Mr. John W. Otto is Senior Director of Advanced Hypersonic Weapons of the Advanced Technologies product line for Raytheon Missiles & Defense. Advanced Technologies is the growth engine and front-end product line at Raytheon Missiles & Defense, and is responsible for new and innovative products and business endeavors. The Hypersonic Weapons Directorate is responsible for developing, growing and delivering both offensive and defensive high speed hypersonic systems to future product lines.
Previously Mr. John W. Otto was the Capability Area Lead for High Speed Air Breathing systems. In this role, he was responsible for the execution of air breathing development, within the Advanced Missile Systems (AMS) product line at Raytheon Missiles Systems.
Mr. John W. Otto has 22 years’ experience with 20 of it in the Defense Industry with Hughes Aircraft Company and Raytheon. In his early career his technical roles included weapon system integration and test in addition to technology development. John supported several international programs and interfaced directly with international technical and managerial teams. He provided technical and program management leadership for multiple technology development programs that focused on improving weapons system performance through increased kinematics, lethality enhancements, and improved kill chains. He led new concept development efforts starting from initial concept design and demonstrated the ability to capture new business. John has significant experience interfacing with USAF, USN, DARPA, MDA, and the international customers. Key leadership roles include Systems Engineering Lead, Chief Engineer, Department Manager, Capture Manager, Proposal Lead, Program Manager and Director.
John W. Otto Educational background includes: BS - Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University; MS –Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, University of Illinois; MBA, University of Arizona.
Along with the use of hypersonic missiles in the war on Ukraine, China and Russia are further developing & fielding Hypersonic Weapons that the U.S. has not kept pace with. New threats are emerging and near peer adversaries North Korea and Iran have now claimed to have also developed Hypersonic weapon’s capabilities.
With this ongoing global proliferation, the Pentagon is seeking to ramp up the pace of hypersonic weapons testing and research to develop a time critical threat for a national & global response.
Mr. Otto, we see & hear in many media outlets of the evolving threats and rapidity of the pace for HW Weapons. How is Raytheon fast tracking their engineering capabilities to meet these threats?
Digital engineering technologies enable the acceleration of hypersonic weapon development. As an example, during our flight testing for the Hypersonic Airbreathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) program, we validated our digital designs and digital engineering concepts to optimize the design and solve the challenges unique to hypersonic flight. Our model performance and our actual performance were almost exact overlays on top of each other.
As a nation, we have fairly limited experience in the hypersonic flight regime and having the power to model that environment with that kind of accuracy really speaks to the power of digital engineering. We used to rely on building and flying hardware to learn. Now we can design, fly, iterate, and ideate all in a digital environment. It’s much faster… And much more cost effective.
Our models will continue to evolve and mature, and we’ll get to a point where we will validate certain aspects of the design versus validating the entire system. Instead of a point solution, our models allow us to develop a solution across a substantial envelope. As the fidelity of our models improve across industry, and the government gets more confident in the correlations between modelled data and real flight data, the quicker we will see programs of record established to keep our warfighters, citizens and allies safe. Digital engineering is the future, and it’s how we move faster.
We have many experts working in Academia on all sorts of expanding testing capabilities. How is digitization streamlining this process for Raytheon and do you believe digital modeling is the most cost effective & efficient way ahead?
As mentioned, digital engineering and modelling & simulation are huge enablers to go faster. Let me provide another example of how it improves efficiency.
In a typical design environment, there’s a mechanical model to evaluate things like computational fluid dynamics to see what that structure looks like in an airflow. Then there’s a thermal model to identify where the heating will occur…. What temperatures to expect on the leading edges of the intakes, wings, and fins… The types of materials that will be needed… And then there’s a performance models to understand how far the missile will fly… How much maneuverability it might have… And even how survivable it is in a threat environment.
Typically, we take the results from one model and feed it into another. The issue with this dated approach is that its serial nature drives you to a series of iterations because you are continuing to update models after you’ve passed them to the next step in the analysis. This is time consuming.
In our digital engineering environment, all those models are brought together. Using a true digital thread, we can now get to a more robust part of the design envelope faster.
Do you see the United Stated (DoD) becoming the leader in developing & ready with a HW weaponry arsenal ready any time soon? If not, what still needs to be done first & foremost to give America the edge we seek?
Hypersonic and counter-hypersonic systems are among the DoD’s top technical modernization priorities, and it’s a critical national imperative to advance this capability. We must continue to innovate breakthrough hypersonic technologies to maintain offensive and defensive capabilities against current or future global threats. At Raytheon Missiles & Defense, we acknowledge the tremendous responsibility our customers entrust us with and understand how important it is to get these critical capabilities into the hands of our warfighters as fast as possible.
On the offensive side, Raytheon Missiles & Defense, in partnership with Northrop Grumman, has been selected to develop the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile for the U.S. Air Force. HACM is a first-of-its-kind weapon developed in conjunction with the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE), a U.S. and Australia project arrangement. Under this contract, our team will deliver operationally ready missiles to the USAF.
On the defensive side, we’re supporting the development of a new interceptor to bridge a crucial gap in hypersonic missile defense known as the Glide Phase Interceptor, or GPI. GPI is designed to counter threats in their long glide phase after launch. In its requirements for GPI development, the MDA has stipulated that “any prototypes designed will fit into the current Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system” which fires from a naval vessel’s vertical launching system. Here, Raytheon Missiles & Defense has a key advantage: Its capabilities have been integrated with that system for around two decades. Our Standard Missiles and Aegis are already tightly coupled. They talk to each other; they exchange messages with each other. We’re able to tweak and reuse a lot of that interface for GPI.
Additionally, the missile defense mission is exponentially more challenging today. Hypersonic missile systems alter warfighting on a strategic and tactical level and can deliver payloads farther and faster than ever before. They move nimbly enough to avoid detection and dodge defensive countermeasures. Unlike the traditional BMD system, which was built for ballistic missile threats with a clear and predictable trajectory, like throwing football, the future architecture needs to evolve to account for proliferation of unpredictable, survivable threats which can quickly change course and can occur simultaneously to evade our sensors.
A key strategy to success is getting eyes on the threat through networked sensors from space to ground to create a better threat picture. Raytheon Missiles & Defense’s softwaredefined apertures can perform multiple missions near-simultaneously in any domain. Advanced sensors, such as LTAMDS and SPY-6, can perform multiple missions near simultaneously in any domain and are important advancements. But sensors like AN/ TPY-2 and U/EWR, which also work together, will remain cornerstones of missile defense, and there is an opportunity to advance them to support hypersonic defense.
Continued bipartisan and allied support and funding are necessary for this crucial work to move forward. Testing and fielding of these weapon systems needs to happen in concert with allied countries around the world. Our international partnerships ensure we share knowledge, infrastructure, testing capabilities, human resources, and the funding needed to address this threat together.
Academic partnerships and STEM education are crucial to develop the right skills and talent base to secure our lead for our defense and national security. This collaborative effort will have cascading effects that will generate economic and strategic benefits to our country for years to come.
