Los Angeles — Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) plans to open a Public Safety Regional Technology Center in Los Angeles County this summer and is in the final stages of selecting a specific location with about 25,000 square feet of space.

The Raytheon Public Safety RTC will serve as the focus of the company’s civil communications business in the western United States, providing test and research facilities, training, a maintenance and logistics center, and customer and systems support. Up to 150 people will work there.

For the RTC, Raytheon is creating a research capability tailored to public safety needs and is forming a consortium of communications experts from across academia, industry and the public safety community. This team will be dedicated to independently verifying future technologies for integration into an open architecture, standards-based system, validating backward compatibility with legacy systems, and testing proposed public safety technologies for today and the future.

“The mission of the Raytheon Public Safety RTC will be to test and certify current and future technologies for use by public safety agencies to enhance the effectiveness of our first responders and the safety of the communities they serve,” said Dan Crowley, president, Raytheon Network Centric Systems. “This latest investment underscores our commitment to the public safety market and will better connect first responders with the latest technologies and capabilities to help them save lives.”

Raytheon Company, with 2009 sales of $25 billion, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, homeland security and other government markets throughout the world. With a history of innovation spanning 88 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems, as well as a broad range of mission support services. With headquarters in Waltham, Mass., Raytheon employs 75,000 people worldwide.