Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems business unit plans to deliver by year’s end the 30th and 31st sets of the Mk 2 Ship Self-Defense System (SSDS Mk 2) for installation aboard LHA-7, the second ship in the Navy’s new America class, and the San Antonio–class amphib to be named the John P. Murtha (LPD-26). Both ships are in early planning stages.
The Mk 2 SSDS is fielded on board the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, all the San Antonios currently in service, and the two newest Wasp-class big-deck amphibs, the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7) and Makin Island (LHD-8), as well as the America (LHA-6), the first of the Tarawa-class replacements now under construction. The company also is working on fielding the system for the Navy’s newest carrier, the Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), under construction at Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding, as well as following Ford-class carriers.
The Mk 2 acts as the integrating element of the overall combat system, controlling shipboard weapons and sensors by means of a distributed-processing architecture linked by a high-speed network.
SSDS Mk 2 in its several variants is the Navy’s combat system for all surface ships except the Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke–class destroyers, which are equipped with the Aegis combat system. The variants control all self-defense weapons and sensors on board SSDS Mk2–equipped ships, which include the SPS-48, SPS-49, and SPS-73 air-search radars, and the Raytheon-built Phalanx close-in weapon system and rolling-airframe missile (both for terminal ship defense), and the NATO Sea Sparrow and evolved Sea Sparrow missile (ESSM), among other weapons and sensors.
Karl Bunker, Raytheon’s senior program manager for SSDS, said that the Mk 2 system was developed from the start exclusively with commercially developed computer hardware and software, aimed at eventual compliance with the Navy’s Open Architecture initiative, based on the Navy’s Open Architecture Computing Environment (OACE) standards for shipboard combat systems. The initial version, first fielded in 2003 on the carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), went through a technology refresh that added faster PowerPC processors with greater memory capacity and upgraded the network.
Bunker said that the company completed development of the OACE-compliant system in 2006, an upgrade that included new processors and a data distribution service standard architecture for message transport functions, and introduced a new and faster Gigabit Ethernet network architecture. The new baseline also incorporates software components of Raytheon’s Total Ship Computing Environment developed for the Zumwalt-class destroyers, two of which are now being built at Bath Iron Works.
The new OACE-compliant configuration started fielding this year on board the USS Nimitz (CVN-76), the first ship to get the upgrade, followed by the Reagan. The Navy will upgrade all other Mk 2-equipped ships to the new OACE baseline, including four ships still fitted with the original 2003-vintage system, which will complete the upgrade by 2014. The Navy also has decided to field the system on board the USS Wasp (LHD-1), which along with LHDs-2 through -6 is equipped with an older, non-OACE-compliant system, the advanced combat-direction system (Block 2). A plan to upgrade the other five LHDs also is being considered.
Bunker points out that 85 percent of SSDS Mk 2 software is common across all ship classes and computer hardware baselines. Newly developed SSDS Mk 2 software is delivered to a single-source library. Whenever a software change is required, either to add new capability or to correct a deficiency, the change is available to all Mk 2–equipped ships regardless of which system hardware baseline they use. As software-support agent, the Naval Surface Weapons Center at Dam Neck, Virginia, executes the ship-software builds for the system. The Navy plans to upgrade the software routinely on a two-year basis.
For example, the earlier SSDS Mk 2 variants did not provide capability to launch ESSM, because the system had not yet been fielded. When ESSM was deployed, the ships obtained the ESSM software from the single-source library.
The Mk 2 system also represents a significant enhancement to the SSDS Mk 1 combat system, now on board all Whidbey Island–class and Harper’s Ferry–class ships. The Navy plans eventually to upgrade those ships to the Mk 2 configuration.