The U.S. Navy is planning to award contracts as early as Feb. 19 to two companies to pursue the final phase of the billion-dollar competition to upgrade the computer networks on more than 200 ships, Navy spokesman Steve Davis said by e-mail.

The Navy has slowly added new sensors, computers and displays to its ships over the decades, creating an expensive-to-maintain rat’s nest of wires and communications networks. The goal of the Consolidated-Afloat Network and Enterprise Services (CANES) program is to reduce the number of onboard networks to about one or two per ship by replacing that old equipment.

During the next phase of the competition, the two winners will install their versions of CANES on some ships over the next 18 months. Based on the results of that work, Navy officials will select a single contractor to complete installation on more than 200 ships and some short sites.

The competitors are Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Rockwell Collins, Boeing and General Dynamics.