By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor
The Navy has selected Lockheed Martin’s Missiles & Fire Control sector to demonstrate its concept for an aerial antisubmarine torpedo that can be launched from high altitudes and glide long distances to water entry.
The High-Altitude Antisubmarine Warfare Weapons Concept (HAAWC) program will include the demonstration launch of an Mk54 lightweight torpedo from approximately 20,000 feet. Current parachute-retarded torpedoes normally launch from altitudes of less than 500 feet.
Advantages of high-altitude launch from a maritime patrol aircraft are numerous. Torpedoes could be launched at standoff distance well outside the range of enemy air defenses, and the aircraft can attack more quickly by launching without having to descend. The accuracy of the drop also is improved by the Global Positioning System in the kit.
The torpedo will be fitted with the company’s Longshot wing adapter kit, a self-contained system that includes a flight computer, a global-positioning navigation system and a power source. Upon launch, the wings on the torpedo would deploy and provide lift to glide to the target. The wings would be jettisoned prior to water entry.
If produced, the glide torpedo would be deployed on the Navy’s P-3C and future P-8A maritime patrol aircraft.
Electric Boat to Develop Shaftless Sub Propulsion
The Electric Boat Co. — a unit of General Dynamics — has been selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to continue development of shaftless propulsion technology for submarines.
Electric Boat will develop concepts for submarine propulsion that will avoid the need for a propeller shaft that penetrates the submarine’s pressure hull, with all of the attendant hull integrity and safety considerations.
The $20 million, 18-month contract was issued under the Tango Bravo program, an omnibus program to examine technologies suitable for the stringent operating requirements for submarines while reducing acquisition and lifecycle maintenance costs.
Under Tango Bravo, Electric Boat also is developing externally mounted weapons for submarines and studying ways to reduce submarine infrastructure.
Defense Industry Notes
- Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $198 million Naval Sea Systems Command contract to build a second Freedom-class littoral combat ship (LCS). The ship will be the first LCS to be built at Lockheed Martin’s partner Bollinger Shipyards in Lockport, La., and is scheduled for delivery to the Navy in 2009. Bollinger built a stern module for the first LCS, Freedom, which is scheduled for launch this fall.
- General Atomics and its team — Boeing, L-3 Communications Pulse Sciences, SPARTA Composites and Jackson Engineering — have been awarded a $9.6 million, 30-month contract from the Office of Naval Research for the technology development and preliminary design of an electromagnetic rail launcher for the Navy’s Innovative Naval Prototype Rail Gun program. General Atomics will extend and mature the technology to provide fire support for Marines at ranges of 200-300 miles inland and at speeds up to seven times the speed of sound.
- BAE Systems has begun fabrication of the first F-35B short-takeoff-and-landing version of the Joint Strike Fighter. A partner of Lockheed Martin in the program, BAE Systems is building the aft fuselage of the F-35B at its facility in Samlesbury, U.K., and will deliver it to the Lockheed Martin facility in Fort Worth, Texas, by the end of 2006.
- Northrop Grumman has begun assembling the center and aft fuselages of the first production Boeing EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft at the company’s facility in El Segundo, Calif. In a related development, Boeing was scheduled to rollout the first development EA-18G Aug. 2 in St. Louis.
