raytheon

Raytheon's new missile factory ready to fly

Raytheon, one of the world's largest military contractors, opened the doors today to its newest missile factory, a state-of-the-art facility that will produce weapons for the United States and its allies.

According to Raytheon, the Huntsville, Ala. plant, located at the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal, will produce Standard Missile-3 and Standard Missile-6 interceptors. The first SM-6s should be delivered in early 2013, while the SM-3s should be ready a quarter later.

The facility is said to be among the most advanced missile production plants in the world, utilizing laser-guided transport vehicles for moving missile components around.

DIY shark intrusion system works in aquariums

The New York Port Authority had egg on its face recently when a stranded jet skier managed to breach JFK International Airport's security perimeter and walk across several runways.

Raytheon, maker of the $100 million Perimeter Intrusion Detection System, has some explaining to do.

But it's not all bad. Inspired by the breach (and Shark Week), Justin Huynh and friends at engineering firm Liquidware have concocted their own intruder alert system for far fewer bucks.

Essentially, it's a simple laser tripwire that sends alerts to Twitter when activated. So far, it works with toy sharks and not hapless jet skiers. … Read more

Raytheon, Lockheed lock horns for Space Fence contract

Last month, the European Space Agency abruptly declared its Earth observation satellite, Envisat, dead. After more than 10 years of successfully monitoring the planet's natural behaviors from space, the once valuable tool is now considered junk that could endanger active space assets for as much as 150 years.

Situations like this are what has led the U.S. Air Force and partners around the globe to move forward with the construction of a system designed to closely track as many as 200,000 piece of space debris. And now, the Air Force is considering which of two contractors' proposals … Read more

Futuristic Navy railgun with 220-mile range closer to reality

Imagine a Naval gun so powerful it can shoot a 5-inch projectile up to 220 miles, yet requires no explosives to fire.

That's the Navy's futuristic electromagnetic railgun, a project that could be deployed on the service's ships by 2025, and which is now a little bit closer to reality with the signing of a deal with Raytheon for the development of what's known as the pulse-forming network.

Rather than using explosives to fire projectiles as do conventional naval weapons, the railgun depends on an electromagnetic system that uses the ship's onboard electrical power grid … Read more

Raytheon passes major Navy destroyer radar milestone

Raytheon this morning said that it has passed a major milestone in its bid to win a multi-billion dollar U.S. Navy radar contract.

The Tewksbury, Massachusetts military contract is currently competing against Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for the lucrative contract to provide next-generation Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) technology for the Navy's Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. As part of its efforts to win the deal, Raytheon has just surpassed 1,000 hours of degradation-free testing on its Gallium Nitride transmit/receive modules. Completing the 1,000 hours of testing, during which the modules were said to have … Read more

In Paris, Raytheon sells high-tech situational awareness

PARIS--As a major contractor to the U.S. Department of Defense, giving American soldiers a competitive advantage is a big part of what Raytheon does.

At the Paris Air Show here this week, the giant company is demonstrating a number of its newly developed technologies, including several intended to give the U.S. military that competitive edge. Among them is an overarching system that provides what's known as Global ISR--intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance--and a technology that's a key part of that known as Distributed Common Ground System, or DCGS.

I got a chance to see this technology demonstrated … Read more

Raytheon signs on for all-fuel engines

Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems has signed a deal with Cyclone Power Technologies to partner on developing a version of the all-fuel Mark V "clean-tech" engine.

The Cyclone Mark V is a Rankine Cycle heat-regenerative external-combustion engine that the company says can run on "virtually any fuel" including algae fuel and waste oil while emitting few pollutants.

The engine has a thermal efficiency of over 30 percent and produces fewer emissions than a modern gas or diesel internal-combustion engines, according to Cyclone. Mechanical energy is derived through the heating and cooling of water in a closed-loop, piston-based … Read more

Defense contractor unveils real-life 'Iron Man' suit

Why go admire the exoskeleton worn by Tony Stark--played by Robert Downey, Jr.--in the "Iron Man" movies when you could wear a real-life version reminiscent of the films' special suit yourself?

That's the proposition being put forward by defense contractor Raytheon Sarcos, which today unveiled imagery of its XOS 2 wearable exoskeleton, a suit it says could allow the wearer to lift 200 pounds hundreds of times without getting fatigued, or to maintain superhuman levels of strength, agility, and endurance.

The XOS 2 is made with a wide variety of controllers, sensors, and actuators.

The suit, … Read more

Tech fixes to wind turbine-radar conflict face hurdles

Emerging technology can ease the problem of wind farms causing interference with air-traffic control systems. But deployment of that technology in the U.S. has been slowed by questions over authority and cost.

Since 2006, radar maker Raytheon and National Air Traffic Services, which provides air traffic control in the U.K., have been working on a project to upgrade air traffic radar so it can distinguish between aircraft and wind turbines' spinning blades. Concerns over the disturbances turbines can cause on air traffic control systems are already stunting the growth of wind power: radar and wind turbines conflicts derailed … Read more