Leonardo DRS Showcases JTT-X Hybrid SATCOM for Tactical Aircraft

The U.S. Air Force is in need of secure communications for tactical

aviation in all environments. DRS has been in development of secure satellite communications

for the last 25 years. As threats evolve, there's a higher chance of those communications being

degraded, jammed, taken out in some capacity. There's a need for multiple communication

pathways that the U.S. Air Force is focusing on from a PACE perspective, or primary alternate

contingency and emergency communications. The JTTX that we've developed with in partnership with the

Navy is a secure communications platform that provides multiple pathways to achieve those

critical communications. Air Force operators are consistently operating in higher and higher contested environments

Those contested environments have the ability to challenge our legacy secure communications

capabilities in the jet, taking away an opportunity for them to have critical communications about

command and control or threats or target information. In an operating environment where communications are challenged or jammed, paced communications

are required. So primary, alternate, contingency or emergency. The hybrid SATCOM terminal that we've developed, JTT-X, provides a myriad of ways to close the

loop on those critical communications in a secure fashion through a variety of tactical

SATCOM environments. The Air Force started working on a project in 2018 through the Air Force Research Lab

called Global Lightning. That project was meant to develop technologies to provide proliferated LEO communications to tactical aviation aircraft The Navy saw this as a critical need as well given the operating environments and the challenges that they facing About two years ago we started developing with the Navy the JTT

which is our hybrid SATCOM solution, to provide global lightning capability for the Growlers and the Super Hornets

That capability will provide secure communications across a myriad of proliferated LEO commercial and traditional satellite communications networks

The XCM3 was developed as our solution for a SOSA-aligned open architecture 3U VPX transceiver card

It's based on red side processing, black side processing, RF transceiver, as well as an embedded crypto module included

For JTTX to start with, it does not include the transceiver capability, but does include the embedded crypto module to provide secure communications for proliferated LEO communications architectures for high assurance IP encryption

The JTTX Production Award, while it's for the Navy and primarily focused on the Growlers

is important because it shows that we've gone from concept to a production contract within

two years of developing a critical need for the Navy as their threats emerge

DRS has been in development and production of secure satellite communications for our

warfighters for the last 25 years. What JTTX provides is that next generation capability and hybrid satellite communications

capability whereby offering additional communications protocols other than what we've offered with

traditional means in the past. The Navy's JTTX program is significant for the Air Force simply because it provides a

mature technology that's now starting production capability that can certainly support other

tactical aviation aircraft. you