Collins Aerospace

Collins Aerospace formed in 2018, when United Technologies merged its Rockwell Collins acquisition with its existing UTC Aerospace Systems business. Two years later United Technologies combined with Raytheon to create RTX, and Collins became RTX's aerospace subsidiary rather than a standalone public company. What it inherited from that merger is a genuinely wide footprint across military and commercial aviation, organized loosely around avionics, aerostructures, interiors, mission systems, actuation and landing systems, and power and controls, with more than 300 sites worldwide and upward of 80,000 employees. On the defense side, Collins is best known for the AN/ARC-210 airborne radio, a software-defined tactical radio that has shipped more than 50,000 units and now flies on over 200 aircraft variants in more than 50 countries, handling everything from SINCGARS and Have Quick anti-jam waveforms to satellite communications. It builds the ACES family of ejection seats, including the ACES II that has been credited with saving hundreds of pilots' lives since the late 1970s and the newer ACES 5, developed to handle the added weight and flail risk from modern helmet-mounted displays.

Collins was recently selected to supply ejection seats for the Air Force's F-15EX fleet under a Boeing-led contract. Its Collins Elbit Vision Systems joint venture with Elbit Systems of America builds the Zero-G helmet-mounted display, a sixth-generation system now moving toward Navy F/A-18 and EA-18G Growler integration. The rest of the defense business is less visible but no smaller. Mission systems work covers processors, sensors, and communications gear built into fighters and transport aircraft, including a role supplying the central mission computer inside the F-35. Aerostructures makes nacelles, engine housings, and structural components for both military and commercial platforms.

Actuation and landing systems build the mechanical guts, hydraulics, flight controls, and landing gear, that keep aircraft flying and landing safely. On the commercial side Collins makes cabin interiors and seating for airlines, and it owns FlightAware, a flight-tracking and predictive data platform used across aviation. Collins does not report separately from RTX, so there is no standalone stock ticker, and its exact revenue split between defense and commercial work is folded into RTX's broader financials rather than disclosed on its own. What is clear from its own site and from defense trade press is the breadth: this is not a single-product avionics house but a supplier whose parts and systems show up on nearly every US military aircraft type in some form, whether that is a radio, an ejection seat, a landing gear actuator, or the wiring behind a cockpit display. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, it operates as one of RTX's three major business units alongside Pratt & Whitney and Raytheon.