DATAR, short for Digital Automated Tracking and Resolving, was a pioneering computerized battlefield information system. DATAR combined the data from all of the sensors in a naval task force into a single "overall view" that was then transmitted back to all of the ships and displayed on plan-position indicators similar to radar displays. Commanders could then see information from everywhere, not just their own ship's sensors.

Development of the DATAR system was spurred by the Royal Navy's work on the Comprehensive Display System (CDS), which Canadian engineers were familiar with. The project was started by the Royal Canadian Navy in partnership with Ferranti Canada (later known as Ferranti-Packard) in 1949. They were aware of CDS and a US Navy project along similar lines but believed their solution was so superior that they would eventually be able to develop the system on behalf of all three forces. They also believed sales were possible to the Royal Canadian Air Force and US Air Force for continental air control.

A demonstration carried out in the fall of 1953 was by most measures an unqualified success, to the point where some observers thought it was being faked. By this time the US Air Force was well into development of their SAGE system and the RCAF decided that commonality with that force was more important than commonality with their own Navy. The Royal Navy computerized their CDS in the new Action Data Automation system, and the US Navy decided on a somewhat simpler system, the Naval Tactical Data System. No orders for DATAR were forthcoming.

When one of the two computers was destroyed by fire, the company was unable to raise funds for a replacement, and the project ended. The circuitry design used in the system would be applied to several other Ferranti machines over the next few years.

At the Atlantic Convoy Conference of 1943, Canada was given shared control of all convoys running between the British Isles and North America. At the time, it was a role of unprecedented importance because it gave Canada a key command role over the United States. After the war, Canada sought to protect its role as the Western Alliance's anti-submarine and escort navy. In order to do so, they would need to invest in an ambitious naval research agenda.

In 1948, the Canadian Defence Research Board sent a letter to various Canadian electronics firms informing them of their intention to start a number of projects that would partner the military, academia and private companies. A copy of the letter was sent to Ferranti Canada, then a small distributor of Ferranti's United Kingdom electrical equipment. The letter was forwarded to the then-CEO of Ferranti in the UK, Vincent Ziani de Ferranti, who became excited at the prospect of enlarging their Canadian operations largely funded by the government. At a meeting in October 1948 de Ferranti was disappointed to learn that while the DRB was equally excited, the amount of money they had to offer was basically zero.

Word of the meeting reached Jim Belyea, a researcher at the Navy's electrical laboratories outside Ottawa. Belyea had been developing the idea of an automated battlefield control system for some time, after having studied the problem of dealing with a coordinated attack by submarines on convoys. During World War II the slow speeds and short submerged range of the typical U-boat allowed the defenders to deal with them one-by-one, but as the capabilities of the newer Soviet designs improved it appeared that a coordinated all-underwater attack was a real possibility, one for which he felt an effective defence would require much faster reaction times.

Belyea's idea was to share radar and sonar data between ships, processing the data in order to present a unified view of the battlefield relative to any particular ship's current heading and location. Belyea had experience with naval training simulators, and thus knew that conventional electrical analogue computation and display would not be sufficient for DATAR.