Lawmakers have opted to slash production dollars for the Navy’s Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program citing delays in its ongoing development, while simultaneously boosting research and development funds for the effort.
As part of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s (SASC) version of the fiscal year 2012 defense authorization bill, panel members recommended a $90 million cut to the sea service’s initial $195 million request for CANES production.
Designed to replace the slate of mission-specific command, control and communications suites on board the Navy’s surface fleet and replace them with a single, open architechture-based C4I system, the CANES program is already five months behind schedule, according to the SASC report accompanying the committee legislation.
That delay–prompted by the failure of the White House and Capitol Hill to get a defense spending plan passed for FY ’11–forced the Navy “to restructure various milestone events” in the program’s timeline, and take on additional maintenance costs to keep the legacy C4I systems in the fleet viable, according to the Senate report.
“Based on these changes, the Navy has requested a reallocation of the budget request to reflect the delay and increased sustainment costs for legacy programs,” the report states.
As part of that reallocation request, panel members have also written into the Senate legislation a $12 million increase for R&D work on CANES, which doubles the initial amount requested by the Navy. Further, committee members also tacked on another $77 million, to finance any maintenance work required to keep the surface fleet’s aging C4I equipment up to spec, “during the period of the CANES program delay,” the report states.
The timing of the Senate language comes as the two primary contractors competing for the CANES program–Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Lockheed Martin [LMT]–prepare for a downselect decision, scheduled for December.
That decision will will also coincide with the system design and development (SDD) milestone also set for December, Dave Wegmann, CANES program manager for Northrop Grumman, said after a June 10 briefing at the company’s facility in San Diego.
That said, the scheduled December date, for both the industry downselect and SDD milestone, will not be pushed to the right any further, according to an industry official. That decision timeline already took into account the five-month delay caused by the continuing resolution debate earlier this year.
On the Navy’s decision to request moving program dollars from procurement to research accounts, the industry official said it was simply an example of the sea service doing a “great job in managing the schedule and budget under difficult funding restrictions” of CANES, Wegmann said via a company spokeswoman yesterday, noting the move was just the Navy trying to balance where the dollars need to be in the CANES accounts, in light of the FY ’11 budget delay.