Stakes Are High in Competition For Naval Air-Defense Program.

The Navy's sensor-networking technology known as "cooperative engagement capability" will undergo this month its most rigorous test so far, a test that could seal its fate. But even if the operational evaluation--"opeval" in Pentagon vernacular--is successful, the Navy's long-term plans for the program remain unclear, according to industry sources.

The cooperative engagement capability (CEC) has been in development since the mid-1980s, and the Navy has invested nearly $2 billion. It has been touted for years as one of the holy grails of joint air warfare. Its sensor-netting software and hardware allows ships in a battle group to share radar data on enemy air targets. CEC merges the sensor data from ships and aircraft in a battle group into a single, real-time, fire-control-quality composite track picture. By distributing sensor data to ships that are part of the network, CEC extends the range at which a ship can engage hostile missiles beyond the radar horizon.

Navy leaders, during the past several years, have pushed the idea that CEC should become the foundation for a Defense Department initiative called "single integrated air picture," or SLAP. It is that notion that makes future CEC work a coveted prize to a contractor. In this program, the race is not just about winning a production contract, but, more importantly, it's about who will "own" the SIAP.

CEC originally was conceived at the Johns Hopkins Applied Research Laboratory, in Laurel, Md. In its early years, the technology was designed to allow one Aegis ship to launch one missile against a target, using radar information from another Aegis ship. At the heart of the Aegis combat system is an advanced phased-array radar, the AN/SPY-1, capable of tracking more than 100 targets. The first Aegis system was installed in 1973.

For the past decade or so, the CEC prime contractor has been the Raytheon Company's Command, Control, Communications and Information Systems, in St. Petersburg, Fla. The firm developed the 2.0 baseline of CEC, which has been tested extensively in sea trials since the early 1990s. If the opeval scheduled for May is successful, the Navy would proceed with full-rate production of up to 215 CEC systems, which would be fielded in destroyers, cruisers, large-deck amphibious vessels, carriers and E-2C Hawkeye naval surveillance aircraft. The Pentagon estimated that the unit cost will be $77.9 million. Raytheon already was awarded four low-rate production contracts for 48 systems.

In March, the Navy completed a technical evaluation of CEC, with live missile firings. That test proved that CEC works as it was designed, said Capt. Dan Busch, the Navy's program manager. In the opeval--to be conducted at a range off the coast of Puerto Rico--the Navy will have to prove that the system is suited for operational use in the fleet. The test bed will be the USS John F. Kennedy carrier battle group.

But even though the Navy is focused on baseline 2.0 for the opeval, it has funded a new baseline 2.1, now in development by Raytheon. This baseline will be compatible with ship self-defense weapon systems aboard carriers and amphibious ships. About two years ago, the Navy also engaged another contractor, Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems, in Moorestown, N.J., to develop a 2.2 baseline of CEC, with capabilities to track tactical ballistic missiles.

The decision to bring Lockheed into the program sparked controversy, because, to Raytheon officials, it meant that they now had a competitor even though there had been no formal competition. According to industry sources, the Navy agreed to award Lockheed Martin a development contract for the 2.2 CEC baseline in the aftermath of the service's decision to include Raytheon in the DD-21 destroyer competition. In that program, initially there was only one "dream team" of Lockheed, Bath Iron Works and Ingalls Shipbuilding competing for the DD-21 design and production. The Navy later decided to break up the "dream team" and bring Raytheon into the competition, so Lockheed and Bath would compete against Raytheon and Ingalls.

Lockheed Martin officials, however, said the reason the company was asked to develop CEC 2.2 was that it provided the Navy an opportunity for the introduction of "technology refresh," said Julian Warrick, program manager for baseline 2.2. "We recognize that CEC is 15-year-old technology and, frankly, is in need of some element of technology refresh," he said in an interview.

Now, the Navy has a prime contractor for CEC 2.0 and 2.1, Raytheon, and a prime contractor for 2.2, Lockheed Martin.

And then, there is TCN.

The tactical component network, or TCN, is a concept for composite tracking that its creator claims can make a CEC network work like the Internet. "If the Internet worked the way CEC does, when I change my Web page, you would have to reprogram your computer," said Warren Citrin, president of Solipsys Corp., in Laurel, Md. Citrin was on the original CEC design team at the Johns Hopkins lab. He co-founded Solipsys in 1996. The firm has about 100 employees, half of whom came from the lab.

In its early years, the CEC concept was aimed at the Soviet-era threat, said Citrin in an interview. "The modern networking technologies didn't exist back then. It worked OK, but had a number of short comings," he said, particularly in handling the complexities of joint warfare.

Solipsys built the TCN with its own funding, because the services weren't interested, said Citrin. It was introduced to the Navy about two years ago.

Citrin said that TCN offers more flexibility and bandwidth efficiency than CEC and he also claims that it can make all CEC baselines compatible with each other. Last year, the Navy's chief engineer, Rear Adm. Kathleen K. Paige, sponsored a study of TCN, and an assessment report was published in November 2000. Industry sources said that Paige wanted to bring TCN into the CEC program, but she was not able to garner financial support from the Navy. The funding for TCN evaluation ran out in December 2000.

Privately, Raytheon officials complained that the TCN evaluation was biased, because it was a simulation-based demonstration, nothing like the rigorous testing that CEC 2.0 had undergone at sea.

In response to written questions from National Defense, Paige said that it is pre mature to predict the future of TCN. "There is no way that, even if we were done with the assessment, that I could tell you whether or not that was a system that we were willing to buy," she said. "There are other issues, including other technical, engineering and logistics aspects, as well as business approaches, that must be analyzed first, and then those will be evaluated against whatever other competitors have to bring."

Don Mitchell, Paige's technical director, is overseeing the assessment of TCN. "The results of all government testing on CEC as well as related technologies, such as TCN, are expected to be available to all competitors who might compete for CEC contracts in the future--within the constraints of security classification and business propriety," Paige said.

Citrin was expected to host a demonstration of TCN in late April at his company's facilities. He said, however, that only Navy officials, and no contractors, would be allowed to attend, in order to protect his proprietary technology. An export license application for TCN recently was turned down by the State Department. "It's a little bit contentious," said Citrin. The rejection, he explained, was "due to Navy concerns."

In a future competition for CEC, he said, "there is a good chance that we will throw our hat into the ring. There are a lot of advantages in going with a small business for this pro gram." A public-relations agency representing Solipsys said in a news release that the company "is making waves in the Department of Defense and is challenging the traditional big corporate and laboratory players."

In an announcement published last March in the Commerce Business Daily, the Navy unveiled its intention to conduct two concurrent competitions for CEC. One would select a "system engineering and integration agent" and the other would award a "design agent and production" contract. A single company would not be able to win both. But it appears likely that both Lockheed and Raytheon will enter both competitions and will propose to set up internal "firewalls" to isolate the system-engineer shop from the design agent.

"It's certainly feasible that one contractor could have the [system engineer] contract, and another have the design-agent role," said Warrick. "I think that is what the government is envisioning here. It is done on other programs."

The developments of baselines 2.1 and 2.2 will continue as sole-source programs.

An industry day was scheduled on April 23 to address contractors' questions about the competition.

Citrin said he would prefer that Solipsys compete independently of the "big guys." If there were a teaming arrangement, it would more than likely be with Lockheed Martin, which has endorsed the TCN technology and, up until last year, was proposing that the Navy incorporate TCN into CEC baseline 2.2.

He said he also is concerned that the Navy may reject TCN, because it would imply there was "something wrong" with CEC. "It's a very difficult thing for the Navy at this juncture to immediately change its course, because a lot of money has been invested in CEC," said Citrin.

Raytheon officials, meanwhile, said they are puzzled as to why the Navy would be interested in TCN, because they believe that the baseline 2.1, after planned upgrades are completed, will provide the capabilities offered by 2.2 and TCN. One project currently under way at Raytheon is a $35 million Navy-funded effort to improve the communications capabilities of CEC. The company also is working on a "low-cost" version of CEC.

"Our view is that 2.1 should be 'the' baseline," said Tony Gecan, Raytheon systems engineer. CEC baselines are complex pieces of software that take time to develop, he said in an interview. "You don't just pop one of those out of the oven every 15 minutes."

The Navy's announcement that there would be two competitions raises significant questions, Gecan said. The more important one is that it does not make it clear "who has the 'soul' of the program."

An intricate technology such as CEC is "more art than science," Gecan said. "Everyone has a copy of the code. But what can they do with it?"

The Navy, said Gecan, "has to define who owns the program. ... We had envisioned a competition for a full-service contract. It appears they are structuring it in two pieces. It's not clear to us what these pieces are."

CEC is not like "competing a print job," he said. "It is vision, insight, rocket science in many ways. [They cannot] bundle it into little pieces and throw it out in the street."

Gecan's long-term vision for CEC is built around a "joint sensor network," which would underpin the SIAP.

"There are no other programs out there that do composite tracking in any of the services," said W. Clifford Clegg, director of advanced tactical programs at Raytheon. The "joint sensor network" concept is not directly competing with TCN, he said in an interview. "TCN hasn't been proven or tested in a battle group. [Even] if it showed promise, it probably wouldn't be available for several years. Asked about the possibility that the Navy could consolidate all baselines into the 2.2 software, Clegg said he did not believe 2.2 would be ready for many years. The 2.1 baseline, he said, will require another 18 months to two years of testing. It is currently not compatible with the Aegis combat system, but it will be in the future, said Clegg.

Lockheed Martin's Warrick said that base line 2.2 "would be ready for a major test" as early as 2004.

The Johns Hopkns Applied Physics Lab continues to participate in the CEC program as a "technical direction agent," said Conrad J. Grant, lab engineer. The lab oversees both Raytheon and Lockheed work in the program, he said. "We will not be a competitor. We do not compete against industry."