Boeing to install Raytheon secure GPS aboard tiltrotor Osprey aircraft for enhanced navigation and guidance
PATUXENT RIVER NAS, Md. – U.S. Navy airborne navigation and guidance experts are asking avionics integrators at the Bell Boeing Joint Project Office, Amarillo, Texas, to retrofit an upgraded Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver into the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.
Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command have announced a $15.4 million order to the Bell Boeing JPO for systems engineering, technical, logistics support, and retrofit of the Miniaturized Airborne Global Positioning System Receiver 2000 (MAGR-2000) for integration onto the V-22 Osprey aircraft.
The MAGR-2000 modular GPS receiver is an open-systems architecture form, fit, and function backward-compatible replacement of the MAGR, which provides enhancements like improved acquisition and GPS solution performance, all-in-view GPS satellite tracking, and GPS integrity.
The MAGR provides precision navigation for U.S. military aircraft and smart munitions by accessing special encrypted military positioning signals from GPS satellites, called P/Y-Code. The MAGR-2000 also includes a selective availability anti-spoofing module (SAASM) upgrade.
Related: Air Force asks Raytheon to provide trusted computing to GPS with secure ASIC components
The Raytheon Intelligence & Space segment in El Segundo, Calif., works together with GPS receiver specialist Trimble Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif., on the MAGR-2000 program. Trimble provides militarized P/Y-Code GPS receivers for embedding in the Raytheon MAGR-2000 avionics.
The MAGR-2000 also incorporates the new M-Code for further secure GPS capability to help protect military GPS signals against electronic warfare (EW) jamming and cyber attacks.
The MAGR-2000 GPS navigation avionics is aboard several different kinds of military aircraft, including the F/A-18 Hornet jet fighter-bomber, VH-3D presidential helicopter, and V-22 Osprey tiltrotor. The system is for new and existing military aircraft.
In 2018 Raytheon received an $11.4 million U.S. Air Force order to add trusted computing capability to the MAGR-2000 through trusted application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology.
Trusted ASICs are high-reliability electronic components designed and manufactured under U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) supervision and certified to military standards to protect sensitive electronics from tampering, cyber attacks, environmental extremes, and other security threats.
On this order the Bell Boeing JPO will do the work in Ridley Park, Pa., and in Amarillo, Texas, and should be finished by November 2024. For more information contact the Bell Boeing Joint Program Office online at www.boeing.com, or Naval Air Systems Command at www.navair.navy.mil.
John Keller | Editor-in-Chief
John Keller is the Editor-in-Chief, Military & Aerospace Electronics Magazine--provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronics and optoelectronic technologies in military, space and commercial aviation applications. John has been a member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since 1989 and chief editor since 1995.
