Raytheon announced Tuesday that its industry team has successfully completed a key design review of the Global Positioning System Advanced Control Segment, the next-generation ground control element for the GPS satellite constellation. Nearly 70 industry and Air Force representatives recently held the three-day software specification review at Raytheon’s facility in Aurora, Colo. “We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this important review,” said Bob Canty, Raytheon’s program manager for the control segment, which is dubbed OCX. He added, “The successful software specification review sets the foundation for the preliminary design review scheduled for spring 2011 and is an indicator of the maturity of the software and interface requirements and the operational concept for GPS OCX.” Raytheon is the prime contractor, having won the $886 million OCX contract in February.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…