Navy seeks small biz input for CANES work
By
Nick Wakeman
The Navy is looking for input from industry on whether small businesses can provide a wide range of systems engineering and support services for its CANES initiative.
The Navy has launched a market research effort for small businesses to support its massive Consolidated Afloat Network and Enterprise Services program known as CANES.
Specifically, the Navy is looking for engineering and support services. The Navy expects that contract to be worth between $50 million and $100 million over five years.
CANES is the Navy’s effort to improve networks and connectivity on ships and other vessels.
In a sources sought notice, the Navy details that it wants information on systems engineering capabilities, architecture research and design, engineering development and cybersecurity.
The Navy is clear that it does not want large businesses to respond and that it is still trying to determine if a small business contract is the right approach.
Other areas of interest include developmental testing, training, documentation, operational support, logistics support and program and project management.
It appears that the Navy wants to develop a broad vehicle. Each task area is assigned a percentage of effort by the Navy and none have more than 8 percent. The Navy wants respondents to estimate what they think the percentage of effort will be for each task area.
The draft performance work statement describes work on afloat and subsurface vessels as well as onshore and airborne.
Some of the capabilities include network design and development, network monitoring, common computing environment, infrastructure, cloud computing, afloat and onshore data centers and server hosting environments.
Some of the operational threads discussed in the document include anti-submarine warfare, ballistic missile defense, close air support and intelligence and reconnaissance,
“The end objective is to deliver capabilities and services that are available upon demand and integrated in the context of the mission(s) to be executed, with the infrastructure supporting all mission applications being nearly transparent to the war fighter,” the Navy says in the RFI.
Responses to the RFI are due Feb. 16.
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