Navy one step closer toward CANES deployment
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With the installation of the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services system, or CANES, on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, the Navy is working toward full CANES deployment across its fleet.
With the installation of the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services system, or CANES, on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, the Navy is one step closer to full CANES deployment across its fleet.
CANES replaces and consolidates functions of five legacy command, control, communications, computers and intelligences systems, creating a single integrated software-based platform. It provides several shipboard IT services, including improved information assurance, firewall and intrusion detection and network standardization. Based on commercial off-the-shelf products and open architecture, CANES offers an adaptable IT platform that meets requirements for current operating systems and upgrades as they become available.
The first CANES installation occurred in November 2013; full operational capability is expected by 2022.
Even after the Nimitz installation, the system still has a ways to go before it is fully deployed. As of February 2016, the Navy has completed CANES installation on 30 ships with 219 still to go, Steven A. Davis, a spokesman for Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, told GCN.
“Installed systems are performing operational missions and have received positive feedback from fleet users,” Davis said.
Aboard the Nimitz, roughly 1,300 new workstations will accompany the new system, which will improve the speed of the network and Internet access, the Navy said in a release. The Nimitz, along with all other CANES-enabled ships, required a switch to temporary local-area networks while cabling for the new network was installed.
To enhance cybersecurity, CANES offers better systems management, refined network defense and greater automation compared to legacy systems. The Navy has maintained that CANES can solve cybersecurity vulnerabilities that cannot otherwise be mitigated, allowing the network to become part of the Navy’s combat capability.