SPAWAR posts RFI for Automated Digital Network System – Intelligence Community News

On September 11, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems command issued a request for information for an Automated Digital Network System (ADNS). Responses are due no later than 2:00 p.m. Pacific time on October 10.

The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in support of the Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (PEO C4I) and Space Systems, Program Manager, Warfare (PMW) 160 Tactical Networks, has released a Request for Information (RFI) for Automated Digital Network System (ADNS). PMW 160 seeks to identify current and emerging technologies and/or projections of technology-enabled concepts that could provide significant value to the ADNS program.

ADNS is the Navy’s Tactical Wide Area Network (WAN) solution, serving as the entryway into the Department of Defense Information Networks (DoDIN). ADNS builds on mature communications technologies to provide a secure, reliable, and tactical WAN that distributes IP traffic over multiple line-of-sight and satellite communications paths. ADNS offers dynamic, flexible bandwidth allocation and localized quality of service monitoring and control.

The following topic areas under this Requests for Information (RFI) are as follows:

1)  The Government is interested in decomposing the functions inherent within the current ADNS architecture to move away from a hardware-centric design while maintaining common and open interfaces between vendors who are developing products targeted for Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) communities.  PMW 160 is interested in gathering information from industry on how the Government can best leverage mature and available software technologies to support ADNS migration to a Software Defined Networking (SDN) design while maintaining open interfaces within the system to maximize interoperability and compatibility with vendor solutions.

2) The Government needs to employ a cost conscious and reasonable approach for license and maintenance support and is interested in gathering information from industry regarding upcoming license and maintenance structures that supports the long-term use of COTS products beyond their normal life cycle support including past end of life (EOL).  ADNS systems are often in operation at sea for significant lengths of time and must be maintained, at a minimum, with cybersecurity updates and mitigations.  Licensing and maintenance contracts are necessary to enable the support of the systems but are often cost prohibitive for the program under current licensing and support structures.

3) PMW 160 is interested in employing an automated configuration deployment strategy that quickly fields changes to network devices with minimal user interaction.  PMW 160 is interested in gathering information from industry regarding technology that will enable the ability to manage automated deployment in a Navy bandwidth constrained environment with the ability to support multiple vendor products, provide baseline verification, and roll back capability.