Raytheon corporate headquarters. Photo: Raytheon

Raytheon has received a 5-year, $197 million contract with the U.S. Air Force to help modernize its missile warning architecture with a new system that will collect and fuse data from an array of sensors to provide a comprehensive picture of launch activity. 

Raytheon’s  Intelligence, Information and Services division developed a completely open framework — which the Air Force calls the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution (FORGE) Mission Data Processing Application Framework (MDPAF) — designed to process Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) satellite data from both the U.S. Air Force’s evolving Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) constellation and the future Next Gen OPIR constellation, as well as data from other civil and environmental sensors.

The company said it is a significant departure from previous satellite ground control programs, in which companies would develop a system that collects and exploits data from specific types of satellites or sensors. FORGE is designed to collect data from nearly any type of satellite or sensor, and then help operators make sense of that data quickly. Raytheon built the prototype system in less than a year and said it is capable of processing real data today. The company said it will work with the Air Force over the upcoming years to further evolve and prove the framework’s capabilities.

Raytheon IIS President Dave Wajsgras said the Air Force wants to open up the network so it can use as much data from the government’s global satellite network, calling it a “huge transformation” for the service and the government. “Essentially, this is a smartphone model,” he said. “We’ve built an operating system that everyone can build applications for – from Raytheon to the Air Force to universities to small companies. These applications allow the system to process specific types of data.”