Northrop designs pass preliminary review

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. Navy's Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services program is closer to reality with successful completion of a preliminary design review.

Northrop Grumman said a two-day review of plans to streamline and update command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance architecture was conducted with the Navy and development partners in San Diego.

The successful PDR and subsequent approval of the CANES design will lead to the critical design review of CANES later this year and planned shipboard installation of the first system in fiscal year 2012.

"Northrop Grumman is poised to rapidly proceed into detailed design of the CANES system," said Mike Twyman, vice president of Integrated Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence Systems for Northrop Grumman's Information Systems sector. "By applying the Northrop Grumman-developed Modular Open Systems Approach -- Competitive process, we continue to advance a technically and financially superior solution that meets, and will evolve with, the Navy's requirements.

"We believe a truly open systems approach is the only means to providing the Navy with an infrastructure that allows the flexibility to deploy the most capable applications while minimizing the cost and risk."

Northrop Grumman said its MOSA-C is a business and engineering process using open-systems architecture and commercial off-the-shelf components and software.

Company partners in the PDR were IBM Global Business Services, Atlas Technologies, Beatty and Company Computing, Juno Technologies, Syzygy Technologies and CenterBeam.