ASW targets that simulate the sounds and behavior of quiet enemy submarines to be built by Lockheed Martin
MARION, Mass., 7 April 2011.Underwater warfare experts at Lockheed Martin Sippican Inc. in Marion, Mass., are designing a next-generation anti-submarine warfare (ASW) training target to help U.S. Navy submarine-, surface ship-, and aircraft-based ASW forces train to detect, hunt, and destroy quiet enemy submarines. Lockheed Martin Sippican won a $5.4 million Navy contract to design and build MK 39 MK39 Expendable Mobile Anti-submarine Warfare Training Targets (EMATTs), an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) which help Navy ASW crews by simulating how quiet diesel submarines sound, move, and behave. EMATT simulates acoustic and non-acoustic submarine signatures. Navy aircraft and surface warship crews will use the second-generation EMATT to train in open-ocean, unrestricted, and on-range ASW training missions. The Navy can launch EMATT out of sonobuoy launchers on ASW helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, and from moving surface warships.
Control software for the Lockheed Martin Sippican EMATT runs on a Windows PC or laptop computer, and can program the target's course, depth, speed, time, and passive tonal changes. The software also can program the EMATT to maneuver automatically in response to active sonar pings.
Lockheed Martin also builds the Submarine Mobile Anti-submarine Warfare Training Target (SUBMATT), which launches from submarine torpedo tubes. Lockheed Martin also builds several recoverable ASW targets, including the Self-Propelled Acoustic Target (SPAT) and the MK 30 Mod 2, for high-fidelity training on and off of acoustic tracking ranges.
Lockheed Martin engineers are designing the latest version of EMATT to be more affordable than previous generations of ASW training targets. The latest version has programmable acoustics, better representation of hostile submarines than previous versions, and acoustic communications links that Navy forces can use in daytime, at night, and in rough seas, company officials say.
Lockheed Martin Sippican will do the work on the latest Navy contract at its 223,000-square-foot facility in Marion, Mass. Sippican designs and builds countermeasure systems, sea-air systems, and underwater vehicles.
For more information contact Lockheed Martin Sippican online at www.sippican.com.
John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
