Electronics manufacturing experts at Leonardo DRS Laurel Technologies in Johnstown, Pa., will build shock-resistant open-architecture computing systems for U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers under terms of an $8.6 million order.
Officials of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington are asking DRS Laurel to build 18 technical insertion (TI) 16 Common Processing System (CPS) water-cooled core computing system cabinets and six TI-16 CPS water-cooled advanced storage area network cabinets.
The CPS provides a common computing infrastructure for ship combat systems, including rugged computer processing, memory, data storage and extraction, and I/O interfaces for combat systems.
Other contract manufacturers for the Navy CPS include Global Technical Systems (GTS) in Virginia Beach, Va., as well as Northrop Grumman Corp., IBM Corp., and GoAhead Software, which has been acquired by Oracle Corp. in Redwood City, Calif.
CPS runs Navy combat system software applications in naval surface warship combat systems such as Aegis Modernization, Aegis new construction, Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP), and other Navy programs.
DRS engineers build the shipboard electronics CPS using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software such as BladeCenter technology that supplies common infrastructure for processing and network fabric.
The CPS consists of a rugged enclosure and three subsystems: the processing subsystem, the storage and extraction subsystem, and the I/O subsystem.
The processing subsystem provides the computing resources to execute combat system application programs on Navy surface ships. The storage and extraction subsystem provides data storage for CPS operating system (OS) image storage, program storage, data extraction, and database management. The I/O subsystem, meanwhile, interfaces the processing and storage hardware to various external elements.
Oracle provides for the Common Processing System open-standard middleware, designated SAFfire, for the CPS to support high-availability management of mission-critical combat system. SAF stands for Standards Availability Forum, an industry consortium of companies that develop open standards-based products. The overall CPS is designed with a shock-isolating enclosure that protects unhardened COTS components from the intense shock and vibration that can occur on Navy surface ships — including hits from missiles and torpedoes. The CPS comes in air- and water-cooled versions.
On this order DRS will do the work in Johnstown, Pa., and should be finished by December 2019. For more information contact DRS Laurel Technologies online at www.leonardodrs.com/locations/drs-laurel-technologies-johnstown-pa, or Naval Sea Systems Command at www.navsea.navy.mil.
