just such a project started soon after, when word of the ferranti meeting reached lt jim belyea, a researcher in the royal canadian navy's electrical labs (electrical engineer-in-chief's directorate). he had been proposing a completely automated system for ships to pass around tactical data from radar and sonar, to help organize the defence of a convoy under attack by submarines. belyea presented his ideas to ferranti, who agreed to start development of the technologies needed. by 1950, they had successfully developed a pcm-based radio system for passing digital data between ships, and the drb started to become very interested. full-scale development of the system, known as datar, started in february 1951 and underwent trials in late 1953. however, the cost of developing a production version was well beyond what the royal canadian navy was able to afford. they attempted to sell the system to the united states navy, but they were uninterested and the canadians were forced to end the project. the us navy later decided that they needed just such a system, having a rather unhappy experience with their naval tactical data system in 1958.