The U.S. Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center has selected Raytheon to upgrade the control segment of the GPS constellation, the service announced today.

The new GPS Advanced Control Segment, known as GPS-OCX, must provide more secure and reliable location and timing data to military users and be compatible with the new military-only signal, or M-Code, which will provide military with GPS signal protected with anti-jamming features, according to Raytheon.

The contract award could be worth $1.5 billion to Raytheon, including options. Engineers from the Raytheon team will install hardware and software at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., over the next six years.

OCX will connect to the military’s Global Information Grid so that troops around the world have immediate access to GPS data and constellation status, said Col. Dave Madden, commander of the service’s GPS Wing, in a prepared statement.

“Being able to connect to the Global Information Grid and getting access to the status of the GPS constellation allows for better planning of what weapon systems the war fighters might want to deploy, or for planning when a mission might happen,” said Bob Canty, GPS vice president and program manager at Raytheon. “GPS is a line-of-sight vehicle, so you might not be able to get coverage in a valley or canyon if a satellite isn’t in the right place.”

The Raytheon team will implement an incremental development approach that is meant to minimize the effect on the GPS constellation for users, according to the company.

“This way, there’s less downtime on the constellation and it brings capability that much quicker, and we’re can have updates every couple of months,” Canty said.