Collins Aerospace
RTX subsidiary and major aerospace electronics maker, competing in US Air Force autonomous aircraft programmes.
Last refreshed: 30 April 2026
- Who owns Collins Aerospace?
- Collins Aerospace is a wholly owned subsidiary of RTX Corporation, the defence and aerospace conglomerate formed from the 2020 merger of Raytheon Company and United Technologies Corporation.Source: RTX Corporation
- What does Collins Aerospace make?
- Collins Aerospace makes avionics, cockpit and mission systems, aircraft interiors, and power and environmental control systems for commercial and military aircraft. It is also developing mission autonomy software for US Air Force uncrewed platforms.Source: Collins Aerospace / RTX Corporation
- What is Collins Aerospace's role in the CCA programme?
- Collins completed a flight test of its mission autonomy software for the US Air Force Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme in April 2026, entering as a third competitor alongside Shield AI Hivemind and Anduril in what had appeared to be a two-company race.Source: RTX Q1 2026 earnings call
- How was Collins Aerospace formed?
- United Technologies Corporation acquired Rockwell Collins for $30 billion in 2018 and merged it with its existing UTC Aerospace Systems division to create Collins Aerospace. The wider UTC-Raytheon merger in 2020 placed Collins under the RTX Corporation umbrella.Source: RTX Corporation corporate history
Background
Collins Aerospace is a wholly owned subsidiary of RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies), formed in 2018 when United Technologies Corporation merged its Rockwell Collins acquisition with the existing UTC Aerospace Systems business. The combined entity employs approximately 70,000 people across more than 300 locations worldwide and generates roughly $20 billion in annual revenue. Its product range spans avionics, cockpit systems, mission systems, aircraft interiors, and power and environmental control systems for both commercial and military platforms. In the autonomous systems domain, Collins completed a flight test of its mission autonomy software for the US Air Force Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) programme in April 2026, introducing a third autonomy software stack into a competition that had appeared to be a two-horse race between Shield AI Hivemind and Anduril .
The Rockwell Collins heritage traces to 1933, when Arthur Collins founded Collins Radio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The company became a leading avionics supplier through the Cold War, was acquired by Rockwell International in 1973, and re-branded as Rockwell Collins in 2001 after Rockwell's aerospace businesses were spun off. UTC acquired Rockwell Collins in 2018 for $30 billion, at the time one of the largest aerospace deals on record, merging it with UTC Aerospace Systems to form Collins Aerospace under the Raytheon-UTC merger that created RTX. Collins now operates as one of RTX's three principal segments alongside Pratt and Whitney and Raytheon.
Collins Aerospace's position in the CCA autonomy competition is significant because it shifts the contest from a duopoly of defence-tech startups toward an established prime subsidiary. RTX's parent company already holds a share of the Golden Dome Other Transaction Authority pool and supplies effectors that make up over 40% of Raytheon segment sales. A Collins software win on CCA would consolidate autonomous-systems revenue within RTX across both the effectors and the mission-autonomy layers, giving the parent company a structural position in drone-era air combat that complements its existing missile and sensor franchises.