USAF B-2 Stealth Bomber The U.S. Air Force has awarded Raytheon a $13.4 million contract to design and develop the Global Aircrew S...
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| USAF B-2 Stealth Bomber |
The U.S. Air Force has awarded Raytheon a $13.4 million contract to design and develop the Global Aircrew Strategic Network Terminal Increment I (Global ASNT), which sends and receives alert messages to bomber, tanker and reconnaissance air crews during nuclear and non-nuclear missions.
The design and development is expected to be complete in December 2016, with production, installation, and sustainment options extending to December 2020.
Global ASNT is a survivable, secure, jam-resistant, multi-path communication system used to disseminate nuclear command and control messages from national-level decision authorities to wing command posts and bomber, tanker and reconnaissance aircrews at geographically dispersed locations.
Global ASNT allows the President of the United States to direct and manage U.S. forces.The terminals are designed to withstand even fallout from a nuclear attack.
The terminals will be installed at fixed sites, including wing command posts, nuclear task forces and munitions support squadrons, and forward deployed mobile support teams. Fielding is expected to begin in fiscal 2017.
Raytheon is actively producing AEHF terminals for the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force. The terminals have demonstrated interoperable communications using the AEHF satellite's Extended Data Rate (XDR) waveform, one of the military's most complex, low probability of detection, low probability of interception, anti-jam waveforms. XDR moves data more than five times faster than legacy satellite systems.
Global ASNT is the latest in a line of Raytheon terminals that will send sensitive information zipping around the globe via the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellites, soon to be the Pentagon’s primary system for highly protected communications.
Source: Raytheon/ US DoD
