Raytheon's Network Centric Systems business unit has started software development work aimed at integrating the Navy's cooperative engagement capability (CEC) with the Joint Land-Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS), a joint-service initiative managed by the Army, with the goal of extending the wide-area netting of sensors for joint-service cruise missile defense.
The JLENS work is landed by the Army through a contract awarded to Raytheon by the Navy's Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems. The company will develop the software required to integrate the CEC system with new radars being developed for the JLENS moored aerostats, which at an altitude of about 15.000 feet will provide over-tlie-horizon surveillance for potential threat missiles.
CEC. for which Raytheon has long acted as prime contractor and systems integrator, provides the real-time exchange of air-search radar data among participants in a network for integrated long-range air defense. The CEC system, which went through a successful operational evaluation in 2001, is fielded in its shiphourd variant, designated USG-2. on board U.S. Navy ships equipped with long-range air-defense rudars: Ticonderoga-class (CG-47) Aegis cruisers, Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) Aegis destroyers, Wasp-class (LHD-1) amphibs, and Nimitz-class (CVN-68) carriers. The system also will he installed on Sun Antonio-class (LPDS-17) amphibs. the Freedom-I class of littoral combat ships, and the Zumwalt-class (DDG-1000) land-attack destroyer.
Raytheon recently received funding to start the CEC integration work for the DDG-1000, now in detail design at General Dynamics Bath and Northrop Gruinnian Ship Systems.
The system also is in service in a USG-3 airborne variant aboard E-2C Hawkeye long-range maritime surveillance aircraft, and will go aboard the enhanced E-2D.
Since the start of the program in the late 1980s, the Navy has ordered a total of 117 shipboard and airborne systems, including land-based test and demonstration units and several for the Marine Corps. The Navy has identified a requirement for 211 new systems, many of which will be for E-2Ds.
The system consists of a cooperative engagement processor, a data-distribution system that transmits and receives sensor data among network participants, and a planar array assembly antenna (PA3). Sensor data received by the ship and E-2 air-search radars is fused with data acquired from other ships to produce a single coherent air target picture that is shared in real time among all network participants, including those at land-based sites.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory developed CEC. originally envisioned as a Cold War system to support Navy battle group air defense against Soviet bombers. Raytheon later was named design agent for the system, which through the mid-1990s used proprietary Navy-unique hardware and software.
Beginning in the late 1990s Raytheon introduced a number of product improvements to cut system costs and capitalize on breakthroughs in commercial processing technology. The PA3 antenna, still being introduced, replaces a more expensive directional array that could not provide full 360-degree coverage on carriers, requiring the use of two arrays and generating higher maintenance and support costs. The company also replaced an expensive transmit-receive module with more advanced transmit and receive array technology.
Raytheon is currently redesigning the transceiver for the airborne variant. The company will consolidate multiple separate components of both the shipboard USG-2 and the airborne USG-3 in a new signal data processor (SDP) to be built under a Navy contract by sechan Electronics of Lititz, Pennsylvania. The SDP will be integrated with the CEC system for both shipboard and airborne configurations for delivery to the Navy under new nomenclatures-USG-2A for shipboard and USG-3A for airborne.
Navy and company officials long have pointed out that Navy CEC offers the potential to serve as the foundation tor a long-sought-after single-integrated air picture (SIAP) by providing the joint-sensor networking capability for airborne and shore- and sea-based assets. Air Force. Army, and Marine Corps units have evaluated CEC in multiple joint-service exercises both before and since the CEC 2001 OPEVAE. The JLENS represents a first key move towards joint application for the system.