Lockheed Martin provides signal processing for global anti-submarine sonar

SAN DIEGO - U.S. Navy undersea surveillance experts are looking to Lockheed Martin to provide modern advanced digital signal processing (DSP) for a global sonar system designed to detect and track quiet nuclear- and diesel-powered submarines, and other underwater threats.

Officials of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in San Diego announced a $135.6 million five-year contract to Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems in Manassas, Va., for Integrated Common Processors (ICP) for worldwide anti-submarine warfare (ASW) sonar systems.

The ICP is a component of the Navy's Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS), which uses fixed, mobile, and deployable sonar acoustic arrays to provide the Navy's primary means of detecting quiet modern nuclear- and diesel-powered submarines and other underwater threats.

The Navy relies on the IUSS's shore-based monitoring stations for global enemy submarine detection since these stations are impervious to destruction, foul weather, and ambient self-generated noise.

The IUSS uses modern hydrophone and digital signal processing (DSP) technologies to augment the Navy's permanently installed Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), which since the early 1950s has provided submarine detection and tracking using long acoustic hydrophone sensors installed across the ocean bottom at key locations such as choke points between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom - collectively known as the GIUK Gap.

The IUSS uses fast processors, high-capacity data storage, and efficient application software to augment SOSUS in detecting and tracking today's modern quiet submarines and counter efforts to defeat SOSUS.

The IUSS uses subsystems such as the Fixed Surveillance System, Fixed Distributed System, and Advanced Deployable System to keep an ear for diesel and nuclear submarines regional and shallow waters of interest. The IUSS uses workstations, enhanced signal processing, and modern communications to monitor remote sonar arrays to reduce costs and improve efficiencies.

ICP is developing the capability to process and display data from all fixed and mobile underwater systems to take advantage of machine automation, array technology improvements, hardware insertions, and common software components of the submarine and surface undersea warfare systems.

Eventually the ICP program is intended to provide processing power to support the Navy's low-frequency active (LFA) ASW bi-static processing using the Lockheed Martin Twin-line 29A towed-array sonar for the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) submarine-hunting system.

To optimize sonar signal-processing power and keep costs as affordable as possible, the ICP is capitalizing on the Navy's Acoustics-Rapid COTS Insertion (A-RCI) program, which uses the latest commercially available computer server technologies for sonar signal processing aboard Navy submarines and surface vessels. Lockheed Martin is prime contractor for the A-RCI program.

The ICP will be part of all new system installations and will replace legacy systems as they reach end of life and require upgrading.

Since 2011, Lockheed Martin engineers have been developing automation algorithms and techniques for addressing multi-array high beam count requirements in the ICP program, and have continued with sonar signal processing upgrades in coordination with the submarine A-RCI program.

Lockheed Martin will do the work in Manassas, Va., and should be finished by December 2022.

For more information visit Lockheed Martin online at www.lockheedmartin.com/us/rms.html.