Rockwell Gets USAF Contract

Rockwell International Corp. said Friday that it has won a $111-million contract to supply communications terminals to the Air Force.

Including the new contract, Rockwell will have sold to the Air Force $500 million worth of the terminals, which communicate by satellite.

Under the latest agreement, Rockwell will supply 24 of the sophisticated terminals--which are used for battlefield communications--and two-thirds of the spare terminals for the system, called Milstar.

“This is an important win that establishes us as a leader in the extremely high-frequency satellite-communication terminal market,” said John McLuckey, president of the company’s $2-billion Defense Electronics unit.

That market is growing, Rockwell said, because of “some fundamental changes in warfare and ‘lessons learned’ from Operation Desert Storm” during the Persian Gulf War.