Raytheon, UTC Merger Will Direct $8B R&D Budget Toward Hypersonics, Cybersecurity, AI, and Next-Gen Connected Aircraft

Almost exactly seven months after United Technologies Corporation  (UTC) completed its acquisition of Rockwell Collins (now Collins Aerospace ), the aerospace conglomerate announced its merger with the Raytheon Company . According to a joint announcement, the merger of Raytheon and UTC into Raytheon Technologies Corporation will create “a premier systems provider with advanced technologies to address rapidly growing segments within aerospace and defense” and a “complementary portfolio of platform-agnostic aerospace and defense technologies.”

These technologies include hypersonic flight and future missile systems; directed energy weapons; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) in contested environments; cyber protection for connected aircraft; next-generation connected airspace; and advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) for commercial aviation.

Raytheon Technologies anticipates spending combined annual research and development budget of approximately $8 billion on these technologies and will leverage seven technology Centers of Excellence and over 60,000 engineers in the development of these critical technologies.

William Kucinski  is content editor at SAE International, Aerospace Products Group in Warrendale, Pa. Previously, he worked as a writer at the NASA Safety Center in Cleveland, Ohio and was responsible for writing the agency’s System Failure Case Studies. His interests include literally anything that has to do with space, past and present military aircraft, and propulsion technology.

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