An alliance of Navy, university, and industry laboratories is Laiming at a summer 2001 at-sea test for a reduced-manning, lightweight broad-band variable-depth sonar (LBVDS) for the DD-21 land attack destroyer.
As scheduled, it will be the first major fleet demonstration of undersea systems for the new vessel. Lessons learned from that outing, which will be conducted from a Navy research vessel, will be incorporated into a suite of integrated undersea warfare JUSW) systems that will go through at-sea testing on board a Spruance (DD-963)-class destroyer in mid-2002.
The "peer group" of undersea experts is managing multiple research efforts to develop and test next-generation undersea warfare systems in an IUSW-21 program sponsored by the DD-21 program executive office (PEO)—formerly called PEO DD-21 but now referred to as PEO (S)—the "S" indicating surface strike, a name change certain to cause confusion for a while.
PEO-Undersea Warfare (USW) manages the IUSW-21 programs and PEO(S) provides the funding for the work. The goal is to demonstrate antisubmarine warfare and mine-countermeasures technologies and systems that will reduce the numbers of sailors required to man the surface-ship undersea warfare suites, particularly on board DD-21.
Harold Herring, manager of the IUWS-21 effort in PEO USW, stresses that his team is not selecting technologies or systems. The distinctive DD-21 acquisition approach requires the competing teams—blue (Bath Iron Works and Lockheed Martin) and gold (Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding and Raytheon)—to propose systems that meet DD-21 performance requirements.
Front and center among those requirements is decreased manning. The DD-21 crew goal is 95. Herring points out that 20 sailors are required to man the ASW display consoles and carry out related ASW tasks for the currently fielded variant (version 6) of the SQQ-89 surface-ship sonar system. The newest SQQ-89 variant, which still is in development but has been upgraded considerably with commercially developed circuit boards and other commercially available components, still requires seven display consoles; the IUSW-21 effort hopes to slash this to one.
DD-21 officials point out that while the program is trying to cut manning, it also must find technologies that will be effective in the crowded acoustic environment of the littorals where the DD-21 will operate. Unlike the deep ocean, shallow coastal waters are filled with acoustic clutter caused by reverberations from the bottom, the shoreline, and surface traffic, that distort acoustic returns and impede sonar performance.
The peer group includes personnel from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and Naval Surface Warfare Center's (NSWC) Dahlgren Division. The NSWC's Coastal Systems Station in Panama City, Florida, is providing input on mine-warfare innovations. Research laboratories at the University of Washington and University of Texas are participating, along with the longtime Navy research and development resources at Pennsylvania State University's Applied Research Laboratory and Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab.
Lockheed Martin's Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems in Syracuse, New York, prime contractor for the SQQ-89, is under contract to develop new wet-end sonar and acoustic processing techniques for IUSW-21. The Portsmouth, Rhode Island, unit of Raytheon's Naval and Maritime Integrated Systems, longtime prime and systems integrator for submarine combat-control systems, is working for the IUSW-21 on the man-machine interface and data-fusion. Herring points out that both DD-21 teams—Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are on opposite teams—will be able to incorporate lessons learned from the IUSW work to focus their individual proposals more precisely.
PEO USW also has awarded 15 contracts in response to broad-area announcements for other undersea warfare technology development efforts, most of them aimed at data fusion, a key to reducing operator workload. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor on the lightweight, broad-band development, an effort that Herring points out actually predates the start of the IUWS-21 initiative. The Office of Naval Research, which originally funded the work, transferred management to the undersea warfare program executive.
The LVBDS effort aims to develop a broad-band acoustic source that transmits active energy; the system could be incorporated into a new active surface-ship hull array. For the 2001 demonstration, the source will be housed in a towed body. On the listening side, the demonstration will incorporate a passive multi-function towed array now being developed as a variant of a TB-29A towed array for nuclear-powered attack submarines and Trident nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Lockheed Martin NE&SS and L3 Communications Ocean Systems are teamed for the TB-29A development.
The full-up IUSW-21 at-sea demonstration in mid-2002 will integrate the data-fusion, man-machine interface, and sonar elements. Program officials note that the winning DD-21 design award is scheduled for April 2001, and that system development will be geared specifically to the approved ship design.