Raytheon Awarded $25 Million Army Deal to Sustain Strategic Communications Terminal

The Army awarded Raytheon Co. a $25 million contract to repair and sustain the AN/USC-28(V) strategic communications terminal, with work running through July 30, 2031.

First Published: July 30, 2026, 1:20 PM ET

FULLERTON, CALIFORNIA — Raytheon Co., a business unit of aerospace and defense giant RTX Corporation, received a $25 million Army contract to keep a strategic communications terminal running through 2031, as announced on war.gov.

The cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity award covers depot-level repair, engineering and obsolescence sustainment of the AN/USC-28(V) strategic communications terminal. The government solicited one bid and received one. Work locations and funding will follow each order, and the contract carries an estimated completion date of July 30, 2031.

Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, serves as the contracting activity under contract number W15P7T-26-D-A004. Officials announced the award July 30, 2026 at 5:00 PM ET among eight Department of Defense contracts issued nationwide that day. The deal marks the 25th award to Raytheon in 2026 and lifts the company’s total contract value for the year to about $6.9 billion. It ranks as the 83rd Department of Defense contract awarded in California during 2026 and falls well short of the company’s record contract near $5 billion.

Obsolescence sustainment matters because strategic communications terminals often outlast the parts that build them. Depot-level repair keeps aging hardware operational when original components leave production. The winner secures years of steady engineering work, while the government keeps a critical command-and-control link alive without buying a replacement system outright.

Raytheon traces its roots to 1922, when Vannevar Bush, Laurence K. Marshall and Charles G. Smith founded the American Appliance Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to wikipedia.org. The firm mass-manufactured magnetron tubes during World War II and later grew into the world’s largest producer of guided missiles, according to wikipedia.org. Raytheon merged with United Technologies Corporation in 2020, and the combined company adopted the name RTX Corporation in July 2023, according to ebsco.com.

RTX reported revenue of $88.6 billion for 2025 and employs roughly 180,000 people, according to wikipedia.org. That scale dwarfs this award, which represents a fraction of a single quarter’s sales. For the average US reader, the contract carries no direct cost at the household level, though it reflects continued federal spending to maintain legacy military communications rather than replace them.

Sustainment awards of this kind have happened before. Raytheon secured a $1.8 billion hardware production and sustainment contract for the SPY-6 family of radars earlier in 2026, according to Google. Repeated single-bid sustainment deals reflect a defense market in which one contractor often holds the technical knowledge to service a system it helped build.

The next decision point rests with Army Contracting Command, which will issue individual task orders that define specific work and funding over the life of the contract. A date for the first order has not been announced.

Maintaining aging electronics has anchored Raytheon’s business since its earliest days, as happened before. The company’s first product was a helium voltage-regulator tube derived from Charles Smith’s astronomical research, according to wikipedia.org. Raytheon produced roughly 80 percent of all magnetrons manufactured during World War II, according to wikipedia.org, and in 1945 Percy Spencer used that same magnetron technology to invent the microwave oven, according to wikipedia.org. The lesson held: mastering the hardware others could not build turned a small tube maker into one of the largest defense contractors in the world.

This contract represents the 25th contract awarded to Raytheon Co., in 2026, bringing the company’s total contract value for the year to $6,888,920,748. It is also the 83rd Department of Defense contract awarded in California during 2026. While this is not the largest contract ever awarded to Raytheon Co., whose record stands at $5,039,629,681, it is notable within the Army portfolio. Specifically, it falls between the 2026 Army portfolio’s year-to-date minimum of $9,051,490 and maximum of $53,859,843,289. Overall, this award was announced among 8 Department of Defense contracts issued nationwide on July 30, 2026.