By Geoff Fein
In the year since BAE Systems won the Navy’s Enterprise Platform Integration Contract (EPIC) to provide technical expertise for integrating and installing command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) systems on ships, the company has begun looking at ways to continue to cut costs and time, a company official said.
In February 2008 the Navy awarded BAE a $242 million contract to provide integration, installation, engineering, procurement, test, inspection and delivery of C4I systems.
The contract stemmed from work BAE was doing on installing radio communications systems on aircraft carriers, Kelly Baldwin, program manager EPIC, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“The first time was [the USS Ronald] Reagan (CVN-76), and we did a full land-based test facility of a radio communications system. We fully tested it, building all the cables to length and an exact replica of the communications system layout and then delivered to Northrop Grumman to install in the ship,” he said.
Because of the cost savings that were associated with BAE’s work, the company was awarded additional contracts for other ship classes, Baldwin said.
EPIC not only increased the number of ship classes BAE began working on, but it also increased the work from just radio communications systems to the rest of the C4I equipment suites that go on ships, he added.
BAE is now looking for ways to cut costs and trim schedules, Baldwin said. “The government has given me an incentive fee contract to continue to figure out ways to save cost and reduce the time it takes.”
Some of the efforts include looking at the workflow–the way the work is done, he added.
“I can’t do bulk buying because it’s LPD-17 money and CVN-78 money…it all can’t mix together to go do something,” Baldwin said.
“I am looking at ways I can do things more efficiently. Some of it will be done through subcontracting to people who do niche things much better than I will be able to do it in a government provided environment,” he said.
Other efforts include looking at ways ships can be grouped together so Baldwin can leverage from one to another. “I could take a LH design and take it over to a carrier and just take out what I don’t need, and not spend all that money on re-engineering.”
And Baldwin is also looking at how to modularize the different types of capabilities so systems can be ported from one ship to the next without a lot of engineering having to be done.
The company doesn’t manufacture anything, Baldwin noted. “We take other people’s systems and do a systems of systems integration. So everybody has their unique system to meet the capability that the ship requires and our task is to make all those systems work together as a big system and get it on a ship in time for the new construction ship cycle.”
Under the EPIC contract, BAE will integrate, install, engineer, test and deliver C4I systems for the Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) and the follow-on CVN-79. “They are still on my schedule to do, through the life of the contract,” Baldwin said.
And when carriers go in for their Refueling Complex Overhaul (RCOH), about every three to four years, BAE will also install new C4I systems.
“In some cases it is a marrying of the old technology with new technology,” Baldwin said.
That’s because of where the funding lines get cut, he added. “So we may have to put some old stuff back on. But then there is new stuff that we have to figure out how to make it work with [legacy systems].”
BAE also does the C4I work on the LH-class, which includes the recently delivered Makin Island (LHD-8) and the America (LHA-6), as well as the follow-on LHA- 7.
“We are actively working both of those ships right now. I am building the radio communications system for LHA-6 right now, and lHA-7 we are doing the planning for,” Baldwin said.
BAE is also doing the C4I work on the T-AKE cargo ships. “There are 12 of those. I just delivered the sixth one and I am building the radio communications suite for the tenth one as we speak.”
And there is the likelihood BAE will do work on the proposed two additional T-AKEs planned for the Maritime Preposition Force Future.
“I just received a task order last week to help with the planning for the Maritime Landing Platform,” Baldwin said.
The company is also doing work on the LPD-17-class. “I am just getting a task order in place for LPD-24, so I am building two of those radio communications suites today,” he added.
Additionally, BAE has been tasked with doing the C4I systems on the Joint High Speed Vessel, the USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19) replacement (LCC-R), the LCAC replacement, and CG(X), if it remains in the Navy’s plans, Baldwin said.
“The [Blue Ridge] replacement, LCC-R, that’s coming up. I don’t have a task order in place but [I have] been told that is going to be coming our direction. That will have the most equipment of anything we will ever do…it will be huge,” he said.
Baldwin said working on the different ship classes does present some challenges.
T-AKEs, for example, are built to commercial standards. “It cost a little bit more for military standard equipment [but] it’s not required on Military Sealift Command ships, so there is some different things we have to think about…different cables we have to use…we don’t have to worry about some of the hardening things,” Baldwin said.
“And then the different shipbuilders selected by NAVSEA have their own special unique requirements for what they allow, what kind of cabling, so we have to take all those factors into consideration when we layout a space,” he added. “We have to take in all these little factors when we do a job, so it is challenging.”
Then there is the CVN-76 infrastructure. The Reagan‘s Local Area Network is the Integrated Communications and Advanced Networks (ICAN) system. Baldwin said it’s like a one-of-a-kind system. LPD-17s have the Shipwide Area Network (SWAN) and then there is the Integrated Shipboard Network Systems. And add to the mix the Navy’s Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES).
“So it’s always changing, always moving, and we have to figure out where those interfaces are,” Baldwin said.