Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS)

The Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) was the US Navy’s first computerized combat data system, deployed in the early 1960s to automate the collection, processing, and display of tactical contacts that manual CIC plotting could no longer keep up with. It introduced shipboard digital computers and the Link 11 (TADIL A) data link to exchange a correlated track picture among ships and aircraft. NTDS is the direct ancestor of later integrated combat systems, including Aegis, and of the modern Link 11 and Link 16 tactical data-link family.