The Air Force has approved Raytheon’s Minuteman Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network program upgrade for full-rate production, announced the company. MMPU is a terminal designed to work with Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites to provide assured communications between the President and strategic nuclear deterrent forces for nuclear command and control. Raytheon anticipates that it will deliver 67 MMPU terminals, including spares, to the Air Force. Raytheon also noted that MMPU recently underwent a series of operational tests with the first AEHF satellite on orbit, demonstrating interoperability with the satellite’s extended data rate waveform that moves data more than five times faster than previous EHF systems.
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…