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Founded in 1988, Science and Applied Technology, Inc. is establishing an innovative approach for the design and development of advanced weapon systems and associated technologies in the defense industry. Since its inception, SAT, Inc. has developed a significant engineering and system development capability in Southern California under contract with the United States Navy for the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM). AARGM is a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program to design and demonstrate an innovative systems upgrade to the AGM-88 High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM).
SAT, Inc.'s corporate headquarters is in Rancho Bernardo, CA and its Technology Development Center is located in Woodland Hills, CA just north of Los Angeles, CA. The company has significant laboratory, assembly and integration capabilities for the design and development of complex weapon systems.
SAT, Inc. employees have a broad range of experience in the Defense Marketplace, particularly in the design, development and manufacturing of tactical and strategic missile systems. As a result of their SBIR success, Science and Applied Technology, Inc. was acquired by Alliant Techsystems in October 2002.
Currently in Phase III of the SBIR demonstration program, AARGM is an innovative multi-sensor fuzed weapon system designed to address several operational shortfalls of the AGM-88 High Speed Anti-radiation Missile (HARM). The scope of the AARGM program is to demonstrate the acquisition, tracking and terminal aimpoint selection of non-cooperating or non-emitting enemy air defense systems and provide a "hard kill" capability to the HARM.
AARGM's Multi-Sensor Fuzed design incorporates state of the art passive and active radar systems that are integrated in a distributed architecture to provide enhanced performance and modular growth to meet evolving threat capabilities. One of the principal subsystems is an advanced passive Anti-Radiation Homing (ARH) seeker employing a state of the art conformal antenna system utilizing the entire aperture of the HARM missile. The ARH sensor passively senses radio frequency (Rf) waves emitted by a target. This provides a broad area of regard with an expanded frequency band to detect, classify and track a wide range of threats.
Through the $180+M invested on AARGM contracts to date, SAT has grown into a multifaceted corporation with nearly 200 employees and a strong capability in weapon system design, development, integration, test and production. This capability, along with the sophisticated technology developed and demonstrated under the AARGM program, has led to significant additional business opportunities and contracts via the Department of Defense and DoD contractors.
SAT, Inc. enjoys an established track record of excellent performance on the AARGM program and has a well-known reputation in the technical community as a "power house" of technical capabilities for innovative design, development and manufacturing of tactical and strategic missile systems. The U.S. Navy has validated SAT, Inc.'s capabilities through numerous assessments and program reviews, and the reputation of the company is spreading throughout the industry. Furthermore, the AARGM SBIR success story has resulted in the fostering and establishment of SAT, Inc. as an innovative, high technology defense contractor that can meet additional DoD needs concerning precision munitions, missiles and weapon systems.
Quick Bolt Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) Program
During the Kosovo Operations over 1,000 AGM-88 HARMs were launched by the US Air Force, US Navy and the German Air Force. Due to HARM's limited capability to attack non-cooperating threats only a very small number of weapons actually hit their intended target. Accordingly, the European Command, the US Navy, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense established an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) program called Quick Bolt.
The Quick Bolt program takes the baseline AARGM weapon system and adds to it two new capabilities. By adding an additional sensor with direct access to national assets, the weapon, while on the wing of the tactical aircraft, receives enemy target information in real time. This information is displayed in the cockpit and provides additional situational awareness to the pilot. Using national overhead assets for targeting, this additional capability provides for the direct targeting of the weapon from literally anywhere in the world. Once the pilot has selected a target and fires the AARGM/Quick Bolt missile, the missile will fly to the intended location of the target using a sophisticated navigation subsystem that includes a GPS receiver. If at any point the threat emits a radar signal, the passive radar seeker on the weapon will detect, identify, track, and refine the location of the target. As the weapon nears the target, the active terminal seeker will (a) search for the target in the target location zone; (b) detect, classify and lock onto the target; and (c) guide the weapon to lethal impact. Just prior to impact, the weapon will transmit an encrypted, Weapon Impact Assessment (WIA) burst message back to the national assets via its Quick Bolt transmitter, providing information regarding the weapon and target locations and features about the target which it is about to destroy. This message is relayed to a command center to assist in Bomb Damage Assessment of the target.
The Quick Bolt ACTD program is jointly funded by the U.S. Navy, OSD's ACTD program office, and the NRO, with SAT, Inc. receiving over $32M in contracts from FY 2000-2003. With the accomplishments demonstrated by SAT, Inc. in the AARGM and Quick Bolt technology programs, the U.S. Navy has decided to fully fund the remaining phases of development and initial production for the AARGM weapon system from FY2003 through 2007. This successful transition into a major defense program is at the heart of the SBIR program, and will result in the Navy receiving an extremely sophisticated and capable weapon system which will solve a longstanding operational deficiency at less than half the investment required in a comparable but conventional acquisition program involving large business.
Higher Speed Anti-radiation missile Demonstration (HSAD) Program
SAT, Inc was recently awarded a contract to provide the forebody (seeker, payload and transition section) for the Office of Naval Research's demonstration program known as HSAD. This program, which will run from 2002-2005, is intended to develop and demonstrate a next generation anti-radiation weapon that will fly twice the range of the current HARM at two to three times the average velocity as HARM. This weapon will utilize a derivative of the AARGM seeker. SAT, Inc. is responsible for providing the modified seeker and providing the overall missile guidance package. Ultimately, this weapon will provide the U.S. Navy the capability to prosecute enemy air defenses, command and control systems, and other time critical targets from a safe, stand-off distance and will be deployable from all planned USN tactical aircraft including the F/A-18C/D/E/F, the EA-6B and follow-on airplane, the JSF and even the Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV).
Trajectory Correctable Munition (TCM)
In addition to the AARGM and Quick Bolt programs, SAT, Inc.'s capabilities were also used to support the Trajectory Correctable Munition (TCM) program, which was a cooperative research and development project between the U.S. and Swedish Armies to develop a long range precision guided 155mm howitzer-launched projectile. SAT, Inc. was responsible for the projectile's overall guidance, navigation and control electronics system. Due to the accomplishments of this project, the U.S. Army recently decided to merge its existing XM-982 projectile program with the TCM program and has since been adopted by most of our competitors.
