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[[Bell Labs]], which had been the primary industry partner in previous ABM systems, proposed development of a new system able to track 200 to 300 missiles at a time. The program officially started in 1969. Development was led by [[System Development Corporation]] (SDC), which had formed in 1955 to develop the software for the [[Semi-Automatic Ground Environment|SAGE]] air defense computer system. PEPE was designed by a team led by [[George Mueller (engineer)|George Mueller]], formerly of [[NASA]]. He described the ultimate goal to produce 300 million instructions per second, far in advance of contemporary systems.<ref>{{cite news |newspaper=Tucson Citizen |first=Deirdre |last=Donnelly |title=New computer generation to work much faster |date= 24 September 1976 |url=http://www.silogic.com/PEPE/PEPE.html}}</ref>
An initial testbed system, the "IC model", was built with 16 processors consisting of individual [[integrated circuit]]s and connected to an [[IBM 360]]/65 host. This was completed in 1971. This proved successful, and between October 1971 and September 1972, SDC and [[Honeywell]] produced a final design. In November, Burroughs won the contract to build a 36 processor prototype of the full-sized 288-processor version. Burroughs delivered PEPE to the Ballistic Missile Defense Advanced Technology Center (part of US Army's Strategic Defense Command) in [[Huntsville, Alabama]] in 1976.<ref name=Ford/> Testing was apparently successful, but Bell concluded that the machine was too expensive for the sorts of threats being addressed by the [[Safeguard Program]] that was being deployed in the 1970s.<ref name=silogic/>
The system was eventually sent to [[McDonnell Douglas]] in [[Huntington Beach, CA]].{{efn|It was previously believed to have gone to [[Kwajalein Island]], home of the Army's ballistic missile testing range.<ref name=silogic/>}} After it was retired, it was sent to [[Auburn University]], which scrapped the system some time in the late 1980s or early 1990s.<ref name=silogic/>
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