Manufacturer and systems integrator Raytheon has won a three-year, $164 million Department of Defense contract to deliver ground terminals for Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite communications. Raytheon has been pushing for an alternate Air Force satellite terminal program with three Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) military terminals it currently produces, claiming that they already meet 80 percent of the military’s requirements.
   The newest contract was announced Oct. 5 by the U.S. Army and will be managed by the Army Contracting Command in Fort Monmouth. Raytheon will be responsible for the procurement and services needed for AEHF tactical terminals that are secure, mobile and resistant to jamming. AEHF is a constellation of communications satellites maintained by the Air Force Space Command for use by U.S. armed forces and selected allies. Two of the four constellation spacecraft are currently in orbit, with a third spacecraft scheduled to launch in 2013.
   Raytheon’s initiative to grow its AEHF business stems back to 2002, when the Air Force awarded Boeing a contract for Family of Advanced Beyond Line of Sight Terminals (FAB-T) that would work with the AEHF satellites. 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. Raytheon Network Centric Systems Vice President of Integrated Communication Systems Scott Whatmough speaks with Via Satellite about the company’s recent success with the U.S. Air Force terminal program.

Via Satellite: Now that Raytheon has won this AEHF program award, what’s next for the company?

Whatmough: Our AEHF terminals passed production acquisition milestones and successfully tested with the on-orbit AEHF satellite, demonstrating interoperable communications using the satellite’s Extended Data Rate (XDR) waveform. We have been 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. 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. The key milestone and date is to deliver a FAB-T terminal into production by that time. There are many additional milestones along the way, but getting under contract is critical for us so that we can get that last 20 percent of the capability designed. We then need to build up the final form-factor systems, go through a qualification program and then put those terminals on the table.

Via Satellite: Can you explain how you demonstrated the alternate FAB-T so soon after submitting your company’s proposal?

Whatmough: Given that this is a risk-reduction program for the Air Force, one of the things they wanted to do is make sure that the bidders were not just ‘Powerpoint’ bidders, but actually had capabilities ready. So, the Air Force inserted a requirement for bidders to do a post-submittal demonstration. We held that demonstration in late June — approximately two weeks after the proposal was submitted. It was defined as a four-hour demo. Obviously, we knew we couldn’t demonstrate the full AEHF capability in all of its modes and configurations in four hours, so the goal was to demonstrate to the Air Force that we really do have a significant portion of this capability to substantiate our claims. We carefully went through the requirements and identified the areas that we believed the government would view as the most difficult and risky and demonstrated those capabilities at our facility in Marlboro, Mass. It was a big milestone for us.

Via Satellite: How did the demonstration turn out?

Whatmough: From our point of view, it went very well. We did a combination of over-the-air demonstrations. It’s hard to get time on the actual AEHF satellite, so we used a simulator that emulates the performance on the satellite. We couldn’t show the Air Force everything that we could do, but we showed them the hard stuff. We showed them some of the capabilities that are unique requirements to FAB-T that, for example, didn’t exist on NMT, but were developed on our Smart-T program. I think we showed them something that they may not have seen in the past from their previous experience. I don’t know exactly what Boeing has and has not been able to demonstrate, but I do know that we were able to demonstrate exactly what we promised. The feedback from the Air Force customer seemed to be good, but I won’t put words in their mouths. The body language seemed to indicate that we delivered what they were looking for.

Via Satellite: Which other companies did you compete with on the contract?

Whatmough: When we were going into the proposal, it looked like we were going to compete with the usual suspects — Harris, Rockwell, Northrop, L3 and others. Of course, some of those companies were bound by previous agreements with Boeing and there was always a question of whether or not they would bid in an alternate program when they were participants on the main program. It turns out that we were the only bidder.

Via Satellite: Did being the only bidder affect the government’s time schedule on determining a winner?

Whatmough: It doesn’t really change anything on the timeline issue. The strength of Raytheon’s case is that we’ve been successful on three different advanced AEHF programs. Each one of those programs brought some of their own unique requirements to the table that allowed us to produce a comprehensive offering.