Combating the Evolving Threats of Tomorrow
By Lieutenant Eric Zilberman, U.S. Navy
The addition of the infrared search-and-track (IRST) pod to the Super Hornet is an initiative to create a modular, cost-effective upgrade to the existing fleet of Super Hornets. IRST significantly increases air-to-air lethality while assuring interoperability with existing systems. Historically, IRST systems have been used on naval assets dating back as far as the 1960s on aircraft such as the F-4 Phantom. Most recently, the venerable F-14 Tomcat incorporated an IRST pod in its mission-systems suite and proved its utility and applicability during countless hours of maintaining air dominance against fourth-generation threats employing electronic-attack. This cutting-edge technology has allowed the United States to maintain air-to-air superiority throughout decades of conflict. Today many threat nations also incorporate IRST systems in their fighter aircraft. To maintain our airborne tactical advantage and outpace future threats, we must continually upgrade our Fleet aircraft with the best possible systems.
IRST Technology and Integration
The F/A-18E/F IRST system will be adapted to fit in a pod similar to the aircraft’s existing external fuel tank, which will be mounted on the Super Hornet’s centerline station. Externally, the structure retains the general shape of a traditional fuel tank up to the nose, where the infrared sensor replaces the pointed nose of the tank. Internally, the structure can be divided into two portions. The aft portion will serve as a traditional fuel tank. The forward portion, also known as the sensor assembly, will house the IRST system’s infrared receiver, inertial measurement unit, system processor, and environmental-control unit. The introduction of a pod that serves as both a sensor and external fuel tank is the first of its kind, and its benefits are twofold. Aircraft such as the Tomcat that have previously been upgraded with an IRST pod have undergone lengthy and costly structural changes to their frame outer moldline. Incorporating an electronic sensor with a fuel tank would allow for the rapid and fiscally restrained development of this capability.
Before the IRST can be operationally deployed, it must pass a series of developmental engineering tests that are currently being completed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River and Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. Developmental tests include a series of aeromechanical, carrier suitability, and mission systems testing.
The aeromechanical integration of the pod includes four engineering competencies: ground qualifying tests, propulsion, noise and vibration, and flight loads. Ground-qualifying tests consist of multiple analyses, generally done before flight, which help assess the pod’s structural design when exposed to various environmental conditions and to the transient shock loads associated with carrier operations (catapults and arrestments). Propulsion tests ensure that the pod’s seeker head and cooling scoop (located on the forward portion of the pod) do not adversely distort airflow in and around the engine and affect stall susceptibility.
Meanwhile, noise and vibration testing requires the aircraft to be flown at the edges of its envelope to measure acoustic and vibration effects to assess IRST performance, component functionality, and structural life. Flight-loads testing is also required; high-fidelity instrumentation is mounted throughout the pod and airframe to measure the strains at the points that attach the pod to the aircraft. Once these tests are complete, a pod with unprecedented capability will be a step closer to its Fleet introduction. These aeromechanical tests will ensure that the Super Hornet can fly with the IRST pod at the edges of its envelope while maintaining the capability to catapult and land aboard the carrier with any fuel state.
Carrier-suitability testing takes ground loads testing a step further and exposes the pod to actual catapults and arrestments in a series of tests known as “shake, rattle, and roll.” These are performed at a unique test site at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, which houses a catapult and arresting gear identical to what is seen on Nimitz-class carriers. Here, standard and off-nominal catapults and arrestments are completed to ensure that the pod can handle the stresses associated with the carrier environment and survive the extreme stresses associated with off-axis catapult shots, high sink-rate landings, and in-flight engagements.
Mission-systems testing ensures that when the pod is flown on a Super Hornet and integrated with other airwing assets, it is a force multiplier and complies with Naval Integrated Fire Control–Counter Air directives to improve situational awareness and cooperative targeting. The sensor operates passively, can locate and track air-to-air contacts, and provides azimuth and range information to the Super Hornet’s mission computers. This complements the other on board air-to-air sensors and the system’s overall capability of providing aircrew and other air wing assets with precise targeting information. Notably, in a denied radio frequency environment, the IRST is independently capable of generating weapons-quality targeting information to assure aircrew success in the most tumultuous conflicts. Development of the IRST pod complies with Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert’s tenets of being ready to fight anywhere and is a game-changing capability.
Future Capabilities
The incorporation of this system with the advanced capabilities of the Super Hornet is an innovative idea. It is the first pod of its kind to combine an external fuel tank and electronic sensor in one pod. This will undoubtedly increase the aircraft’s lethality. As the system continues to mature, it is important to continually refine its capabilities to keep in line with our goal of providing the warfighter with the best tools.
Other future capabilities could be:
- Including air-to-ground capability. While the IRST is formidably known for its capability in the air-to-air environment, there is potential to use it against surface targets. This will broaden and maximize the pod’s potential and the Super Hornet’s lethality.
- Continuing to incorporate new sensors with fuel tanks. A precedent has been set, and it is possible to incorporate an electronic sensor with a fuel tank. An external fuel tank capable of housing a jamming pod should be the next sensor/fuel-tank combination introduced to the Fleet.
Only the beginning stages of the IRST’s developmental testing and aeromechanical integration have been completed at Patuxent River. Other tests, such as a mission systems evaluation and operational testing still must be performed. We must continue to upgrade components on the F/A-18 E/F to meet tomorrow’s threat and ensure carrier assets maintain control of the skies. The IRST system is a critical incremental upgrade to the Super Hornet, and it can’t be the last. The Department of Defense must continue to fund projects such as IRST to ensure the maintenance of our technological warfighting advantages.
Why the Pod?
By Jacob Gunnarson
In the late 1970s, Soviet attack submarines began appearing with large, teardrop-shaped pods on the top of their rudders. The pod was substantial—over 25 feet long and 7 feet in diameter, roughly the size of a Volkswagen minibus.1 Western analysts came up with various theories as to what it contained. Some said it was a countermeasure dispenser, while others claimed it was a silent drive, which was the inspiration for the “caterpillar drive” in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. However, the prevailing theory, which would prove to be correct, was that the pod stored a towed sonar array.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the release of considerable information about its submarine force, documents and photos have confirmed that this pod contained a towed sonar array, a linear chain of hydrophones strung out on a very long cable. Thus, “What is in the pod?” has been answered, but why it exists in the first place has yet to be explained.
Solving the Mystery
During the Cold War, intense speculation abounded regarding the pod because it seemed very unorthodox. Placing a heavy and potentially “draggy” object atop the rudder did not seem like a good solution for storing a towed array, especially given the American solution. U.S. Navy submarines have the winch for the array either inside the pressure hull or in the forward ballast tanks, with the array being fed through a tube over the single-hull portion of the boat to one of the stern planes from which it streamed. This design creates little drag.
Why would the Soviets use the pod? The double-hulled construction of their submarines creates a large space between the hulls in which to store equipment. It would be easier to install a towed-array system on a double-hull Soviet submarine than a single-hull American submarine. In fact, the Soviets had towed-array setups broadly similar to those on American submarines on their Oscar II and Delta IV classes that were being built at the same time as the nuclear-attack submarines (SSNs) that had the pod.
Several classes of nuclear submarines carried the pod: the Victor III, Sierra I and II, Akula I and II, and a Yankee ballistic-missile submarine converted to serve as a test bed for new sonars. All of these boats except the Yankee have a structural feature in common. Almost all Soviet and Russian submarines are completely double-hulled. However, the Victor, Sierra, and Akula SSNs have a small section of pressure hull that becomes the outer hull near the leading edge of the rudder. This prevents the towed array from being stored in the space between the hulls; it would have to penetrate the pressure hull twice. This configuration started with the Victor I and Alfa SSN designs in the late 1960s. When the decision was made to fit a towed-sonar array on the latest variant of the class, the Victor III, the pod was the only practical solution.
Although it seems like the pod would cause a substantial amount of drag, there are indications that it actually has a minimal impact on the total drag of the submarine. The pod is mounted directly aft of the sail, likely taking advantage of the disturbed water behind the sail to reduce drag—similar to how racing cars draft behind each other to cut through the air more easily. This is supported by the fact that the pod is scaled to the size of the sail. For example, the Victor III has a fairly small sail and hence a smaller pod. The Sierra and Akula have large sails, so they have larger pods. Fitting a larger pod to a Victor III could cause it to interact with the undisturbed water flowing past it, which would create drag.
Also, there may be a packaging advantage in locating the entire array in one place. The array and cable can be replaced easily dockside, as many photos seem to indicate. There are photos of a Sierra II with its pod removed during overhaul, which suggests that the pod and its array could easily be worked on without invasive hull work. In the case of the Akula and Sierra, the designers could have just extended the fairing on the leading edge of the rudder to bridge over the single-hulled section, but they stuck with the pod for nearly a decade, implying that there is an actual benefit to having the pod, rather than it just being an ad hoc solution for a strangely designed hull. Both the Akula and Sierra were upgraded several times with evolved variants, which would have been perfect opportunities for the designers to find a better solution to the pod, but it remained unchanged throughout the evolution of the two classes.
Replacing the Pod
However, the designers eventually did get rid of the pod. In 1990 and 1991, two SSNs were laid down that had no pod, just a tube atop the rudder.2 The K-335 Gepard was the sole Akula III, distinguished from the Akula II by the absence of a floating communications buoy and towed-array pod; the addition of life-raft dispensers and more quieting measures; and a taller, thinner, and longer sail containing the towed-array winch. The Project 945AB Mars SSN was the final variant of the Sierra class and likely would have been called the Sierra III by NATO. Although this attack submarine, known only by her factory number of 305, was nearly finished, she was cut up for scrap on the building ways in 1993.3 Both of these submarines had the exact same modifications to their sterns. The fairings on their rudders were extended to span over the single-hull section so that the winch for the towed array could be stored elsewhere in the boat.
There are two possible reasons for this change. The first is that it was a design improvement. The pod may have been just a temporary design until a more elegant and low-drag solution appeared. However, as discussed above, the pod seemed to have been working well and probably did not cause much drag. If the replacement of the pod with a tube and a modified rudder was a better solution to towed-array storage than the pod, why wasn’t it implemented earlier? The inventive engineers at the Soviet design bureaus were certainly intelligent and creative enough to have realized this solution while the pod was still only on paper.
There is a second and more speculative hypothesis that fits the evidence better. Project 945AB and the Gepard were designed by different design bureaus—Lazurit and Malakhit, respectively—that operated largely independent of one another. These two submarines were laid down within a year-and-a-half of each other. This, along with the arrangement of the towed array inside the hull, could reflect a change in the array itself.
There are two basic types of towed sonar arrays: thin and thick. Thin arrays can be wound around a winch with their cable, while thick arrays need to be kept relatively straight because they are less flexible. On the Virginia class and other modern American submarines, which carry both types, the thin array and its cable are stored in the aft ballast tanks while the thick array is stored in a long, straight blister along the outer hull, and its cable is located in the bow. The pod must contain a thin towed array because it has to be wound around a winch. A setup similar to the one used for Project 945AB and the Gepard would allow for a long, relatively straight path from the winch to the rudder instead of being constrained by the tight confines of the pod. The Soviets could have developed a thick towed array that was superior to the thin one stored in the pod, which would have forced them to abandon the pod for the setup in Project 945AB and the Gepard. Thick towed arrays have the advantage of generating less self-noise per unit length, which means they can be used effectively at higher speeds and also possibly represented less of a processing challenge for the relatively primitive sonar systems aboard Russian submarines.4 While hypothetical, this conjecture is more compelling and more consistent with Soviet submarine design practices. The pod—like the massive Soviet submarine force—is one of the more interesting aspects of undersea warfare in the 20th century.
1. Norman Polmar and K. J. Moore, Cold War Submarines: The Design and Construction of U.S. and Soviet Submarines (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2004), 160.
2. Yuri V. Apalkov, Submarines of the Soviet Fleet 1945–1991, Volume III (Moscow: Morkniga, 2012), 79, 260.
3. Ibid., 79
4. Norman Friedman, U.S. Submarines Since 1945: An Illustrated Design History (Naval Institute Press: Annapolis, 1994), 68.
Can Honor be Remediated?
By Captain Rick Rubel, U.S. Navy (Retired)
A goal of every institution and organization should be to create an ethical climate of integrity. Individuals should not only uphold their organization’s core values, but also rise above the minimum moral expectations of not lying and cheating. They should strive to improve their own morals and character to the level where they do the right action when no one is watching. While this might sound trite, this standard is the goal of developing individual integrity—when someone does the right thing without the promise of reward or the threat of punishment.
As an alternative to separation, the U.S. Naval Academy offers a moral remediation program for students who have committed honor infractions such as lying, cheating, or stealing. It involves a process of intense counseling with a senior staff or faculty member. Students engage in assignments and conversations to help them understand the wrongness of their actions, examine their morals and character, and “map” their own character using a tool called a character map.
The Naval Academy has been charged from its inception to develop midshipmen “morally, mentally, and physically.” Honor offenses are taken very seriously at the Naval Academy because of the corrosive effect service members’ lying, cheating, or stealing could have on the effectiveness of the U.S. military. While there was once a time when a midshipman caught in an honor offense was summarily dismissed from the Academy, recent years have seen the development of the remediation program designed to give midshipmen a chance to reform.
A Climate of Integrity
The honor concept at the Naval Academy is a simple ideal: “Midshipmen are persons of integrity: We stand for that which is right.” Midshipmen learn this mantra the day they arrive. But we must recognize that we admit high school graduates from all congressional districts of the country and from various backgrounds, including different levels of moral development. We must realize that memorizing a paragraph is not the same as internalizing a set of moral principles. Not every midshipman enters the Naval Academy with a strong sense of right and wrong. Some students who enter did not receive strong (or consistent) moral guidance from their parents or communities or were not held accountable for improper behavior in the past. Clearly, memorizing a mantra or attending a training lecture cannot simply create a climate of integrity at the Naval Academy; it will also take some remediation to correct a deficit in moral development.
Creating such a climate and culture is not easy. We cannot “inoculate” students against immoral behavior. It’s an iterative process that requires three steps: compliance, deterrence, and development.
- Compliance. A culture of integrity starts with an understanding of the rules. Of course, we call this training, and the explanation of the rules must be clear and repeated as often as necessary to ensure everyone understands the regulations and boundary conditions.
- Deterrence. To change immoral behavior, there must be known, consistent, and clear punishments for wrongdoing. The punishments should be fair and sometimes harsh. For deterrence to be effective, the rest of an organization should understand the offense and see the punishment associated with it. At the Naval Academy, we write anonymous cases (called “XYZ”) so students can learn from others’ mistakes.
- Development. Individuals can develop their own morals and character, but this must be voluntary and consensual. We cannot make someone a more moral person if they don’t want to do so. We can train and punish them (both externals), but we cannot fundamentally affect their moral development (an internal) unless they are personally committed. Voluntary moral development can be accomplished by encouraging a student’s self-assessment and self-understanding, improving his/her moral awareness, challenging and refining his/her moral reasoning, and mapping his/her character to allow the midshipman to see which aspects of his/her character caused him/her to do the wrong action.
Moral Remediation
The Naval Academy’s moral remediation program helps with the development process. Its goals are to help students understand the wrongness of their actions, assess the moral reasoning they used in making that poor choice, and to improve their morals and character so they can avoid making bad decisions in the future. To these ends, a student is assigned to a senior mentor (staff or faculty member) for an intense series of weekly counseling sessions that usually last between four and six months. (Some students are separated for their first offense depending on the seniority of their class and the degree of egregiousness and premeditation of the offense.)
The overall construct of this program is guided by the questions: Who? Why? How?
Who am I? What is my moral code? What motivates me? In the initial phase, we try to get the midshipmen to understand who they are. “Who developed your morals and character?” “How did your family influence your upbringing?” “Who else influenced you?” “Who are your role models?” “What is your motivation to be here?” “Why should I spend the time to remediate you?” “Where were the shortfalls in your moral development?”
Why did I commit this offense against the honor concept? In this phase, we focus on why the student committed the honor offense. We start with the facts of the offense. We then add the contributing and causal factors. The important analysis of this offense centers on the moment of the bad decision. At some point in his decision-action process, the student made a decision to lie or cheat. We need to reconstruct and dissect this moment and ask, “What was going on in your head, morals, character, and reasoning at that moment?”
Then follow the two most important questions in this process:
- At the moment you decided to do this, did you know it was wrong? Most will say they “knew it was wrong, but . . .” The “but” is the beginning of their rationalization. Our job as mentors is to try to remove their excuses and get them to take full responsibility for their actions.
- If you knew this was wrong, why did you do it? To help a student answer this difficult question, the mentor will explore it in more detail by asking, “What was the moral reasoning process that you used?” As many young people reason, most will eventually figure out that they used some sort of consequential “cost-benefit” approach. “Where was your moral conscience?” “What part of your character might have allowed you to do this?” This inquiry often becomes the most important part of remediation.
How do I correct the specific aspects of my character that caused me to commit this offense? To answer this, students develop a character improvement plan that explains what they will do to develop and improve those identified traits. Character determines how we draw on our virtues to shape our decisions and actions. A person can be predisposed to act in a variety of situations; one may be inclined to over-react, under-react, or react somewhere between the extremes. Students undergoing moral remediation can then “diagnose” their own character using the character map. The map is a matrix of two-dozen dispositions, arranged with several columns that correspond to degrees of excess or deficiency, noting, for example, if they have a deficiency or excess that might cause them to do the wrong thing.
Using the virtue of courage, for example: If one has too much of it, he or she may act recklessly. If one has too little of it, he or she may act cowardly. A person who acts somewhere in between may act courageously. A person with excessive pride may be arrogant. A person with deficiency of perseverance may be a quitter. Our dispositions greatly influence our actions. We know we become courageous by doing courageous things. We become honest by doing honest things, and so on. Unfortunately, we also know we can become dishonest by doing dishonest things. These excess or deficient virtues of character (vices) can cause us to make bad decisions.
I have conducted 39 remediations in 15 years, and I have had some remarkable successes and some dismal failures. (Students who “fail” remediation are dismissed from the Academy). The evidence from my files provides a clear answer of why some succeed and some fail. The determination of success can be seen on a scale of “contrition.” Students will usually succeed in remediation if they are sincerely contrite, take full responsibility for their actions, and want to improve. However, there is little chance that remediation will succeed if they fail to take responsibility or if they even deny any wrongdoing. Remediation, like all aspects of moral development, must be voluntary.