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The Navy just awarded Lockheed Martin a $141 million contract to develop a helicopter-borne radar that can automatically detect submarine periscopes. The Advanced Radar Periscope Detection and Discrimination System (ARPDDS) project is due to be completed in 2013, and will lead to the modification of the Telephonics APS-147 radar carried by the Sikorsky MH-60R (Romeo) shipboard anti-submarine helicopter. (Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the Romeo, but much of the work on this program will be carried out by Telephonics.) A Telephonics engineer remarked at the US Navy League show in Washington in March that the company had "all our genuises" working on ARPDDS. It is a capability that the Navy has been pursuing for at least 15 years, so far without final success. Some of the back-story can be found in this paper. Until recently, the Navy was trying to implement ARPDDS on its maritime patrol aircraft - issuing a contract to Raytheon in 2005 - but has now shifted its efforts to the helicopter radar. It's a challenging job. Submarine masts are small targets in the first place, designed and treated to reduce their radar signature, and have to be detected among a welter of sea clutter. Stealth design is evident in this photo of a Kollmorgen mast:  Moreover, masts are fleeting targets: with electro-optical sensors rather than direct optics, the mast pops up long enough to sweep the horizon once and then submerges again. The goal of ARPDDS is to detect and discriminate: that is, reliably find the periscope with a small false alarm rate. ARPDDS on the MH-60R is seen as an important tool to protect Navy ships against diesel-electric submarines, which are hard to spot by other means. "In one of the Unitas exercises [involving the USN and South American navies] a Colombian diesel-electric popped up in the middle of the battle group every day," one observer comments. (This may reflect a 2003 Navy story describing how P-3Cs and helicopters were tasked to catch the Colombian sub Tayrona - with results that the Navy called "very interesting.") Telephonics engineers say that mechanically scanned radars like the APS-147 are actually better platforms for ARPDDS than active electronically scanned array (AESA), because they have weaker sidelobes and are less sensitive to clutter Posted by Bill Sweetman at 6/30/2008 6:45 AM CDT |
The Navy just awarded Lockheed Martin a $141 million contract to develop a helicopter-borne radar that can automatically detect submarine periscopes. The Advanced Radar Periscope Detection and Discrimination System (ARPDDS) project is due to be completed in 2013, and will lead to the modification of the Telephonics APS-147 radar carried by the Sikorsky MH-60R (Romeo) shipboard anti-submarine helicopter. (Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the Romeo, but much of the work on this program will be carried out by Telephonics.)
A Telephonics engineer remarked at the US Navy League show in Washington in March that the company had "all our genuises" working on ARPDDS. It is a capability that the Navy has been pursuing for at least 15 years, so far without final success. Some of the back-story can be found in this paper. Until recently, the Navy was trying to implement ARPDDS on its maritime patrol aircraft - issuing a contract to Raytheon in 2005 - but has now shifted its efforts to the helicopter radar.
It's a challenging job. Submarine masts are small targets in the first place, designed and treated to reduce their radar signature, and have to be detected among a welter of sea clutter. Stealth design is evident in this photo of a Kollmorgen mast:
Moreover, masts are fleeting targets: with electro-optical sensors rather than direct optics, the mast pops up long enough to sweep the horizon once and then submerges again. The goal of ARPDDS is to detect and discriminate: that is, reliably find the periscope with a small false alarm rate.
ARPDDS on the MH-60R is seen as an important tool to protect Navy ships against diesel-electric submarines, which are hard to spot by other means. "In one of the Unitas exercises [involving the USN and South American navies] a Colombian diesel-electric popped up in the middle of the battle group every day," one observer comments. (This may reflect a 2003 Navy story describing how P-3Cs and helicopters were tasked to catch the Colombian sub Tayrona - with results that the Navy called "very interesting.")
Telephonics engineers say that mechanically scanned radars like the APS-147 are actually better platforms for ARPDDS than active electronically scanned array (AESA), because they have weaker sidelobes and are less sensitive to clutter
