Navy asks Lockheed Martin to upgrade sonar signal processing on submarine and fixed sites

John Keller, Military and Aerospace
19 January 2017

Sonar experts at Lockheed Martin Corp. will provide the U.S. Navy with advanced sonar systems and sonar signal processing for fixed-site and submarine-based anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and surveillance under terms of a $120.9 million order.
Officials of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington are asking the Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems segment in Manassas, Va., for work involving the Acoustics-Rapid COTS Insertion (A-RCI) technical insertion (TI) 16 program, as well as for the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS).
A-RCI TI 16 seeks to provide vast improvements in acoustic sensing aboard U.S. fast-attack, cruise-missile, and ballistic-missile submarines without changing the sonar transducer sensors through the rapid insertion of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)-based digital signal processing hardware and software.
By sharply upgrading ship sensor processing, A-RCI TI 16 will integrate improve submarine towed-array, hull-array and sphere-array sonar sensors arrays.
The IUSS, meanwhile, is a large-area ocean basin surveillance system to track surface ships and submarines over large swaths of the world's oceans. It provides the Navy with submarine detection, identification, and classification.
The IUSS consists of fixed fields of hydrophones and sonar sensors such as the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) and Fixed Distributed System (FDS); the Advanced Deployable System (ADS) relocatable sonar sensor field; the Surveillance Towed-Array Sensor System (SURTASS) aboard long-endurance surveillance ships; and the Surveillance Direction System (SDS) that provides command, control, communications, and data fusion to combine the capabilities of SOSUS, FDS, and SURTASS.
On this order Lockheed Martin will do the work in Manassas, Va., and Clearwater, Fla., and should be finished by December 2017.