The Department of the Navy, Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, in support of the Program Executive Officer – Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence and Space (PEO-C4I), Advanced Automated Tactical Communications Program Office PMW 179, has a continuing requirement for information on how multi-vendor teams could be established and managed to provide a successful collaborative effort under the Increment III Phase of the ADNS program.

The ADNS programs currently provide the Navy with its at-sea Wide Area Network (WAN). ADNS and ADMS are responsible for the network that delivers Voice, Video, and Data between ship and shore and ship to ship. Figures 1 through 4 show the current ADNS and ADMS systems in the attached RFI document. These systems support both the shore and ship side of the WAN. Currently, the systems are not considered as mission critical. However, ADNS is soliciting feedback on the ramifications involved in designing the proposed system to meet “Mission Critical” requirements, which also include MIL-STD-901D Grade A environmental shock and vibration.

• On ships, ADNS provides the Internet Protocol (IP) routing between the ship’s LANs and the RF links. Both the WAN router and the baseband equipment are part of ADNS. There are two different ship configurations: Unit level ship (Fig.1) and Force level ship (Fig. 2). The major difference between the configurations is the baseband multiplexer. Force level ships have more Radio Frequency (RF) links and serial connections and use a Timeplex Link2 Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) multiplexer. The Unit level ships use a FCC-100 TDMA multiplexer. The TDMA multiplexer switches serial connections between the RF links and the different serial data connections. ADNS runs IP traffic over serial connections through the multiplexer. Some of the other serial connections are unique. The ultimate goal is to run only IP traffic and eliminate the multiplexers. This includes converging voice to Voice over IP (VoIP). The Commercial Wideband Satellite Program (CWSP), also referred to as Challenge Athena (CA), and Super High Frequency (SHF) satellite links normally operate at 1 or 2 Mbps. However, the future objective is to have Force level ships operate at 50 Mbps and Unit level ships at 25 Mbps.
• The ADNS router is a Cisco 3662 and operates at the secret level. Ships also contain separate LAN’s (Local Area Networks) that operate at multiple security levels which interface to the ADNS Router through an IP encrypter to the Secret LAN. The ADNS routing protocol is Open Shortest Path First (OSPF).

• The contractor shall provide:
  • Program Management/Administration
  • Information System Security Management
  • ADNS Production