TUCSON, Ariz., Dec. 9, 2013 /PRNewswire

Astrium, the world's second largest space company, and Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) signed a teaming agreement that formalizes the companies' plans to compete for the role as lead system engineers and integrators for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Ballistic Missile Defense Program.

NATO's BMD Program oversees the development and execution of ballistic missile defense capabilities, which expanded in 2012 to include the defense of European populations and territories.

"This transatlantic team has a proven, successful track record supporting national and NATO missile defense," said Yannick Devouassoux, Astrium's Head of Missile Defense and NATO Programmes. "The Astrium-Raytheon team will provide sound, innovative, and cost-effective solutions to help develop NATO's future ballistic missile defense capability."

The NATO BMD System Engineering and Integration contract will establish the contractual requirements for territorial defense, while helping create a NATO command and control network architecture for Europe. It will also provide a test infrastructure for the new architecture.

"With more than 30 years' experience in ballistic missiles development and production, ballistic battle analysis, and threat modeling, Astrium is a leader in European missile defense," said George Mavko, Raytheon Missile Systems' Director of European Missile Defense. "Combined with Raytheon's decades of experience in ballistic missile defense interceptors, radars and space sensors, this partnership will provide Europe the best, most affordable missile defense protection."

Once awarded, the contract will call for a 7-year period of performance with an estimated value of 67.6 million Euros (US $91 million).

About Raytheon

Raytheon Company, with 2012 sales of $24 billion and 68,000 employees worldwide, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, security and civil markets throughout the world. With a history of innovation spanning 91 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems; as well as a broad range of mission support services. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. For more about Raytheon, visit us at www.raytheon.com and follow us on Twitter @Raytheon.

source missiledefense.wordpress.com

December 2, 2011 defense-aerospace.com

(Source: ThalesRaytheonSystems; issued December 2, 2011)

MASSY, France --– ThalesRaytheonSystems (TRS) has been awarded a contract by the NATO Air Command and Control System Management Agency on behalf of the NATO Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) Programme, to upgrade the operational hardware and software of the ALTBMD Interim Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) Capability (InCa).

“ThalesRaytheonSystems is committed to supporting this alliance focused approach. Systems such as the Air Command and Control System Level of Operational Capability 1 (ACCS LOC1) and Missile Defence on top of ACCS LOC1 will be critically important to fight as one alliance with warfighters from across the nations trained on common highly interoperable Command and Control systems,” said Jack Harrington, CEO, ThalesRaytheonSystems, during a briefing to NATO and industry participants at the contract signature ceremony in the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

TRS was awarded a contract to develop TMD InCa Step 2 in June 2010 and delivered its part of the system to the end users in December of 2010. TRS worked in close cooperation with the NATO’s ALTBMD Programme Office to field TMD InCa Step 2 and again in August 2011 to conduct operational exercises.

TRS will soon implement additional operator identified requirements to enhance the alliance’s Command and Control capabilities. Under this contract TRS will be upgrading TMD InCa Step 2 to the latest configuration of NATO ACCS. As the world’s first fully integrated C2 system for planning, tasking and execution of air operations, NATO ACCS replaces multiple aging air C2 systems in the NATO nations.

ThalesRaytheonSystems is an international company specializing in air defence systems, command and control systems, 3-D air defence radars, battlefield and weapon locating radars. Since its founding in 2001, ThalesRaytheonSystems has become one of the defence industry’s most successful transatlantic joint ventures. The company employs 1,600 people and is equally owned by Raytheon and Thales.

Oct 4, 2011 By Robert Wall - aerospace daily and defense report

LONDON — When defense ministers from NATO member states meet this week in Brussels, missile defense will be on the agenda. And while concrete decisions are not expected, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen hopes to be ready to declare some meaningful progress next year.

“Step by step, NATO’s territorial missile defense is becoming a reality,” he tells reporters in advance of the defense ministerial. He says he is hopeful that at the time the heads of government of NATO members meet next year in Chicago, the alliance will be ready “to declare an interim operational capability.”

Poland, Romania and Turkey already have agreed to host elements of the U.S.-European Phase Adaptive Approach — a key element of the NATO concept — and Rasmussen says others will be asked this week to prepare commitments.

More broadly, the ministers are likely to discuss the report from an Allied Command Transformation task force exploring potential areas of increased cooperation. Rasmussen has been pushing for more cooperation as part of his “Smart Defense” agenda and says he will work with governments in the coming months to identify projects they may be ready to lead. Program decisions are not expected this week, he notes.

Moreover, a decision by NATO to terminate military operations over Libya remains in limbo. Although Rasmussen says NATO is ready to stop its efforts as soon as the situation on the ground allows, he does not expect this week’s meeting to reach that conclusion.

NATO Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD).

January 28, 2011 DEFPRO.COM

On 27 January 2011, NATO’s first ever theatre ballistic missile defence (TBMD) capability has been handed over to NATO’s military commanders. The handover took place at the NATO Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) in Uedem, Germany, in the presence of NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Claudio Bisogniero, and civil and military authorities from NATO and host nation Germany. The NATO Combined Air Operations Centre demonstrated how this interim capability allows NATO commanders, for the first time ever, to do limited ballistic missile defence planning and exchange information with national ballistic missile defence assets.