The U.S. Office of Naval Research recently awarded Raytheon Company an $11.8 million contract to develop networking technologies enabling greater sensor interconnectivity and enhancing integrated fires capabilities for Naval operations.

Communications and Interoperability for Integrated Fires, or CIIF, will advance situational awareness for force-wide integrated air and missile defense. New and existing ships, planes, UAVs and expeditionary forces will communicate and share critical information across data links. These links connect one platform to another via radio frequency to transmit and receive digital information.

CIIF will leverage existing and planned sensor networking systems deployed onboard naval ships and aircraft, and in U.S. Marine Corps expeditionary systems and land-based test sites. CIIF provides a greater information flow of integrated fires data supporting higher fidelity situational awareness and data dissemination capability across the battle force.

"CIIF brings the Navy closer to full spectrum awareness and supports distributed lethality," said Colin Whelan, vice president of Advanced Technology at Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems. "Battlefield commanders need instant access to as much information as possible to protect critical assets and save lives. CIIF ties together that information – from land, sea and air-based sensors, across the services – in ways never before possible."