🔷 Moneyballing The Next War

Winning the Campaign

In tomorrow’s fight—fast, complex, and contested—victory won’t come from a single platform, weapon, or payload.

It will depend on how well everything works together.

That’s where modeling and simulation (M&S) matters.

RCADE

Raytheon is leading the way with its Rapid Campaign Analysis and Demonstration Environment (RCADE), a campaign-level M&S capability built to help decision-makers think beyond individual systems and see the entire operational ecosystem.

RCADE works across four layers of analysis: engineering, engagement, mission, and campaign. That multi-tiered approach lets leaders evaluate systems, strategies, and tradeoffs before they hit the field.

• Engineering: Assess hardware performance and component tradeoffs

• Engagement: Model how sensors, shooters, and targets interact in real time

• Mission: Simulate integrated strike, ISR, and EW packages in contested airspace

• Campaign: Understand how air operations achieve strategic goals across domains

Mission Engineering

RCADE enables full-theater simulations of complex operations—from Indo-Pacific logistics to ISR-fires integration and comms in denied environments.

It maps the interdependencies of modern kill chains: How do space-based sensors cue air assets? How does EW shift strike timing? How do tanker plans shape deep-raid viability?

And because it ingests real-world Concepts of Employment (CONEMPs) and force structure data, RCADE can wargame relevant “what if” scenarios.

How many tankers are required for a Pacific fight? What’s the right mix of 5th-gen and 4th-gen fighters? Is a higher sortie rate more valuable than platform survivability? Should future investments prioritize autonomy, range, or electronic warfare? What about basing dilemmas and logistical throughput?

These aren’t just hypothetical questions—they’re mission-defining choices, and RCADE brings the analytical firepower to answer them.

While government M&S systems have existed to do some of this analysis, RCADE is unique in that it has flexible fidelity. Hi-fi can get the 100% answer in months, but if a medium fidelity is sufficient to gain insights in weeks, RCADE can do it too.

Moneyball

RCADE is a digital decision advantage that can moneyball future conflicts.

Decision-makers can conduct risk-free experimentation and make data-driven tradeoffs—all before committing resources or lives.

🎧 Want more?  Check out the latest episode of The Merge to hear how Raytheon is using RCADE to shape the future of airpower. Available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In That Number

20-40-40

The UK Army is adopting a 20-40-40 strategy prioritizing uncrewed combat. 

The framework calls for 20% manned platforms (tanks, etc.), 40% one-way attack drones, and 40% reusable reconnaissance drones.

TRIVIA

What military creation kicked-started the field of operations research?

A) Radar
B) Submarine
C) Torpedo
D) Tank

On the Radar

Guam Radar R.I.P. The Pentagon ceased TPY-6 radar development for Guam's defense, reallocating funds to accelerate command and control upgrades and integrate various Army and Navy systems. The TPY-6 radar is/was part of the larger Aegis Guam System effort, which plucks the Aegis ballistic missile defense system off of Navy ships and places it ashore. This is/was part of the overall system called the Guam Defense System (GDS).

• The Merge’s Take: Killing the giant, highly capable TPY-6 is likely due to it not being mobile, which makes it a juicy target. The goal is now to enable SM-6 ‘engage on remote’ employment from TPY-2 and LTAMDS track data—transportable radars (with new upgrades) located throughout the island. OBTW, those land-based SM-6 missiles are coming from the Army’s mobile MRC Typhon batteries—a capability that fielded in 2023 that you definitely forgot about.

UK Strategic Defense Review: The long-awaited SDR is out, all 144 pages and 62 recommendations of it. The big ones: submarines, a 10X more lethal army, 7,000 UK-produced long-range weapons with sovereign warheads, $5B for drones and $1B for lasers through 2030, more E-7 Wedgetails, and a commitment to the F-35, the GCAP 6th-gen fighter, and the autonomous collaborative platforms (ACPs, aka CCAs).

• The Merge’s Take: The UK’s military hollowed out quietly over the past 20+ years. Restoring military power is going to take guts—a ton of time and resources—and there is a reason for its present state. On a brighter note, the SDR does state the plans to integrate ACPs with 4th, 5th, and 6th-gen fighters, so we might see Typhoons with loyal wingmen in the coming years. OBTW, the doc also teases the possibility of buying F-35As to complement the F-35B fleet. This substack has a review of the SDR that is worth the click—big callouts are the lack of meaningful detail and the SDR being decoupled from a spending review to make any of it real.

Lockheed Martin proposed a new F-35 fuselage design to enable interoperability of APG-81 and APG-85 radars due to the latter’s production delays. The new radar was planned to be fielded with Lot 17, but now it (and the proposed fuselage) are projected to come in Lot 20.

• The Merge’s Take: So, the new radar is not interoperable with the current F-35 design, and the planned new F-35 design is not interoperable with the old radar? Given the new radar is not going to all international F-35 customers, what were they planning to fly with after Lot 17—a lead nose? And the CEO of Lockheed Martin took time to write a memo to the Air Force Chief of Staff to pitch a new fuselage design to fix this? This is either acquisition malpractice or something else is going on—keep an eye on this.

They Said It

“We simultaneously launched 400 small drones. More than 40 pieces of equipment were destroyed at once.”

— President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the covert operation that employed drones smuggled inside Russia and covertly staged in modified shipping containers.

Subsequent reports indicate the number was closer to 117 drones, but the impact was dramatic and is being called ‘the Pearl Harbor moment’ for drone warfare.

Video

💎 NEW PATCH GIVEAWAY! Here are the SPINS:

• Locate your super special referral link at the bottom of this email

• Share the Merge using that link

• Share More to increase your odds of winning (1 referral = 1 entry)

We’ll pick the winner next week!

You can also skip to the end and buy it here—use THEMERGE code and save 10%!

Knowledge Bombs

• Lockheed Martin launched an “AI Fight Club” for companies to test military algorithms

• DIU announced Project G.I. with a $20M prize pool  

• Honeywell proposed its F124 turbofan engine for Japanese CCAs and T-4 trainers

• GE Aerospace & Kratos are developing a new engine for smaller low-end CCAs (1,500lb thrust class)

• RTX is increasing AIM-9X production to 2,500 missiles per year after a $1.1B award for 1,800+ missiles

• Airbus & Alpha Unmanned Systems are partnering for helicopter manned-unmanned teaming

• Maxar & Saab are partnering on satellite intel for defense

• The Air Force formalized the first experimental operations unit as a test squadron for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA)

• The Pentagon is making the F-47 a priority over the Navy’s F/A-XX program, wants to shift $500M from the Navy to the Air Force, and is likely to incur a 3-year delay to F/A-XX

• Voyager Technologies is set to go public this month, targeting a $1.6B valuation

• NATO's 32 nations might all reach the 2% GDP defense spending target this year

• Germany is equipping its F-35s with Joint Strike Missile (JSM) from Norway

• The Marine Corps received its 18th and final MQ-9A Reaper

• Sodern unveiled a compact star-based navigation system (no-GPS ops)

💎 Free Merch! 💎 

Don't keep us a secret!
Share the Merge = earn free swag.
It's that simple.

You currently have 0 referrals, only 3 away from receiving Stickers.

Or copy and paste this link: https://themerge.co/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

ANSWER
A) Radar. The use of operations research started in the late 1930s and grew out of the initial inability of the UK’s military branches to operate and integrate radar effectively. By 1942, virtually all allies in World War II had embraced ‘science at the operational level.’