SAN DIEGO, 4 May 2009. Lockheed Martin announced that General Dynamics, ViaSat Inc., Harris Corp., and American Systems will be a part of its industry team pursuing the competitive contract for the U.S. Navy's Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program.

The CANES program will consolidate and reduce the Navy's afloat information systems networks, reduce the infrastructure size and associated costs, and increase reliability and other capabilities to meet current and projected warfighter requirements. In late 2009, the Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence(C4I will award an initial system design and development contact to two companies for the common computing environment portion of the contract. A down-select to a single prime contractor responsible for system production is anticipated in 2011.

For the CANES program, the Lockheed Martin-led team plans to use a wide range of content from small business innovators to provide niche services and products to the Navy. The team will use Lockheed Martin's Technology Collaboration Center – West, located in Old Town San Diego, for integration and testing of the CANES systems. The center was specifically created to foster and encourage small business technology development, collaboration and interface with actual Navy systems, in a secure, unstructured test environment.

ViaSat Inc. brings expertise in information assurance to the Lockheed Martin CANES team. Harris brings their wireless communications experience through design and development of a highly reliable, low cost communications system.