USS Carter Hall’s CANES refresh reaches final production milestone

The first Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) refresh on the US Navy’s Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship, USS Carter Hall (LSD 50), has reached the final milestone of its production phase.

The refresh is being performed by the US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SSC) Atlantic Fleet Readiness Directorate Installation Office Atlantic (FIO) at the General Dynamics NASSCO-Norfolk shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia.

LSD 50’s installation and testing phase is expected to be completed by August following the completion of the production works.

The navy originally installed the USS Carter Hall’s first CANES during a Chief of Naval Operations Availability from July 2014 to August 2015.

Fleet Readiness Directorate Installation Office Atlantic Carter Hall CANES install project lead lieutenant commander Chris Matters said: “It’s a big milestone in the CANES progression.

“We started CANES installs on the ships four years ago, and this is the next-generation of the process where ships with CANES networks are getting an updated version.”

The production phase initially began in January and involved the installation of shipboard systems, as well as the removal and replacement of existing hardware in preparation for upgrade works.

In addition, the production phase saw the removal of seven data centres for software upgrades and future retrofitting of edge switches and backbone switches aboard the vessel.

LSD 50 was noted to require minimal infrastructure improvements and ship alterations during the refresh.

The CANES is intended to install a common infrastructure across dozens of command, control, intelligence and logistics applications, while eliminating several legacy and standalone computing networks.

Matters added: “The CANES refresh is an important step in returning warships to the fleet.

“We get a chance to improve combat capabilities, end-user efficiency and new advancements to command, control, communications, computers, combat systems, and intelligence (C5I) systems.

“Most of these ships will leave their period of maintenance and shortly return to a workup schedule and deployments around the world with better networks than when they arrived.”

The navy expects to complete the deployment of CANES across the fleet by 2024, while a number of vessels are set to receive the system’s first network upgrade in the near future.