TUCSON, Ariz., 17 Dec. 2012. Raytheon Company (NYSE:RTN) won a $1.5 million contract under Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) Space Enabled Effects for Military Engagements (SeeMe) program, designed to provide useful on-demand imagery to the warfighter in the field from a low-cost satellite constellation.

Raytheon engineers, over the next nine months and for the program’s first phase, will design small satellites to enhance warfighter situational awareness on the digital battlefield. Raytheon has teamed with Sierra Nevada Corp., University of Arizona, and SRI International to assist with design work and production. Next year, in phase two of the SeeMe program, the Raytheon team anticipates building six satellites for ground testing.

"Leveraging our state-of-the-art missile assembly lines, we can mass produce these small, lightweight satellites quickly and affordably," says Tom Bussing, Raytheon Missile Systems' vice president of Advanced Missile Systems. "As the world's only producer of exoatmospheric kill vehicles, we are already developing and building hardware to space standards."

"We are pleased to be working with DARPA to solve the challenge of providing warfighters with a tactical space sensor capability at a production rate price," says Bussing.

Follow Military & Aerospace Electronics and Avionics Intelligence news updates on Twitter.