Mil Tech — Detecting Enemy Periscopes
Nov 03 2008
Operations near the sea’s surface can be highly vulnerable times for a submarine. Nuclear submarines can stay submerged for long periods of time, but diesel-electric subs must rise to snorkel for air, and even air-independent propulsion subs are time-limited in undersea operations.
The U.S. Navy is taking advantage of those drawbacks by developing equipment to quickly and easily locate a submarine’s elusive periscope. The result is the MH-60R Advanced Radar Periscope Detection and Discrimination System (ARPDD).
Lockheed Martin Systems Integration in Owego, N.Y., has received a $114 million contract to design, develop, and test the system, which is expected to be completed in 2013. Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, Md is managing the contract.
George Barton, director of naval helicopter development programs for Lockheed Martin, says the new system is a significant leap in capability.
“The ARPDD in anti-submarine warfare mode allows operators to deal with an extremely tough problem when displaying a large number of tracks — the sea clutter, buoy pots in littoral warfare, small boats, large shipping — those contacts show up on radar and the operator has to pick out a periscope,” Barton says. “It’s work-intensive to fly out to the contacts and eyeball them.”
But ARPDD cuts through the clutter and allows the operator to “pick the needle out of the haystack and determine which one is the periscope,” Barton says. “It’s a huge capability for the helicopter and strike group where they can combine it with periscope detection on the current radar and add in the ability to discriminate among contacts to determine what it is from the aircraft without having to put an eyeball on it.”
Barton notes the operator has the ability to put the craft’s forward-looking infrared radar on the contact to get a visual or can order a flight out to the contact to actually eyeball it if necessary.
“Once you get detection on a potential periscope, you can go over there and dip to get contact,” Barton says. “That sub will not be able to get away from them.”
He adds the ARPDD will process the number of contacts 10 times faster than those able to be processed today because of massive computing power and increased rotational speed of the antenna.
About the author: Alan M. Petrillo is a Tucson, Ariz. freelance writer who works in a wide variety of fields, writing for national and regional magazines and newspapers. He’s also the author of the historical mystery, Full Moon (JoNa Books, 2005).
