Raytheon to Undertake Architecture Buildout of Air Force Battlefield Network

Raytheon Technologies will proceed to build an operational architecture for the U.S. Air Force’s Common Tactical Edge Network after finishing a demonstration. Developed by Raytheon unit Collins Aerospace, CTEN is meant to connect disparate networks to facilitate data sharing and accelerate decision-making in contested environments.

CTEN is part of the Advanced Battle Management System, the Air Force’s contribution to Joint All-Domain Command and Control. Ryan Bunge, Collins Aerospace vice president and general manager for resilient networking and autonomy solutions, explained that CTEN establishes an overlay network across domains through an open architecture foundation, enabling JADC2, Raytheon said.

On Wednesday, L3Harris Technologies announced that it would work on CTEN as part of a consortium that also includes Northrop Grumman. L3Harris said it would work on system architecture design, software development and systems integration.

Northrop was added to the consortium in March following a demonstration of interconnected sensors and platforms through an open radio system, gateway technologies and machine learning algorithms.