In July, the program executive office for theater surface combatants, through the Naval Sea Systems Command, awarded Solipsys a $21.5-million phase-three small business innovative research contract for development and testing of computer servers for the company's Tactical Component Network (TCN) management software. The servers will support TCN for operations with the Aegis SPY-1 radar on board Ticonderoga (CG-47)-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke (DDG-51)-class destroyers, and the APS-145 radar on board E-2C Hawkeyes.
The work aims at a series of land-based demonstrations and an at-sea test in 2003 of TCN's capability to carry out functions planned for the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) developed by Raytheon for fleet sensor netting.
The Raytheon system went through a successful evaluation in May 2001 and is certified for fleet use. CEC is set for fielding on cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers, Wasp (LHD-1) and San Antonio (LPD-17)-class amphibious warfare ships, and E-2Cs. The CEC program office plans to release a request for proposals for CEC next year with a contract award set for 2004.
The plans for the 2003 TCN demonstration represent yet another in a series of efforts to collect data on TCN, which Solipsys and some Navy officials say provides a cheaper and more effective alternative to CEC.
The CEC system consists of a cooperative engagement processor, a high-speed data distribution system, and a phased-array antenna that incorporates Navy-unique transmit-receive modules. The system consolidates in a common air picture the target data provided by multiple air-search radars.
CEC was developed initially by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory during the Cold War to provide secure mission-critical networked fleet defense against antiship cruise missiles. Raytheon, as prime contractor, acquired the designagent role from Johns Hopkins in the mid-1990s.
Solipsys and its Navy supporters say that TCN, which uses commercial hardware and software, discriminates precisely among sensor data to disseminate to users only data they require, thereby using less bandwidth than CEC. Raytheon counters that it has introduced the same capability in its system.
For years, Navy officials defined CEC as the baseline for its network-centric warfare concept. In February 2000, Lockheed Martin Naval Electronic & Surveillance Systems, the Navy's prime contractor for the Aegis combat system, formed an alliance with Solipsys with the intent of competing with Raytheon to provide sensor netting for shipboard combat systems. Navy officials continued supporting CEC, arguing that the Raytheon system, while more expensive than TCN, also met the fleet requirements for secure mission-critical data transfer.
The Marine Corps, however, which also plans to field CEC to provide targeting data through its TPS-59 air-defense radar as well as air-picture situation awareness to its ground units, has looked seriously at TCN as an alternafive. The Marine Corps Systems Command carried out a series of demonstrations of TCN between mid-2000 through the beginning of this year to show the feasibility of using TCN to extract sensor data from CEC networks for distribution, using existing communication systems, to Corps units. An official from the program executive office for theater surface combatants said during the CEC evaluation that the Corps was "ahead of the Navy" in exploring new networking opportunities.
TCN advocates meanwhile complained that the Navy program officials would not seriously consider TCN as an alternative to CEC. The Navy also discontinued funding for development work on an advanced CEC terminal by an SAIC operation in Florida.
In December 2001, as the program office prepared for a Defense Acquisition Board meeting that was expected to approve the start of full CEC production, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition John Young directed the program to explore whether other technologies could meet the requirement.
Officials now say the results of the 2003 TCN demonstration will be represented in a kind of data library accessible to industry teams that plan to compete for the CEC award, which, they add, increasingly will incorporate TCN-like qualities.