[Satellite TODAY 03-01-10] Raytheon has won an $886 million contract with the U.S. Air Force to develop and improve the accuracy of information from GPS satellites, the company announced Feb. 26.

    The contract represents the first two development blocks of the advanced control segment (OCX), which will include anti-jam capabilities and improved security, accuracy and reliability and will be based on a modern service-oriented architecture to integrate government and industry open-system standards. OCX aims to make it easier for operations teams to run the current GPS block 2 and all future GPS satellites.

"The OCX concept was created to separate the control and space segments," Raytheon GPS OCX Vice President Bob Canty said in a statement. "Technologies were evolving so rapidly and were so critical to execution that specialized skills were needed. The GPS wing saw the same need for specialized expertise on GPS OCX.”