RTX Corporation's $221 billion order backlog at year-end 2024 is larger than the GDP of Portugal. The company generated $80.7 billion in revenue from 185,000 employees across three segments — Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney, and Raytheon — making it one of the two or three largest aerospace and defense companies on earth. The $155 billion market capitalization prices that backlog as a multi-year revenue certainty, which is the most defensible revenue visibility in any commercial or defense industry. The Pratt & Whitney GTF powder metal engine defect is the single financial event that most shaped the company's recent history. A contaminated powder metal used in engine disk manufacturing required the inspection and removal of thousands of engines from service, grounding aircraft across dozens of airlines globally and costing RTX over $3 billion in a single quarter. The defect affected the geared turbofan engine installed on more than 1,000 aircraft operated by over 75 airline customers. The financial liability was enormous; the operational disruption to airlines was worse. RTX was formed in 2020 through the merger of Raytheon Company — founded in 1922 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a researcher's candy bar famously melted near a radar magnetron, leading to the invention of the microwave oven — and United Technologies Corporation, which had itself acquired Rockwell Collins for $30 billion in 2018. The combined entity operates across both commercial aerospace and defense in ways that almost no other company matches: jet engines for both commercial airlines and military aircraft, missile defense systems deployed in 17 countries, and avionics in virtually every commercial aircraft operating globally. Revenue grew from $64.4 billion in 2021 to $67.1 billion in 2022 to $74.3 billion in 2023 to $80.7 billion in 2024. The Raytheon division's Patriot missile defense system achieved global recognition during the 1991 Gulf War and has been continuously refined since — 17 countries across four continents deploy it, creating an installed base that generates decades of maintenance, upgrade, and ammunition revenue regardless of new system sales.