Raytheon's MMPU terminal receives production award

Raytheon has announced that the Minuteman Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network Program Upgrade (MMPU) Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) terminal being developed for the US Air Force (USAF) has received a successful Milestone C decision and subsequent production award.

The MMPU terminal provides protected communications to warfighters, and is the first AEHF terminal for the USAF to enter in to the production phase. In another achievement, it became the company's third AEHF terminal to interoperate with the on-orbit AEHF satellite, joining the US Army's Secure Mobile Anti-Jam Reliable Transportable Terminal (SMART-T) and the US Navy Multiband Terminal (NMT).

The first AEHF satellite, launched in August 2010, recently began an extensive set of operational tests. In this testing, MMPU, SMART-T and NMT demonstrated interoperable communications using the AEHF satellite's eXtended Data Rate (XDR) waveform, moving data more than five times faster than previous EHF systems. MMPU adds essential nuclear command and control capabilities to the Raytheon AEHF terminal product line established by SMART-T and NMT.

Raytheon is projected to deliver 67 MMPU AEHF terminals, including spares, to the US Air Force. The MMPU AEHF systems incorporate Raytheon's XDR waveform hardware and software, including new cryptographic algorithms for protecting national command and control (NC2) networks, a complex technological breakthrough in protected communications. XDR and the cryptographic algorithms provide increased bandwidth, speed and significantly improved security within the NC2 communications architecture.