Raytheon Netcentric Systems, prime contractor for the cooperative engagement capability (CEC) for Navy surface combatants and E-1 Hawkeye surveillance aircraft, plans to demonstrate later this year new CEC software programs that will enable the system to operate within the Navy's evolving open architecture computing environment for shipboard combat systems.
The cooperative capability system, managed by the Navy's Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems, is in service aboard several Ticonderoga-class cruisers, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, Nimitz-class carriers, and Wasp-class amphibious assault ships. It also will go aboard the San Antonio-class amphibious warfare ships and new classes of DD(X) destroyers and littoral combat ships.
The system integrates air-search radar data into a common air-defense data picture that is shared by ships participating in a cooperative network, a capability that Navy surface warfare leaders say makes it the ideal foundation for a joint-service air-defense architecture.
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory developed the system in the mid-1980s originally to provide a networked air defense for Navy carrier battle groups against Soviet Backfire bombers and other Cold War threats. It consists of a cooperative engagement processor or CEP that integrates radar data to produce the common picture, a data distribution system that transmits the data to CEC-equipped ships, and a phased-array antenna that provides 360° coverage.
The company is developing a miniterminal that adopts commercial processor technology to achieve dramatic weight reductions and performance enhancements. In its shipboard configuration, the new 55-pound terminal will replace the current 2,000-pound refrigerator-size data processing unit. Company officials say they expect to receive an initial production contract for the mini-terminal in mid-2006.
Through this development and earlier improvements, the open architecture system will be considerably different from the Block 1 version of the mid-1990s. Since the late 1990s, the company has introduced commercial processor technology and new software that replace the 1980s-vintage proprietary processors and Navy-unique CMS-2 software.
Among other improvements, the company has replaced 39 individual processing cards used in the Block 1 system with two quad cards, each of which accommodates four processors. Software programs are being ported from the original Navy-proprietary CMS-2 programming language to the widely used C++ language.
The company also developed a planar array antenna assembly, or PA3, that replaces the current doughnut-shaped antenna that clamps onto ships' masts. In its cruiser installation, the antenna is blocked from full coverage by the ship's forward deckhouse, requiring a second antenna. The PA3 consists of four array faces that can be mounted in a number of locations to provide forward, aft, port, and starboard fields of view. It now is going through checkout aboard the destroyer USS Bulkeley (DDG-84).
In January 2003, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin teamed to compete for a Navy contract to develop a new Block 2 system that was hoped would cut costs and enhance networking capability. A key goal of the program was to make the cooperative capability more attractive to the Army and Air Force as a joint-service sensor networking system. Facing cost constraints, the program office canceled the competition and directed Raytheon to develop the mini-terminal instead.
For the E-2D Hawkeye cooperative variant, the mini-terminal will consolidate the cooperative engagement processor, receiver/synthesizer, and ancillary processors into a single standard 19-inch-wide air-transport rack. Similar upgrades are planned for the shipboard system.
The open architecture combat-systems initiative aims at development of new hardware and software that will be widely common to combat systems aboard frontline surface combatants. Surface-warfare officials say that the effort will resolve the perennial problem of non-interoperability among the multiple and dissimilar combat systems now aboard surface ships.
The work, aimed for completion by 2010, is engaging Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and other companies, to produce a standards-based computing environment that incorporates such widely accepted commercial standards as Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). Open architecture will be introduced in four stages-categories 1 and 2, expected to be complete this year, establish open compliant interfaces among systems.
Raytheon is working on a technical instruction to develop the software to enable category 3 compliance for the system. The open architecture qualified system will operate with the new enhancements for the Aegis system, the total-ship computing environment being developed for the DD(X), the ship self-defense system (SSDS) for amphibious warfare ships and carriers, and a mission computer for the new Hawkeye.