The Defense Department earlier this month authorized the full deployment of the Navy’s Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program, which upgrades the service’s shipboard computing systems and consolidates five networks into one.
Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall on Oct 13 signed the Acquisition Decision Memorandum approving the full deployment decision, a milestone that is equivalent to full-rate production. The decision transfers oversight authority for the program from the Defense Department to the Navy, and the service will be responsible for procuring and installing CANES from this point forward.
In June, Northrop Grumman [NOC] delivered the last of 37 CANES ship sets, ending the low-rate initial production (LRIP) phase (Defense Daily, June 1). The Navy has installed CANES on 25 ships and plans to complete the transition to CANES on all 153 ships by 2024.
To keep technology fresh and cut costs, the service plans to regularly compete CANES contracts among seven vendors: BAE Systems, General Dynamics C4 Systems [GD], Global Technical Systems, Northrop Grumman, Serco, CGI Federal Inc. and DRS Technologies. The first five vendors in 2014 won full deployment production contracts worth $2.5 billion, and the last two companies in January picked up funding to produce one system each.
The companies are also required to leverage nondevelopmental, commercial off-the-shelf technologies, which also drive costs down.
“Already, CANES has realized a cost savings of more than $720 million,” the Navy said in a news release.