FAB-T Fight

Raytheon will have about 10 months and $70 million to compete with Boeing for the future of the Family of Advanced Beyond-Line-of-Sight Terminals program, the Defense Department said in a contract announcement yesterday afternoon. In an effort to drive down cost and risk on the long-delayed communications terminal program, the Air Force decided late last year to bring on a competitor to prime contractor Boeing. Raytheon was the only company to bid, as Inside the Air Force reported this summer, and the company received a formal contract for that work this week.

The complete contract announcement from DOD is below:

The Raytheon Co., Network Centric Systems, Marlborough, Mass. (FA8307-12-C-0013), is being awarded a $70,000,000 firm fixed price contract for development, testing and production of engineering development models of air (E-4, E-6), ground fixed and transportable Command Post Terminals with Presidential and National Voice Conferencing (PNVC) for the Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals. The location of the performance is Marlborough, Mass. Work is to be completed by July 2013. The contracting activity is AFLCMC/HSNK, Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass.

FAB-T is designed to be fully compatible with the Air Force's new Advanced Extremely High Frequency line of communications satellites, as well as with the legacy Milstar constellation. In addition to the command post terminals portion of FAB-T mentioned in the contract announcement, the program is also meant to include airborne terminals aboard the Air Force's bomber aircraft, but the service has not committed to a schedule for production of those devices.