Rockwell Collins won an $18 million contract from the Air Force to complete development and qualification of the Tactical Targeting Network Technology waveform, paving the way its implementation on a broad range of aircraft, announced the company. “TTNT will provide warfighters with a higher throughput, low latency networking capability to meet the demands of new and evolving mission requirements,” said Bob Haag, Rockwell Collins’ general manager of communication and navigation products, in the company’s Dec. 17 release. That is something “the warfighter does not have today,” he added. TTNT is built to deliver high data rate, long-range communication links for airborne platforms as a complement to existing tactical data link networks, according to the release. The Pentagon has demonstrated TTNT on aircraft including the B-2, B-52, E-2C Hawkeye, E-3 AWACS, F-16, F/A-18, and F-22. (See also Raptors Test Networking, Air and Ground.)
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.