The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has awarded Lockheed Martin [LMT] a $1 billion contract for continued development and evolution of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Weapon System, the company said recently.

Under the terms of the contract, Lockheed Martin’s Surface-Sea Based Missile Defense line of business in Moorestown, N.J., will design, develop, integrate, test, deliver and install further Aegis BMD capability for the United States and allied navies, the company said.

“This contract will both continue the spiral development of Aegis BMD capability to meet expanding global security threats and increase the number of BMD-capable ships at sea by integrating Aegis BMD into the Aegis Modernization program,” Orlando Carvalho, vice president and general manager, said. “This further supports the increasing demand for Aegis BMD capability worldwide, especially in light of the administration’s recent shift in policy in European Missile Defense.”

In September, the Obama administration refocused the U.S. European missile-defense plan, moving away from fixed radar in the Czech Republic and ground-based interceptors in Poland, and moving toward a phased, distributed interceptor and sensor setup.

The new plan calls for deploying the sea-based Aegis system and Raytheon‘s [RTN] Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) block IA interceptors, along with sensors, in 2011 to counter missile threats to Europe and deployed U.S. troops. Later phases of the system would include more-advanced versions of the SM-3, including land-based setups, in 2015 for countering short-and-medium range missiles, in 2018 for intermediate-range threats, and in 2020 for medium-and-intermediate-range missiles and ICBMs that could reach the United States.

Currently, a total of 21 Aegis BMD-equipped warships–19 in the Navy and two in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force–have the certified capability to engage ballistic missiles and perform long-range surveillance and tracking missions. The Navy is modifying two additional East Coast-based Aegis-equipped ships to perform ballistic missile defense, according to Lockheed Martin.

The 92 Aegis-equipped ships currently in service around the globe have more than 950 years of at-sea operational experience and have launched more than 3,500 missiles in tests and real-world operations. In addition to the United States, Aegis is the maritime weapon system of choice for Australia, Japan, Norway, South Korea and Spain, Lockheed Martin said.