In early February, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin announced they will join to pursue a Navy program to develop a Block 2 Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) program, uniting the Navy's preeminent surface-warfare systems integrators.
CEC is a secure, high-data-rate processing and communications system that consolidates air-defense radar information from multiple ships, surveillance aircraft, and potential shore-based sites to create a real-time common targeting picture accessible by all participants in a network.
Raytheon Network Centric Systems is the prime contractor and design agent for the Block 1 CEC, now on board several Ticonderoga (CG-47)-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke (DDG51)-class destroyers, aircraft carriers, and Wasp (LHD-1)-class amphibious warfare ships. The Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, which initially developed CEC concepts in the early 1980s, continues to support the current effort.
Lockheed Martin's Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems is the longtime prime contractor for the Aegis combat system on board cruisers and destroyers, the surface force's primary air-defense platforms and front-line CEC users.
Under the teaming agreement, Raytheon will act as prime contractor and design agent and handle 60% of the effort, including development of a new terminal, networking and air-tracking software, systems interfaces, and a new antenna. Lockheed Martin, as primary subcontractor, will carry out the remaining 40%, including CEC integration with the Aegis system and development of ballistic missile defense and satellite communications capabilities.
The Navy released a request for proposals for the Block 2 system in February. Navy and industry officials anticipate a contract award in early 2004, with first system delivery in 2006.
The Block 2 CEC will respond to new "characteristics and attributes" developed by the Joint Theater Air Missile Defense Organization last year at the direction of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Edward Aldridge as a caveat to approval of full production for the current Block 1 system.
The characteristics and attributes were passed to the Navy for evaluation as elements of a next-generation system. Among them are greater bandwidth efficiency and extension of the system beyond the Navy-proprietary CEC data distribution system to joint-service communications systems, such as the Marine Corps-Army enhanced position location reporting system and future variants of a software-programmable joint tactical radio system. The Block 2 system also will incorporate a standard sensor interface and is required to be lighter and cheaper than Block 1.
Navy and Defense Department leaders also have stressed that CEC represents the foundation for generation of a single integrated air picture needed for flexible networked joint-service air defense
A multiple-service market is critical. The Army and Air Force have carried out some evaluations of the Block 1 system, but have declined to purchase and field it. The Block 2 CEC will be widely compatible with joint-service sensors.
The Marine Corps has an approved requirement for CEC, but it is not happy about the cost. The Corps, without significant Navy participation, experimented from 2000 through last year with tactical component network software developed by Solypsis, Inc., to distribute to its units CEC data received by its TPS-59 air-defense radar over lower-cost Marine Corps communications systems.
Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, longtime competitors for many Navy surface ship systems-integration programs, were forced to cooperate to make CEC work with the Aegis combat system. Early attempts through the late 1990s to integrate CEC, with its mix of commercial and proprietary software, and the meticulously engineered Aegis system produced conspicuous failures, acrimony, and a two-year delay in the CEC operational evaluation. Because CEC processes data far faster than tactical datalinks that already are integrated with Aegis, early CEC tests with Aegis produced multiple redundant tracks—or, in some cases, no tracks.
The Navy directed both companies to work together on CEC-Aegis integration in a series of 11 underway incremental demonstrations. As a result, CEC, representing the USG-2 shipboard system running CEC version 2.0 software, successfully passed its operational evaluation in May 2001. Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin both received 100% performance awards for the effort.