From Classroom to Combat Advantage: NPS and RTX Partner to Advance Education, Research, and Mission Impact

In an era of rapidly evolving threats and accelerating technological change, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and RTX have partnered for years focused on one objective: delivering operational advantage for the warfighter. Through sustained collaboration in education, research, and experimentation, the nearly decade-long relationship connects operational experience, academic rigor, and defense-industry expertise to address complex national-security challenges.

Built through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), faculty-industry engagement, and collaboration across classified and unclassified environments, the collaboration demonstrates how defense-focused graduate education and industry collaboration can accelerate innovation for warfighting advantage while strengthening capacity for warfighter development.

A Foundation of Trust and Technical Exchange

Early technical exchanges with RTX and its three businesses contributed to unmanned systems research, propulsion experimentation, and missile systems education, and established a level of trust necessary for effective collaboration but also to take risks and challenge assumptions.

RTX engineers work at the forefront of aerospace and defense technologies, while NPS students are military professionals and civilian leaders experienced in the realities of conflict, deterrence, logistics, and command. Together, the relationship created a forum where technology, operational experience, learning, and mission requirements converge.

"By combining highly skilled engineering teams with operational expertise and advanced technologies, this collaboration brings powerful insight to some of the nation’s most complex defense challenges," said Hsin-Fu “Sinker” Wu, RTX co-Principal Investigator of the RTX-NPS CRADA and lead for collaboration efforts. “Working together, we are creating an environment where innovative concepts can be rigorously developed and translated into operationally relevant capabilities.”

From Collaboration to Commitment

The relationship matured into formal cooperation in 2019 with the signing of the first CRADA between Raytheon and NPS. The inaugural project focused on one of the most pressing issues confronting modern militaries: how to responsibly command and control autonomous systems operating in complex, contested environments.

The research explored how unmanned systems could operate effectively in contested maritime environments while maintaining meaningful human supervision and ethical accountability. The project addressed undersea command, control, and communications for autonomous systems while applying concepts from Network Optional Warfare (NOW) and Mission Execution Ontology (MEO) methodologies to validate, simulate, and implement mission orders.

Through monthly technical interchange meetings, researchers, engineers, and military practitioners remained closely aligned on operational realities and constraints. The work helped establish foundational approaches balancing autonomy with accountability in contested maritime environments and later informed broader national discussions on trusted and ethical artificial intelligence.

Expanding the Mission Set

Building on early success, the collaboration expanded into areas increasingly critical to future warfare, including hypersonics, advanced metamaterials, directed-energy defense, and operational analysis.

Research outcomes were shared with the broader defense community, and in several cases, NPS-RTX collaboration helped shape future capability decisions by demonstrating both feasibility and operational relevance.

The metamaterials research produced results that led to further collaboration with the Office of Naval Research. The hypersonics project yielded a joint AIAA SciTech paper, advancing modeling techniques and strengthening RTX and NPS thought leadership in high-speed weapons analysis.

This period also marked deeper institutional engagement. RTX supported campaign analysis courses, contributed to wargaming and modeling efforts, and participated in technical workshops bringing together NPS faculty and students, government sponsors, and industry experts. What began as research collaboration increasingly evolved into a broader strategic dialogue about future warfare.

RTX also actively supports the Meyer Scholar Program at NPS, helping prepare officers to lead the development and employment of advanced naval warfare technologies. The collaboration helps develop technically sophisticated officers capable of connecting operational demands with emerging combat systems. Access to talent and technology provides these scholars with vital insights into advanced combat systems, including the SPY-6 radar and associated missile systems.

“RTX routinely provides the Meyers Scholars with classified seminars on both well-established and emerging capabilities being employed by the fleet,” said John Hammerer, NPS Warfare Chair, Integrated Air and Missile Defense. “Meyer Scholars learn about systems such as the SPY-6 air and missile defense radar and the family of Standard Missiles used for air and missile defense and anti-surface missions to a degree not possible in other professional training programs. Scholars have also fulfilled thesis research and field trip requirements by collaborating with RTX engineers and visiting RTX production and research facilities.”

Aligning with Strategic Priorities

By 2024, collaboration efforts increasingly focused on operational analysis, distributed sensing, mission engineering, and wargaming aligned to emerging naval priorities.

One notable example involved analysis supporting an Advanced Distributed Radar (ADR) concept of employment, helping clarify how emerging sensing architectures could be integrated into future naval operations. RTX analysts also supported NPS-led simulations and adjudication efforts for complex wargaming events, contributing additional analytic rigor and operational insight.

These activities demonstrate the CRADA’s ability to translate technical research into operational understanding that inform force design, doctrine, and acquisition decisions — a direct benefit to NPS students and the Fleet.

Education and talent development also remained central to the CRADA. Few realize that defense industry professionals working on active government contracts can attend NPS. RTX embraced the opportunity, with employees leveraging NPS distance-learning degrees and certificates to strengthen their understanding of joint and naval warfare challenges.

That investment strengthens the defense-industrial workforce by developing engineers with both deep technical expertise and a stronger understanding of modern operational realities gained through study alongside experienced military officers and defense professionals.

A Defense Ecosystem for Learning and Innovation

RTX leaders and technologists maintain a consistent presence at NPS through guest lectures, small-group engagements, and participation in NPS events such as the Warfare Innovation Continuum (WIC) workshops and “Converge @ NPS,” which brings dozens of emerging technology companies to the school facilitated by a Partner Intermediary Agreement (PIA) with the NPS Foundation. These forums enable direct engagement among students, faculty, small businesses, government stakeholders, and industry experts to surface early-stage ideas, collaborate on research and potential applications, and expose technologists to emerging operational needs.

By partnering through CRADAs, NPS benefits from insights into evolving defense-industrial challenges, including production realities and systems integration at scale. This mutual understanding helps ensure research priorities remain grounded in operational and industrial realities.

“One of the greatest strengths of NPS is our ability to connect and empower our faculty and operationally experienced students directly to industry talent leading the technologies shaping the future fight,” said Kaitie Penry, NPS Director of Emerging Technology and Innovation. “Collaboration with industry strengthens NPS’ education and research and helps accelerate the transition of promising solutions into prototype capabilities for the warfighter.”

With renewed agreements in place as of 2025, RTX and NPS are positioned to deepen collaboration in areas such as mission engineering and operations analysis, advanced propulsion concepts, long-range fires, and resilient command-and-control architectures. Each effort reflects the same guiding principle that has defined the relationship from the beginning: innovation must simultaneously serve operational needs, ethical commitments, and national interests.

As global competition intensifies and technological change accelerates, NPS industry partners are essential to keeping both NPS education and the defense industrial base at the cutting edge. The RTX–NPS CRADA demonstrates how defense-focused graduate education, operationally relevant research, and sustained industry collaboration can accelerate innovation and deliver enduring warfighting advantage for the nation.