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.)
NASA, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance are all preparing to launch their next-gen rockets from Florida’s Space Coast, two of them before the year is out. One is expected to liberate the U.S. launch enterprise from its reliance on Russian-made RD-180 engines, while all three rockets could eventually carry astronaut crews.