Stennis, SPAWAR Prepare for First Carrier Deployment with Next Generation CANES Network - USNI News: Navy communications at sea will take a big leap forward in capability and capacity later this year. The service’s next-generation IT infrastructure, which promises faster connections and greater cyber security protections, will be tested and deployed for the first time on an aircraft carrier, USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74).
Stennis is preparing for both a deployment in the fall and its five-year Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) examination in late July, and it will be the first aircraft carrier to do either with the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES).
Sailors aboard Stennis may notice faster and more reliable connections, but the real advantages of CANES are behind the scenes. It combines five legacy networks into a single environment that the Navy says is easier to defend from cyber attacks. It will eventually be put on surface combatants, amphibious ships and submarines, standardizing the computing environment across platforms to make upgrades easier and ownership costs lower.
The new IT backbone has been installed on 24 ships, with another eight in progress now, but Stennis – being the first aircraft carrier – was orders of magnitude more complex and challenging than the guided missile cruisers and destroyers that came before it, officials said.
