WASHINGTON — Raytheon Technologies, L3Harris’ Interstate Electronics Corp. and BAE Systems collectively received $552.5 million in contracts to develop and produce integrated circuit cards for military GPS receivers.
The contracts announced Nov. 6 by the U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center are for tiny circuit cards known as MGUE Inc 2 MSI ASIC — short for Military GPS Users Equipment Miniature Serial Interface Increment 2 Application Specific Integrated Circuit.
The new generation of military GPS circuit cards are low power and about the size of a silver dollar. They are compatible with the secure Military Code (M-Code) signal broadcast by the newer GPS satellites.
A GPS 3 satellite launched by SpaceX on Nov. 5 was the 23rd M-Code signal-enabled GPS space vehicle on orbit. This signal is harder to jam and spoof.
The three companies received five-year contracts to design, develop, build, integrate and qualify the receiver cards to enable production of M-Code-capable GPS products and user platforms that require secure positioning navigation and timing capability. The work has to be completed by September 2025.
