Competitors Target Navy Networks
Written by Peter Buxbaum
MIT 2011 Volume: 15 Issue: 11 (December)
A head-to-head competition between Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman over the Navy’s Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program has the two companies touting their methodologies for technology insertion and cost control.
The Navy’s next generation tactical afloat network, CANES represents the consolidation of five shipboard legacy network programs to provide a common computing environment for 40 command, control, intelligence and logistics applications. Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman were selected from among four vendors in March 2010 to continue to compete to design CANES.
A single vendor is expected to be chosen in early 2012, and the first CANES installation on a fleet destroyer is planned for later next year. Ultimately, the network will be deployed to more than 180 ships, submarines and Maritime Operations Centers by 2023.
At the same time, the Navy is proceeding with its Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN), the counterpart to CANES for its ashore network and the follow-on to the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI). The Navy released a draft request for proposals for NGEN in September. A final RFP is scheduled for release no earlier than the end of January 2012, with a contract award expected a year later.
Like CANES, NGEN is a nondevelopmental program, meaning that the two programs will be relying on the deployment of commercial offthe- shelf technologies.
“The Department of the Navy has been managing afloat networks for over a decade,” said Captain D.J. LeGoff, program manager for CANES at the Tactical Networks Program Office. “The bad news is that five separate systems have grown up independently, with separate requirements documents, funding streams, and refresh cycles. As a result, asynchronous training and logistics philosophies have been developed for each.”
Five Legacy Systems
The Navy’s five legacy systems are the Integrated Shipboard Network System (ISNS), for unclassified communications; Submarine Local Area Network, which provides like capabilities for submarines; Sensitive Compartmented Information networks; the Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System, which provides networking capabilities with coalition partners; and the Video Information Exchange System.
“The first aspect of CANES will be to take those five infrastructures and create a common design, common logistics and a single user experience,” said LeGoff. “Another piece involves modernizing the network infrastructure so that it is scalable and secure and so that it has built in common refresh cycles.”
“The components of Navy networks are largely commercially available,” said Captain Shawn Hendricks, the NGEN program manager. “Today’s network is a commercial system used for military purposes, as opposed to a military system comprised of commercial pieces. The systems are integrated for uniquely military purposes. That’s why NGEN, like CANES, is a non-developmental program.”
The current CANES competition involves the design and initial low rate production of the network infrastructure. “We gave the vendors historical data and functional specifications and allowed them to take it from there,” said LeGoff. Competition for various aspects of full rate production of various network components, and for a separate engineering services contract, will take place in 2013 and will managed by the Navy, rather than a prime contractor or principal integrator.
NGEN likewise will be managed by the Navy, which will compete its various parts. NMCI has been operated by a single vendor, Electronic Data Systems, now Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services.
“The tenets of the CANES program are constant competition, builtin refresh and obsolescence schedules and budgets,” said LeGoff. “The strategy is how to best integrate COTS technologies and capabilities to maximize value to the government in a constant competitive environment. We plan on examining new software baselines every two years and hardware every four years.”
Open Architecture
In the non-developmental environment that is the CANES design competition, the contenders have emphasized their technology insertion and cost control methodologies. “Lockheed Martin’s CANES technology insertion process is modeled after the Acoustic Rapid Commercial-off-the-shelf Insertion [ARCI] business model,” said Joe Villani, vice president of CANES at Lockheed Martin’s mission systems and sensors business. “The ARCI business model has successfully supported the submarine community for many years.”
ARCI is a phased effort to provide the Navy’s submarine force with a common sonar that is more capable and flexible than earlier designs. “An open systems architecture [OSA] exploiting commercial processing development permits the use of complex algorithms that could not previously be accommodated,” said Villani. “Commercial processors and OSA technology and systems allow onboard computing power to grow at nearly the same rate as commercial industry. This facilitates regular updates to both software and hardware with minimal impact on submarine scheduling.”
At Northrop Grumman, the key focus in its CANES design has been affordability, according to Dave Wegmann, the company’s program director for CANES, and to that end it has deployed its Modular Open Systems Approach-Competitive (MOSA-C) methodology.
“MOSA-C is Northrop Grumman’s strategic business and engineering process that achieves the life cycle benefits of open-systems architecture and COTS components and software,” Wegmann explained. “The process ensures vendor-neutral solutions that improve interoperability and lower the total cost of ownership. The MOSA-C process will also allow the Navy to continuously compete the program to drive down acquisition and life cycle costs.”
The Navy’s approach to CANES and NGEN could benefit from leveraging cloud computing technologies, according to Kevin Jackson, general manager for cloud services at NJVC. “They are looking at leveraging commodity components and reducing costs,” Jackson said. “The cloud strategy is to leverage low-cost commodity components that are highly standardized. The huge focus on standardization of both hardware and software components enables a high degree of coordination and reduced costs.”
“Using a structured system engineering process, Lockheed Martin is upgrading shipboard networks by utilizing a common hardware and software architecture within a given ship as well as across different ship platforms,” said Villani. “This approach lowers the cost of integration by providing a common infrastructure across all afloat networks.”
An essential part of Lockheed Martin’s approach was to build a network management system that can help warfighters at sea deal with large increases in security policies, configuration directives and new systems. “Defending the network and its hosted applications is a growing requirement that requires solid asset and configuration management, along with new tools to monitor performance and health of the deployed network by the our afloat administrators,” said Villani.
Lockheed’s network management solution makes it easier for CANES administrators to acquire network situational awareness and direct network actions as necessary, according to Villani. “Specifically, our single-paneof- glass operator view reduces the demand for operator training while delivering network situational awareness,” he explained. “With the CANES network designed to accommodate hardware technology refresh every four years, our extensive experience within the Navy’s successful ARCI program indicates the incidence of component hardware failures and subsequent maintenance costs will be greatly reduced.”
Lockheed Martin’s proposed CANES design will make network administration easier while reducing overall costs, he continued. “Our CANES design is configured for applications integration and employment in the maritime domain. Our flexible design will readily scale to accommodate the hundreds of computer applications sailors and marines need to perform their mission, while reducing shipboard footprint and overall life cycle costs.”
Lockheed Martin’s past experience providing tactical networks for SPAWAR includes building the racks of computing equipment for the ISNS. “These experiences have enabled Lockheed Martin to demonstrate the lowest technical, program start-up and production risk as demonstrated on our ISNS performance metrics,” said Villani. “CANES is different in that the program requires a design for an integrated networking solution as opposed to racks filled with commercial hardware like with ISNS, but the knowledge of the common computing environment has been invaluable.”
Villani also pointed to Lockheed Martin’s NexGen Cyber Innovation and Technology Center as important to its approach to CANES. “It is a new research, development and collaboration center where best practices and tools are employed in innovative ways by partners Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, HP, Intel, VMware, NetApp, Symantec, McAfee and others, enabling safe attack and defense testing, simulating customer environments,” he explained. “That environment and experience has taught us how to enhance the speed, security and innovation of real world solutions development.”
Leveraging COTS
The importance of Northrop Grumman’s MOSA-C methodology, for Wegmann, is directly tied to the Navy’s approach of leveraging COTS technologies. “Many programs across the Department of Defense have tried to do this,” he said, “but our analysis shows that the government has not been reaping the full benefit of technology improvements being developed in the private sector. We believe that taking a total life cycle cost approach and ensuring a truly open system architecture will enable competition across the entire commercial marketplace for initial procurements as well as for the entire program life cycle including refreshes. Northrop Grumman’s CANES solution offers considerable cost and performance improvements over existing shipboard networks, including a modernized C4ISR architecture with increased security and reduced development, deployment and life cycle costs.”
Northrop Grumman’s basic strategy has been to strengthen the Navy’s network infrastructure in a way that reduces the hardware footprint and the total ownership costs for the infrastructure. “An open plug-and-play architecture allows for the insertion of multiple commercial technologies without redesigning the system. This enables commercial industry to compete for their part of the system. Our low-risk, affordable design will easily integrate and securely deliver the best C4ISR applications to our warfighters,” Wegmann said.
Northrop Grumman has vast experience integrating mission applications including cross-domain command and control programs, noted Wegmann. “Our mission application experience spans all services and includes the Global Command and Control family of systems, Joint Mission Planning System, the Global Combat Support System Army logistics system, Marine Corps Command and Control Processing System, the Blue Force Tracking system, and many others,” he said. “We also build cross domain devices that are on the United Cross Domain Management Office list. We apply these products for a number of agencies such as national intelligence agencies and each of the armed services, and to a number of programs such as the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node. Northrop Grumman also performs cross domain integration on weapon systems such as the F-22 and the F-35.”
The genesis of NGEN, like CANES, sprang from the realization that the development of separate networks yielded diverging levels of performance. “Before the Navy took control of managing the networks, they were in the hands of ad hoc organizations,” said Hendricks. “As the systems matured it became apparent that there were varying levels of security and service depending on whether you were in Guam, NAVAIR, SPAWAR or Jacksonville.”
In 2000, the Navy brought its networks together under the umbrella of NMCI. “Under NMCI there has been a standard level of service and security across Department of the Navy networks,” said Hendricks. “NGEN is the next logical step. Instead of bidding out all enterprise services for a price, we are going to start to break out different network services and compete them all.”
Those network elements fall into four buckets: hardware, software, transport and enterprise services. Within those categories a total of 38 services have been identified, some unique to a single bucket and some shared among two or more. Under NGEN, all of these will be competed.
“The big thing to recognize is that each of those areas must be compatible and interoperable,” said Hendricks. The Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems has received over 700 industry comments to the draft RFP released in September. Following anticipated release of the final RFP, proposals will be due in the early part of 2012, and one or two fiveyear contract awards are expected in December 2012.
“In this competition the contract will be awarded to the lowest price technically acceptable proposal,” said Hendricks. “Once a proposal gets over the technical bar it will be evaluated based on price. In this market, technologies for which the government is willing to pay a premium are difficult to define.”
Jackson believes that Navy’s scalability needs and cost reduction goals in both CANES and NGEN could be met with the incorporation of cloud computing technologies. “Cloud computing technologies could scale across both the afloat and ashore networks and provide a modernized network to the Navy that is both scalable and more cost-effective.”
Single Enterprise?
Beyond that, Jackson also believes that the two programs ought to be managed as a single enterprise in order to ensure compatibility and interoperability. “Right now they are two separate procurements,” said Jackson. “They should approach both as a single enterprise.” Both LeGoff and Hendricks welcome the notion of incorporating cloud computing in their programs, although, as LeGoff noted, “it is not specifically mentioned” in the solicitation, in keeping with the Navy’s approach of letting the competing vendors develop their own network designs. They also both agreed that CANES and NGEN have their similarities but also important differences.
“Because on ship we have limited and interruptible communications, we are treating each platform as individual cloud,” said LeGoff. “We are building several clouds on ships at sea and connecting them as best as possible.”
Hendricks noted that the Navy’s ashore networks already deploy some aspects of cloud computing, including network-hosted applications and virtualized servers. “As we move forward we will look for increasing opportunities to expand to a cloud-based architecture, especially as security and architecture standards become better defined,” he said. “The NGEN draft RFP allows for any technology which will improve the performance consistency and cost effectiveness of the network, so long as security and productivity are not sacrificed.”
Northrop Grumman’s CANES proposal combines a “commercial cloud-like system” with Department of Defense network security elements, said Wegmann. “We think it is the right thing to do. We sought to support the Navy’s acquisition objectives of program affordability and that influenced the approach we took in our proposal.”
Whether CANES and NGEN can be approached as a single enterprise is another matter. “There are a large number of functional requirements for both the terrestrial and afloat networks that allow us to coordinate and synergize acquisition strategies across both networks,” said LeGoff. “They need to be interoperable and a sailor should not have to care whether he is onboard ship or on shore when using the network. But afloat networks are subject to physical constraints such as space and weight and we must also deal with environmental factors such as corrosion and exposure to heat. These factors, as opposed to performance issues, drive different hardware solutions.”
Additionally, afloat networks need to be maintained by sailors onboard ship and not by outside contractors, LeGoff noted.
“Terrestrial networks also have unique requirements,” added Hendricks, “to serve the Navy’s industrial base, test and evaluation facilities, labs, and a large shore infrastructure.” ♦
