Commercial Technologies Manage Navy Networking

Signal, May 2008 by Ackerman, Robert K

Better Internet communications adds to fleet connectivity.

The U.S. Navy is turning over the modernization of a shipboard network system to private industry to speed the introduction of new technologies and capabilities. The upgrades currently being introduced into the system help bring ship networks into the Web 2.0 era and provide the flexibility to accommodate more communications advances as they are incorporated into the fleet.

The Automated Digital Network System, or ADNS, is the key interface for managing network information on and off every Navy ship, explains Robert Wolborsky, Navy program manager for afloat networks, information assurance and enterprise services, in PEO C4I, PMW-160. By eliminating dedicated media circuits, the ADNS is allowing the Navy to move completely to Internet protocol (IP). "As we march into the information age, this is the key way of routing and transferring information on and off the ship as efficiently as possible," he emphasizes.

Where the Consolidated Afloat Network and Enterprise Services (CANES) program modernizes shipboard local area networks (LANs), the ADNS is the tactical wide area network (WAN) for Navy ships. Operating in some form since the 1990s, it serves as the connection between the ship and shore networks. Architecturally speaking, ADNS equipment is sited between the ship's radio room and its LANs. The system controls access from those LANs to the radios. On shore, the ADNS is between ashore switching networks and the radio rooms in network operations centers.

It has been implemented in three increments. Increment I, which began in 1997, combined IP traffic from different enclaves across a single radio frequency path. The system attained 13-percent efficiency, Wolborsky reports. Increment II improved routing efficiencies to provide increased bandwidth throughput to ships. Increment IIa added the ability to transport data beyond the previous limit of 2 megabits per second, and it enabled traffic flow over multiple satellite communication paths. It provided converged IP and achieved about 67-percent efficiency.

Increment III is taking those moves further, and it also is expanding the ability of the ADNS to perform nonsatellite data transfer. These alternative pipes include high frequency (HF), HF IP with subnet relay, line-of-sight data relay and even 802.11 network extension functionalities. Wolborsky states that this increment will achieve nearly 100-percent efficiency.

All previous increments were developed and installed by the Navy. For Increment III, the Navy turned to General Dynamics to head a team developing the upgrades. This marked the first time that the Navy sought industry participation in running the ADNS effort, says Bill Rau, director of emerging business in the communications networks division of General Dynamics. He is the business unit manager over the company's ADNS effort.

Turning to a private sector contractor to take control of the ADNS program offers the Navy several advantages. Cmdr. Alan Walters, USN, assistant program manager, ADNS, PMW-160, explains that this approach allows the government to leverage efforts by General Dynamics to build a better product than one done entirely in-house.

Wolborsky describes it as a shift toward greater industry involvement in the program. "There is more industry involvement and leadership in our engineering and development than in the past," he says. "We still have a very strong government technical team to help our industry partners, but our government technical team isn't defining every technical detail of the system and the architecture. We've delegated quite a bit of that to our industry partners to tackle.

"We want industry to bring to bear the strengths that it can to support the success of our programs, and we didn't feel that the government managing every single technical aspect of this program to be the optimum path to succeeding on ADNS Increment III," he concludes.

Rau relates that his company has been able to leverage investments already made in other programs, such as the Army's Warfighter Information NetworkTactical (WIN-T) system. Differences exist: The Army's networking effort seeks to link many diverse points at the edge of the network, while the Navy connects platforms. However, the two services' networks are similar enough that the company could adapt Army technologies for the Navy without redundant research and development spending.

"Solutions that we are bringing to bear into the Army market directly apply here," says Bill secher, ADNS program chief engineer, General Dynamics. "The Army has large command posts and individual on-the-move vehicles. The Navy has the same kind of problems -large aircraft carriers and small patrol boats that are very mobile with low bandwidth. The quality of service that ADNS adds becomes more important with lower bandwidth to make sure that high-priority users -on large and small ships-get the bandwidth they need to do the job."

This approach also helps improve interoperability among Army, Navy and Air Force networks, particularly where Global Information Grid (GIG) requirements come into play. Among the technologies employed in the ADNS are Cisco routers-large units for ashore, smaller ones for ships -Packeteer specialized quality service equipment, Dell servers, and General Dynamics Taclanes along with WIN-T server software.