Raytheon's U.S. Air Force satellite terminal system that provides protected communications to warfighters has received a successful Milestone C decision and subsequent production award.

The Minuteman Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network Program Upgrade (MMPU) is Raytheon's first Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) terminal for the Air Force to enter into the production phase.

In another achievement, it became the company's third AEHF terminal to interoperate with the on-orbit AEHF satellite, joining the U.S. Army's Secure Mobile Anti-Jam Reliable Transportable Terminal (SMART-T) and the U.S. 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.

"Our success on MMPU reflects our three-decade commitment to our EHF/AEHF terminal product line," said Scott Whatmough, vice president of Integrated Communication Systems for Raytheon's Network Centric Systems business.

"We are delivering the most powerful, the most secure communications to the armed forces, giving them more mission flexibility and significantly increased capacity to provide protected voice, data and video communications," added Whatmough.

Raytheon is projected to deliver 67 MMPU AEHF terminals, including spares, to the U.S. 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.