Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall has approved production of the Navy’s next generation tactical afloat network and installation on a first ship could begin as early as this month, the service said yesterday.
The Consolidated Afloat Network and Enterprise System (CANES) will now go into low-rate initial production (LRIP), with 29 units to be produced and 23 of them to be installed on ships. The first ship will be the Arleigh Burke-class (DDG-51) destroyer USS Milius (DDG-69).
Kendall signed off on production on Friday, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) said.
“CANES is more than a system, it is also a new business model for delivering capability to the fleet,” Rear Adm. Jerry Burroughs, program executive officer for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence, said.
CANES is designed to eliminate multiple legacy information technology systems by effectively merging five stand-alone legacy networks for command, control, computers, communications, and intelligence (C4I) systems into a common shipboard computing environment.
“Today, we have many different variants of networks out there that present significant supportability and information assurance challenges,” Burroughs said.
Northrop Grumman [NOC] is the prime contractor for CANES, having defeated Lockheed Martin [LMT] in final bidding. But during the LRIP phase, SPAWAR plans to hold another competition for full production based on Northrop Grumman’s winning design. The Navy holds the data rights. CANES could be installed on up to 190 ships by 2020.
The LRIP decision came months later than anticipated. The Navy says the delays were due in part to congressional budget squabbling in recent years, as well as to Lockheed Martin’s award protest that forced the Navy to temporarily issue a stop work.
CANES is a cornerstone of the Navy’s push to move toward more open architecture systems designed to allow for easier upgrades while lowering total ownership costs, and to quickly counter emerging cyber or security threats. The program is designed to strengthen network infrastructure, improve security, and reduce hardware space. It will also decrease the manpower burden by reducing operations and sustainment workloads through the use of common equipment, training and logistics.
The Navy awarded dueling development contracts to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in March 2010 while eliminating Boeing [BA] and BAE Systems from the competition.