Raytheon to upgrade Navy embedded computing for weather forecasting and battle management
SAN DIEGO –Battle management experts at the Raytheon Co., will operate, maintain, and upgrade a U.S. Navy weather-forecasting and embedded computing system that helps military commanders to plan and carry out combat operations without being hampered by adverse weather.
Officials of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in San Diego, announced a $50 million contract Friday to the Raytheon Technical Services Co. in Indianapolis for the Environmental Satellite Receiver Processor (ESRP) program.
ESRP involves engineering, production, procurement, in-service engineering agent, and support services for the Navy's AN/SMQ-11 and AN/FMQ-17 meteorological and oceanographic satellite receiver processor systems, which provide real-time direct readout of environmental data to support Navy battle planning and execution in all warfare areas, Navy officials say.
Raytheon Technical Services has been operating, maintaining, and upgrading the ESRP since 2011. Friday's sole-source contract calls for Raytheon to analyze, carry out, upgrade, and repair the AN/SMQ-11 and AN/FMQ-17 hardware and software.
The ESRP program seeks to enable AN/FMQ-17 and AN/SMQ-11 antennas to ingest, store, process, and display raw data from polar-orbiting and geo-stationary weather and oceanography satellites to help military commanders plan and carry out their missions. The AN/SMQ-11 primarily is a shipboard battle-management weather system, and the AN/FMQ-17 is a land-based version.
The AN-SMQ-11 is a stand-alone environmental satellite ground receiver that receives raw imagery data in the visible, infrared, and water vapor wavelengths from military and civilian weather satellites. It has three primary components: a motorized antenna, a A VME embedded computer for signal processing and scheduling, and an image processing software application called TeraScan.
The TeraScan software enables users to define sectors of interest, resolution sub-sampling, imagery enhancements and colorization, as well as to display displaying geographical, coastal, and political boundaries. The system can stitch together adjacent polar orbiter images, as well as loop satellite images.
On this contract Raytheon Technical Services will do the work in Indianapolis, and should be finished by September 2022. For more information contact Raytheon online at www.raytheon.com, or SPAWAR at www.spawar.navy.mil.
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John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
