The U.S. Navy has issued a request for information on potential vendors as it works on a new acquisition strategy for the potential $2.5 billion follow-on Consolidated Afloat Network Enterprise and Services contract, Bloomberg Government reported Friday.
The CANES program is a commercial-off-the-shelf systems integration initiative that seeks to consolidate a number of separately managed operations and shipboard networks. It seeks to provide Navy surface combatants, maritime operations centers and submarines with a complete infrastructure – including software, hardware, end-user devices, storage and processing – for secret, unclassified, coalition and sensitive compartmented information network services.
Naval Information Warfare Systems Command wants information on companies with experience in the production and assembly of rack-mounted Navy submarine and surface systems; ability to develop hardware units based on detailed technical data package materials; experience working with industry partners for subsystem development; experience in maintenance of fielded military hardware platforms; and cooperation with other prime partners in the integration of complex systems.
NAVWAR will accept responses to the RFI through July 28.
The Navy awarded BAE Systems, General Dynamics (NYSE: GD), Global Technical Systems, Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) and Serco’s U.S. arm spots on the $2.53 billion CANES contract in 2014 and added CGI (NYSE: GIB) and Leonardo to the program in 2015. The existing CANES contract will run through August 2022.
