Raytheon Pushing for Alternate U.S. Air Force AEHF Program
By Jeffrey Hill | July 12, 2012
[Satellite TODAY 07-12-12] Raytheon submitted a proposal to the U.S. Air Force in June for the Family of Advanced Beyond Line of Sight Terminals (FAB-T) alternate program to provide secure, anti-jam communications for the U.S. president and senior military advisers, the company announced July 11.
Raytheon is pushing for an alternate U.S. Air Force satellite terminal program. The company claims that the three Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) military terminals it currently produces already meet 80 percent of the Air Force’s requirements.
The Raytheon AEHF terminals have passed production acquisition milestone decisions and successfully tested with the on-orbit AEHF satellite, demonstrating interoperable communications using the satellite’s Extended Data Rate (XDR) waveform.
“Raytheon is well positioned to provide the Air Force exactly what it is looking for — reliable, efficient, cost-effective terminals to handle one of the nation’s most sensitive and important communications needs,” Raytheon Network Centric Systems Vice President of Integrated Communication Systems Scott Whatmough said in a statement. “We already meet a substantial number of technical requirements and we will leverage them to meet the Air Force’s timeline for operational terminals by 2015."