Air Force tabs Raytheon for SATCOM project

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MARLBOROUGH, Mass., Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Raytheon is to help in the development of a cost-effective protected tactical military satellite communications system for the U.S. Air Force.

The identification of architectures and component development paths for the future SATCOM system, which will follow the Advanced Extremely High Frequency system, is worth $8.7 million to Raytheon.

"Cost is the main driver in designing the architecture of the future system," said Brian Gray, director of Strategic Communication Systems for Raytheon's Network Centric Systems business.

"By getting in on the ground floor of development and working together with industry partners, we can use our 30 years of domain expertise and success from working on the Milstar EHF and AEHF systems to deliver a low-cost solution for the next generation of protected satellite communications."

Raytheon said it will leverage its experience from AEHF programs -- such as the U.S. Navy Multiband Terminal and the U.S. Air Force's Minuteman Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network Program Upgrade -- to help meet program needs.