Raytheon’s first Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) terminal, the Minuteman Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network (MEECN), has entered into the production phase after receiving Milestone C decision.
The company is expected to supply 67 MMPU AEHF terminals, including spares, to the US Air Force (USAF).
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The USAF satellite terminal system is also interoperable with the on-orbit AEHF satellite, which integrates US Navy Multiband Terminal (NMT) and US Army’s Secure Mobile Anti-Jam Reliable Transportable Terminal (SMART-T).
Raytheon Network Centric Systems business Integrated Communication Systems vice president Scott Whatmough said the satellite offers secure communications to the armed forces with mission flexibility and increased capacity to provide protected voice, data and video communications.
During the AEHF satellite’s extensive set of operational trials, the MMPU, SMART-T and NMT used the AEHF satellite’s Extended Data Rate (XDR) waveform to demonstrate interoperable communications by moving data more than five times faster than previous EHF systems.
An essential capability such as nuclear command and control is added by MMPU to the AEHF terminals in addition to providing mission flexibility, data throughput and transmission assurance for the user.
The MMPU AEHF systems provide increased bandwidth and speed to enable strategic and tactical military communications and the cryptographic algorithms for protecting national command and control (NC2) networks.
AEHF, developed by MILSATCOM Systems, has been designed to provide improved global, survivable, highly secure, protected communications for warfighters operating on ground, sea and air platforms.
NMT is a family of multiband ship, submarine and shore communications terminals that integrate extremely-high-frequency/advanced extremely-high-frequency capability while SMART-T provides the user with increased flexibility and capacity to transmit voice, data and video.
