Digital Battlespace
NG wins CANES navy contract
Northrop Grumman (NG) has been down-selected by the US Navy to design the network infrastructure for the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) programme.
The two-year design contract was awarded by the navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) on 1 February with the $36 million contract covering the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase of the programme.
NG beat Lockheed Martin (LM) to the contract and this phase will see NG procure the CANES network infrastructure to include a ‘guided missile destroyer (DDG) variant first article, DDG variant production unit, and multipurpose amphibious assault ship (LHD) variant first article’, a SPAWAR statement read.
‘Many factors were evaluated during the downselect evaluation process and we are confident that warfighter needs will be met,’ navy Capt DJ LeGoff, programme manager for navy tactical networks said. ‘CANES is the navy’s only modernisation option for information technology afloat,’ he added.
Speaking at the AFCEA West conference in San Diego on 25 January, LeGoff told a media briefing that in 2014 a full four-year deployment contract will be awarded, for which anybody can bid. A request for proposals for this will be released by the end of this year.
‘The next step in the programme is completion of an operational assessment in SPAWAR’s Enterprise Engineering and Certification laboratory in support of a milestone C decision in the summer of 2012,’ the statement continued. ‘The Milestone C decision will commit the Department of Defense to production and authorises the programme entry into limited deployment.’
The first CANES deployment aboard a fleet destroyer is scheduled for the end of this year and is intended to be deployed on some 180 platforms by 2012.
While NG would not comment on CANES during the AFCEA conference, Joseph Bulger, senior manager for Navy Networks at LM told Shephard: ‘We are confident our CANES design will meet the navy's requirements’. He also confirmed that the company would explore bidding for the next phase of the contract to manufacture the winner of the EMD’s design if it were not to win.
The company has also requested a debrief to ‘understand the navy’s position on this decision so that we may better serve them in the future’, a representative from Lockheed Martin told Shephard.
The contract includes options which, if exercised at the maximum quantities, would bring the cumulative value of the contract to an estimated $637 million, the DoD programme office also said on 1 February.
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