Raytheon 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. 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. 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 AN/ARC-231 is an Airborne VHF/UHF/LOS and SATCOM Communications System. This system supports Department of Defense (DoD) requirements for airborne, multi-band, multi-mission, secure anti-jam voice, data and imagery transmission and provides network-capable communications in a compact radio set. The AN/ARC-231(V)(C) Skyfire Radio System, based upon the RT-1808A/ARC-231(V)(C) Receiver Transmitter is a fully compliant, high performance, fully qualified, low risk solution for any airborne platform.
The AN/ARC-231(V)(C) is fully qualified to appropriate Military Standards (MIL-STD) through Environmental, Reliability, Electromagnetic interference (EMI)/ Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) testing that ensures interoperability across the tactical environment in addition the AN/ARC-231(V)(C) is Air-Worthiness certified. The ARC-231(V)(C) Radio System operates from 30 to 512 MHz, AM/FM Very High Frequency (VHF), Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Line-of-Sight (LOS) with frequency agile modes Electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM), UHF Satellite Communications (SATCOM), Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA), Integrated Waveform (IW), Air Traffic Control (ATC) channel spacing is operator selectable in 5, 8.33, 12.5, and 25kHz steps. Standard Ship-to-Shore Maritime operation is also available.
The RT-1808A/AN-ARC-231(V)(C) is currently used on a wide variety of platforms. Rotary wing platforms include MH-60L/M and UH-60L/M Black Hawks, MH-47E/G and CH-47G Chinooks, UH-1N Hueys, A2C2S Black Hawks, AH-64 Apaches and UH-72A Light Utility Helicopters (LUH) . Fixed wing platforms include Airborne Reconnaissance Low-Altitude Multi-Mission-ARLM, USAF Rivet Joint, and USAF Joint-STARS. These platforms, along with a wide variety of additional users, utilize the ARC-231 for VHF/UHF Line-of-Sight Single Channel and SATCOM BLOS for voice and data transmission.
