UK to decide on US Navy's CEC next year

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) will decide in 2010 whether to acquire the US Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) for integration into selected Royal Navy (RN) surface ships after concluding a third tranche of Assessment Phase (AP3) studies.

This comes five years after initial plans to integrate the UK CEC system into Type 23 frigates and Type 45 destroyers were brought to a sudden halt as a result of budget pressure.

A spokesperson for the MoD told Jane's: "The initial design review on [AP3] was successfully held in May 2009, with the final design review conducted in October 2009. The MoD team is now preparing for a main investment decision in 2010."

UK interest in co-operative engagement stems from a classified mid-1990s study activity that identified the US Navy's CEC system – a networked sensor data fusion system that builds a single track from radar plots supplied by multiple ships – as the leading technology in this environment that potentially could address shortfalls in ships' ability to detect, monitor and counter air threats, as well as reducing the widening gap in interoperability with the USN.