TUCSON, Ariz., 29 Nov. 2012. Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN) was awarded a $422 million contract for its Paveway II family of precision-guided munitions. The company was awarded the direct commercial sale from an international customer. Paveway is a Raytheon-designed kit that transforms "dumb" bombs into precision-guided munitions.
Newer versions of Paveway include global positioning system/inertial navigation system guidance capabilities, which combine the precision and flexibility of laser-guided weapons with the all-weather capability of GPS guidance.
The addition of the GPS/INS system to the PavewayII weapon provides increased delivery accuracy, better in-flight wind corrections, increased low-level performance and expanded delivery envelopes. Specifically, GPS guidance can be used for all-weather attacks of known targets and laser guidance provides an option for improved accuracy, man-in-the-loop, moving targets and targets of opportunity when GPS is denied.
Raytheon’s GPS-aided inertial navigation system extends weapon steering ability by providing autonomous midcourse and terminal modes of guidance. The option for on-demand laser guidance allows the weapon to correct for up to 5,000 feet of target location error.
Paveway has been used by 43 customers. Paveway laser-guided bomb kits comprised more than half the air-to-ground precision-guided weapons used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom and Unified Protector.
