Raytheon, which is competing for an alternate U.S. Air Force satellite terminal program, currently produces three Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) military terminals that already meet 80 percent of the Air Force's requirements. Raytheon submitted a proposal to the Air Force in June for the Family of Advanced Beyond Line of Sight Terminals (FAB-T) alternate program, which will provide secure, anti-jam, communications for the U.S. president and senior military advisers.

All three of Raytheon's AEHF terminals have passed production acquisition milestone decisions and successfully tested with the on-orbit AEHF satellite.

They demonstrated interoperable communications using the satellite's Extended Data Rate (XDR) waveform, one of the military's most complex, low probability-detect, anti-jam waveforms. It moves data more than five times faster than legacy EHF systems.

Raytheon's U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force terminals currently support military operations on Milstar satellites, and are deployed and ready to operate with the newest AEHF satellites as soon as they are operational.

"With a 30-year history in highly secure satellite communications terminals for the military, Raytheon is 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," said Scott Whatmough, vice president of Integrated Communication Systems for Raytheon's Network Centric Systems business.

"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," Whatmough added.