US Army Awards Raytheon $406m Contract for Radios

Raytheon (NYSE: RTN) won a $406 million Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract award from the U.S. Army for ARC-231A radio systems. The contract, which will be performed over the next five years, includes upgrades, production and support for up to 5,000 radios.

Because the ARC-231A is software-defined, it can accommodate rapid upgrades without requiring the radio to be removed from its platform. The latest version of the system recently gained NSA Type 1 certification and delivers secure, classified communications on the battlefield.

"These radios are the backbone of rotary-wing communications," said Barbara Borgonovi, vice president of Raytheon Integrated Communication Systems. "The ARC-231A enables U.S. forces to maintain the edge in secure communications, whether they're flying in contested or congested environments."

The radios will be installed on a variety of Army platforms, including the UH-60 Black Hawk, UH-72 Lakota utility helicopter and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter.