The Naval Sea Systems Command in late December awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to Sechan Electronics Inc. for production and support services for a signal data processor, designated the Sierra assembly, for the Fleet’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC).
The CEC is a sensor-netting system in service on board Ticonderoga-class cruisers, Arleigh Burke–class destroyers, Nimitz-class carriers, Wasp-class big-deck amphibs, and E-2C Hawkeye 2000 and E-2D Advanced Hawkeye maritime-surveillance aircraft.
NAVSEA said that the Sechan-built processor will serve as the “core” of the CEC transmission-processing system. The Sierra processor consists of commercially developed components, including a programmable and scalable Sierra II cryptographic device fabricated by Harris RF Communications, supporting a fully “open” processing architecture for CEC.
Sechan, of Lititz, Pennsylvania, also builds the Navy’s Mk 53 decoy-launching system and the Harpoon ship-command and launch-control system and, under a recent Boeing contract award, will provide a future upgrade to the Harpoon missile-launch control system.
Sechan will deliver the processor as government-furnished equipment to the St. Petersburg, Florida, facility of longtime CEC prime contractor Raytheon Network Centric Systems for system integration, testing, and delivery to the Fleet.
The baseline CEC consists of the USG-2 common equipment set, which includes the CEC processor, a data distribution system (DDS), and a directional active-array antenna. When integrated with ship and aircraft combat systems, CEC enables access to a collaborative network that provides all network participants with a single set of target data for engagement with anti-air weapons. Approximately 100 CEC systems have been deployed, with a planned target of 136 by 2013.
The Navy has introduced an upgraded, lighter-weight CEC USG-2B shipboard equipment set. Raytheon also has developed a USG-3B for the Advanced Hawkeye and a ground-mobile USG-4B variant.
In a CEC network, the CEC processor continuously fuses target-measurement data provided by sensors of all the CEC ships and aircraft. The data are transmitted by the DDS at extremely high speed, allowing all CEC-networked ships and surveillance aircraft to share the common “picture” of target data.
CEC originally was developed for the Navy by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University in the mid-1980s. Raytheon has acted as the Navy’s design agent since the early 1990s.
Through CEC development, the Navy faced significant challenges in integrating the CEC target-generation capability with the Aegis combat system on board the Ticonderogas and Burkes. The system went through a successful operational evaluation in May 2001. Since then, Raytheon has introduced a number of system upgrades that incorporate commercially developed technology, including a more compact planar-array antenna.
CEC serves as an essential element of Navy battle-group and theater-integrated air defense, and eventually will be on all Ticonderogas and Burkes as a component of the cruiser- and destroyer-modernization programs now under way. The CEC architecture also will be integrated with a Marine Corps CEC variant, the Composite Tracking Network. A USG-5B configuration will be part of the Army’s Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System. CEC was planned to be interoperable with the Army’s medium-extended air-defense system, or MEADS, until the Army decided in early 2011 to end the program.
CEC will be a critical component of the Navy’s ballistic-missile defense (BMD) capability to be fielded in the cruiser/destroyer modernization. CEC also would support the air-defense and BMD capability of the Navy’s planned Flight III Burke that is expected to be fitted with a new air-missile defense radar and armed with new BMD weapons.
The Navy awarded Raytheon a contract in March 2011 modifying a previous award for production of USG-2B units for the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78). In July the company won a contract for USG-3B units for the E-2D, and in December received an award, valued at $67.4 million, for continuing-design agent and engineering support services, and includes work through the Foreign Military Sales Program for CEC for the Royal Australian Navy’s Air Defense Destroyer. The Canadian and U.K. navies also are purchasing CEC.