ARLINGTON, Va., April 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company
(NYSE: RTNA; RTNB) has selected Sun Microsystems Inc. to participate in the
engineering effort to design, build and support the total ship computing
architecture (TSCA) for the U.S. Navy's 21st Century Land Attack Destroyer --
the DD-21. The long-term, exclusive agreement between the two companies
includes provisions to assure selection of the best value commercial hardware
and software to meet performance and cost requirements.
Raytheon, Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding, and The Boeing Company are the
principal members of the DD-21 Gold Team, which is now under contract to
develop and deliver a preliminary system design to the Navy. The team is
competing to be selected to be the full service contractor to build the lead
ship of this new class of vessels for the Navy.
The DD 21 TSCA is the ship-wide, all-source information processing and
management system supporting all operational functions of the ship. It is also
the key contributor to network centric warfare, assuring knowledge superiority
and the execution of accurate measured force response. In addition, TSCA will
contribute to reducing the crew's workload.
"Our priority is to enable the sailor to manage the ship and fight to win,
and use TSCA to enhance the quality of life for personnel while they are on
board," said Jack Cronin, vice president of Raytheon's DD-21 campaign. "We're
confident that we will design a system which meets the vision for the future,
with the lowest life cycle cost, by using an evolutionary migration of legacy
systems and open-systems computing."
While the TSCA will be based on open-systems software architecture, the
development process, integration, testing, certification and delivery will
exploit use of commercial items and reuse of legacy software where
appropriate. An effective system of metrics also will be used to assess the
maturity of software development.
Design of the DD-21 TSCA will benefit from Sun Microsystems' expertise in
a variety of information technologies, including processors, operating
environments, servers, and displays. The core architectural elements in the
TSCA will provide an infrastructure that will allow self-healing and
adaptability, with high availability of computer resources throughout the
network. In addition, Sun Professional Services will participate in the
development of a prototype of the TSCA infrastructure software to validate key
aspects of the DD-21 design. Sun is now working on the design and initial
development of a software environment that will enable rapid integration,
including legacy systems, and the certification of both tactical and non-
tactical software for the new ship system.
Raytheon Company is a global technology leader that provides products and
services in the areas of commercial and defense electronics and business and
special mission aircraft. It has operations throughout the United States and
serves customers in more than 80 countries.
Editor's Note: Phase I of the DD-21 program -- development of competing
concept designs by separate Blue and Gold teams -- began in 1998. Phase II
follows with a system concept design competition, which will culminate in Blue
and Gold team proposals being submitted in December, 2000. This will be
followed by a down-select in mid 2001 to one full service contractor team to
perform final system/subsystem design. The lead ship is scheduled to be
delivered in FY 2008. The Gold Team partnership is supported by more than 40
companies that are technically and geographically diverse, as well as Navy
laboratories in the United States and Canada. The Gold Team has successfully
completed its Phase I concept design and its Phase II first major review with
the U.S. Navy program office (PMS-500).
Sun Microsystems' contributions to the DD-21 TSCA design will be based on
JINI and JAVA technologies, SPARC and MAJC processors, Solaris Operating
Environment, and scalable Sun Enterprise servers and Ultra thin client SunRay
displays. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Jini, Java, Solaris, Sun
Enterprise and SunRay are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun
Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC
trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks
of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Contact: Mark Day
310.647.0784
http://www.raytheon.com
SOURCE Raytheon Company
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