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Bill Sullivan, a vice president and OCX program manager at Raytheon, has said the company expects software development work on a ground-based operational control system for the U.S. Air Force’s GPS III satellites to conclude in 2019, SpaceNews reported Tuesday.
Sullivan said the Raytheon-built OCX system, which is slated for completion in June 2021, adopts “layered security†and is designed to “integrate new types of security controls as threats evolve.â€
He noted that the company completed the qualification test for OCX’s monitoring station receivers in the summer of this year, a development which Sullivan said could pave the way for the deployment of such receivers in 2019.
The OCX Block O launch-and-checkout system, which was handed to the service in September 2017, will “support readiness activities for the upcoming GPS 3 launch in December and for early orbit operations,†Sullivan told the publication.