Collins wins $36M Air Force satellite contract

CEDAR RAPIDS — Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, has been awarded a $36 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a satellite communications pod.

The pod will provide pilots with high bandwidth communications and data directly to the cockpit.

It will bring together military and commercial satellites to add resiliency to the platforms and will be able to switch between different vendors “with little of no hardware modification,” the company said in a news release.

"It is critical in a contested environment that the warfighter can communicate with operators regardless of communication path," said Ryan Bunge, vice president communication & networking solutions for Collins Aerospace.

"This resilient communications terminal is designed for survivability in degraded environments to offer military leaders enhanced situational awareness to make better decisions faster, across the battlespace."