Research & Development

Advancing the Technologies That Support National Defense

Red Cedar USA (TRC) brings hands-on R&D experience to the defense technology mission. Our leadership team has personally executed prototype development under the Department of War’s Other Transaction Authority from requirements development and government collaboration through milestone execution and final delivery. That experience is not theoretical. It lives inside TRC’s corporate heritage and in the people who lead this company today.

Our R&D Lineage

Red Cedar USA’s R&D capability is rooted in the acquisition of Subsystem Technologies, Inc., which executed a program for the U.S. Army, Smart Machining Solution (SMS), a prototype developed under the Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium (DOTC) Other Transaction Agreement. The SMS was a semi-automated, intelligence-based manufacturing advisor designed to optimize subtractive machining processes for large caliber weapons systems including the Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) and related Army ordnance components.

This work represents Red Cedar USA’s institutional foundation in applied AI for defense manufacturing: automated decision support, intelligent parameter selection, and machine learning-adjacent optimization fielded and demonstrated in a live Army environment.

Where We Are Today

Red Cedar USA actively participates in a portfolio of OTA consortiums spanning undersea systems, armaments, cyberspace operations, propulsion, AI, and geospatial intelligence. TRC is actively pursuing new initiative agreements that build on our SMS heritage and align with our systems engineering capabilities across air, land, and sea domains.

Current active consortium memberships include UTIC, NSTIC, MSTIC, NAC, LETHALITY, U.S. Army COBRA, NGA OTA, and others spanning the full spectrum of DoD mission areas. See our Customers page for the complete list.

Building the Next Capability

Drawing on our heritage, Red Cedar USA is developing applied AI capabilities grounded in operational experience that reflect how government programs actually work, not how they look on paper. TRC operates a proprietary, secure, AI development environment aligned with CMMC Level 2 requirements, ensuring that capability development never comes at the cost of compliance.

Red Cedar USA’s AI development work is internal and mission focused. We are not a software company; we are a defense engineering firm that builds tools to make our people and our customers more effective.