Sea Power - February/March 2016

CEC includes a Cooperative Engagement Processor and a data distribution system with an integral antenna array. The self-forming network, transmitting and receiving simultaneously, takes the various received sensor data, fuses that data into one composite track.

That one track is a much better track than any the individual sensors can have on their own just by getting various looks of the same object at different geometries. Any one sensor could have jamming problems or horizon or weather limitations. The data distribution system takes that one composite track and provides it to each one of the cooperating units, the platforms in theater that have CEC. They have the same track at the exact same time.

CEC has evolved significantly since those early days. What was once the size of a double-wide refrigerator is now the size of a microwave oven. The Navy ran a build-to-print competition for the signal data processor [SDP] and Sechan Electronics, a small business in Lititz, Pa., is doing an excellent job building the SDP at a fraction of the cost of the first-gen CEC system. In the beginning, the shipboard CEC had a cylindrical array antenna called Shipboard Active Aperture, state of the art at the time, liquid cooled. With a cylindrical array, 360-degree coverage was a challenge, with dual-antenna configurations required on some platforms.

Beginning in the early 2000s, we fielded the next-generation antenna, a planar array active aperture antenna, which has four faces that you can separate. It provided increased reliability and significant savings in acquisition, installation and support costs.

Now we are integrating the latest CEC variants, the USG-2B and USG- 3B, on ships and aircraft, respectively. We’re in the process of developing the next-generation CEC antenna, the Common Array Block [CAB] antenna, for expeditionary and shipboard applications, so we call it the CAB-E/S. The gallium nitride MMICs [Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits] allow the antenna to be air cooled as opposed to the liquid cooling. The CAB will also be more reliable and maintainable.

PROGRAM SNAPSHOT

Raytheon’s CEC:
Engaging for 20 Years

BACKGROUND

The Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) was developed as a sensor-netting system that integrates target tracks into a high-quality situational awareness and fire-control capability. The CEC makes it possible for multiple cooperating units, such as air-defense ships, radar early warning aircraft and ground air defense sites, to form an air defense network by sharing radar target measurements in real time.

SCOPE

Raytheon has delivered more than 150 CEC systems, which are installed on more than 100 U.S. Navy ships and 40 E-2C Hawkeye and E-2D Advanced Hawkeye radar early warning aircraft. CEC also is a component of the Marine Corps’ Composite Tracking Network (CTN). The contract awards to date total more than $1 billion. Raytheon currently is scheduled to deliver 15 more CEC systems.

TIMELINE

Work on the CEC began in the 1980s. The operational system first was installed on ships of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier battle group, which brought CEC to initial operational capability in 1996. CEC was integrated in the CTN beginning in the late 1990s. In 2015, USS Theodore Roosevelt deployed with the Navy Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air capability, of which CEC is a component.

WHO’S WHO

Pat Speake is director of Integrated Mission Systems at Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems.

Two of the Cooperative Engagement Capability’s planar array active aperture antenna’s four faces are shown in the inset of the top of the mast of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, seen here in the Atlantic Ocean Nov. 17.