Raytheon has been awarded $8.7 million from the U.S. Air Force to participate in development of the future protected tactical military satellite communication system. The Air Force's objective is to identify cost effective architectures and component development paths for the future SATCOM system that will follow the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) system.

Raytheon will design and demonstrate affordable terminal components as well as support the waveform development for the Air Force.

"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 will leverage its long history and deep understanding of protected SATCOM developed from AEHF programs such as the U.S. Navy Multiband Terminal, the U.S. Army's Secure Mobile Anti-jam Reliable Tactical Terminal and the U.S. Air Force's Minuteman Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network Program Upgrade to meet the government's objectives.

All three of Raytheon's AEHF terminals have passed production acquisition milestone decisions and have successfully tested with the on-orbit AEHF satellite.