Raytheon's P1/ATCAS Declared Operational in Germany.

Business/Technology Editors

MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 20, 2000

Raytheon Company's (NYSE:RTNA)(NYSE:RTNB) state-of-the-art P1 Air Traffic Control Automation System (P1/ATCAS) at the Langen Area Control Center near Frankfurt, Germany, has been declared fully operational by the Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH (DFS). This milestone followed nine months of comprehensive operator training, during which P1/ATCAS demonstrated its effectiveness in air traffic management in the Frankfurt airspace, one of the busiest flight corridors in the world, which accommodated more than 43 million passengers in 1999.

&uot;It was a long way to go to successfully meet and prove the functionality required by the DFS for the Frankfurt P1/ATCAS system,&uot; said Christian Opphard, the DFS P1 Program Manager. &uot;During the five-year implementation, the Raytheon P1/ATCAS team has shown itself to be a highly knowledgeable and motivated partner. Raytheon's program effort continues to be remarkably focused to comply with the DFS needs,&uot; Opphard added.

&uot;P1/ATCAS incorporates new technological capabilities designed to meet the demands of today's high-volume air traffic, laying the DFS' foundation for the largest en route ATC center in continental Europe,&uot; said Frank Marchilena, president of Raytheon's Command, Control, Communications and Information (C3I) Systems business unit.

In May 1994 the DFS contracted with a Raytheon-led team that included Indra Systemas of Torrejon, Spain, and Terma of Copenhagen, Denmark, for the development of P1/ATCAS. The contract award followed the successful implementation of Raytheon's DERD (Display of Extracted Radar Data), DERD-X and DERD-XL systems at 10 ATC centers throughout Germany from 1980 to 1994. The selection of Raytheon's AutoTrac system for P1 reaffirmed the DFS' confidence in Raytheon's design, development and implementation capabilities in air traffic management. Furthermore, the decision solidified the DFS' 22-year working relationship with Raytheon.

The backbone of the P1 system is the local area network - a high-speed, secure, fiber-optic system coupled with a distributed open system configuration and standardized interfaces and communications protocols. P1/ATCAS provides advanced multi-radar tracking with enhanced software that reduces the effects of radar errors and noise, producing a smoothed track display.

The P1 system reduces the DFS controllers' amount of routine work by electronically performing many of the functions that were previously handled manually, such as en route sector coordination and automatic secondary surveillance radar code assignments. Automating such routine tasks increases efficiency while reducing the risk of human error.

To ensure increased system reliability, each of P1's major components is dual redundant and connected to a central control and monitoring system. The control and monitoring display (CMD) provides system status monitoring, radar quality control, system diagnostics and record and playback ability. The CMD detects subsystems that fail and performs central software analyses to determine if an automatic reconfiguration should take place. As an additional safety measure, P1 includes a fallback system, which employs Raytheon's TracView as a basic radar tracking system.

The success of the Langen development and integration led to additional orders for systems in Munich and Dusseldorf and a master test reference system at the Langen complex.

The DFS has further requested Raytheon to develop greater functionality and further enhancements to the operational software. Consequently, the next release series will incorporate significant changes in the development and integration of software into the existing P1 system.

&uot;Providing full-time on-site personnel support and sharing development responsibilities with the DFS, Raytheon is helping enhance its German counterpart's in-house development and maintenance capabilities. This effort underscores Raytheon's continuing commitment to the DFS' modernization plans,&uot; said Marchilena.

Raytheon Company, based in Lexington, Mass., is a global technology leader that provides products and services in the areas of commercial and defense electronics, engineering and construction, and business and special mission aircraft. Raytheon has operations throughout the United States and serves customers in more than 80 countries around the world.