Raytheon, DARPA test new warfighting concept designed to transform ocean warfare

December 14, 2021

TUCSON, Ariz., (Dec. 15, 2021) — Raytheon, an RTX business, in partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, successfully completed a three-week demonstration of its Cross-Domain Maritime Surveillance and Targeting program. CDMaST is a new maritime ‘systems of systems’ warfighting concept designed to enable distributed maritime operations and change the way the U.S. Navy projects power and holds enemy ships and submarines at risk in contested environments.

During the demonstration, Raytheon hardware and software systems were used in conjunction with a live, virtual test bed developed by the Naval Information Warfare Center. The test bed included virtual assets in a simulated environment and live assets, both manned and unmanned, at sea. During the event, these assets partnered in a series of integrated anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface warfare scenarios.

“Using our modeling and simulation capabilities, we’ve shown countless ways a distributed and agile battle group can hold an opponent at risk over large areas, but it’s incredible to see it unfold in a live demonstration,” said Colin Whelan, president of Advanced Technology for Raytheon. “This capstone event proved our forces can be flexible and fast in response to changing dynamics in a heavily contested environment and progressed the DoD’s goal of creating an advanced, integrated undersea warfighting capability.”

The CDMaST system of systems was simulated and analyzed by Raytheon-developed modeling and simulation technology, which enables collaborative, theater-scale wargaming exercises and provides agile, operational-level mission analysis of thousands of weapons and sensors on military assets operating across a theater of operations. This analysis technology allowed the government-industry team to conceptually demonstrate how various integrated systems and sensors can work together to accomplish an objective.

During the test, Raytheon also used an emerging unmanned surface vehicle prototype as a mobile air-water gateway to disseminate information between various assets. Unmanned mobile gateways are critical to enabling multi-domain information dissemination in contested environments.

In 2018, Raytheon was awarded a $29.9 million contract to develop CDMaST. CDMaST and Raytheon’s modeling and simulation technology are critical to multi-domain distributed maritime operations and contribute to joint all-domain command and control.