The U.S. Air Force awarded L3Harris Technologies an $81 million contract to deliver a new multi-orbit, multi-waveform satellite communications (satcom) capability.

The Air Force’s Strategic Development and Planning office is overseeing the contract as part of its ongoing Global Lightning program to develop deployable systems that connect military satellites, protected waveform infrastructure and new commercial space internet satellite constellations into a single network. L3Harris will leverage its Rapidly Adaptable Standards-compliant Open Radio (RASOR™) to deliver resilient, protected, high bandwidth, high availability communications and data-sharing capabilities.

“Our goal is to extend seamless data connection to a wide variety of manned and unmanned airborne platforms, ground and surface platforms, and other operating locations utilizing low earth orbit and other satellites,” said Brendan O’Connell, president, broadband communications, L3Harris. “These capabilities leverage our L3Harris open-systems approach to drive reusability, affordability and the rapid adoption of path-agnostic communications. RASOR has led and will continue to lead the resilient and advanced capability needs of our customer’s missions.”

This award continues L3Harris’ support of the ongoing Global Lightning program. In 2020, the Air Force awarded contracts that successfully established multi-orbit satcom terminals for multiple aerial platforms. The company has showcased RASOR in a series of military and industry demonstrations since its 2021 launch, including flight demonstrations with the Air Force and General Atomics.