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 wants to pump more than $12 billion over the next five years into its new affordable long-range missiles program and recently asked industry to push the flights of some of those munitions beyond 1,200 miles.