By JON P. WALMAN
Jon P. Walman is a
former U.S. Navy surface warfare and antisubmarine warfare officer. He currently works as
a defense contractor for the Techmatics Division of Anteon Corporation in
Arlington, Va.
"Damn
the torpedos, full speed ahead!"
The courageous words
uttered by Admiral David Farragut during the battle for Mobile Bay capture the challenge
the U.S. Navy faces in designing and developing its next-generation surface combatants to
operate in contested waters despite the threat of mines, diesel-electric submarines, and
other coastal defenses.
The Navy's Land-Attack
Destroyer, DD-21, is the first class in a planned "family" of 21st-century
surface combatants. Acting independently or as an integral part of a naval, joint, or
combined task force, DD-21 will carry out land-attack and maritime-dominance (sea-control)
missions while operating primarily in littoral regions. A fundamental requirement for
achieving maritime dominance--be it near shore or in the open ocean--involves controlling
what is under the sea. The Navy plans to meet the complex undersea-warfare challenges of
the 21st-century in large part through the advanced technology being developed for DD-21's
Integrated Undersea Warfare (IUSW-21) program, which is focused on controlling the
undersea battlespace, particularly in the littorals.
Littoral
Threats And Environmental Challenges
Diesel-electric
submarines, and sea mines of all types, are the two most prevalent of today's undersea
threats--and perhaps the most difficult to counter--according to Paul Stevens, IUSW-21
technology manager.
"Modern diesel
submarines, such as the Russian-built Kilo class and the German-built Type 209 and 212
classes, use advanced battery designs and air-independent propulsion, enabling them to
operate with low radiated noise and relatively high submerged endurance," he said.
"These factors, coupled with their low active acoustic target strength and low
doppler [i.e., opening or closing rates], make them very difficult to detect.
"On the other hand,
detecting mines, especially bottom and buried mines, is challenging because of their small
size, odd shapes, and construction of special materials and coatings."
DD-21 will be the first
U.S. Navy surface combatant specifically designed to operate against undersea threats in
the complex and dynamic littoral environment. Among the principal factors limiting
littoral USW (undersea warfare) threat detection are the shallow water depth, variations
in water temperature, the ambient noise created by shipping and biologics, acoustic
reverberations, debris or "clutter" on the ocean bottom (which causes a high
rate of "false" contacts), and the inherently irregular contours of the bottom
itself.
DD-21
Acquisition Plan
Under the current phase
of DD-21 acquisition, two competing industry teams are developing total ship system
concepts without predetermined subsystem boundaries or constraints. This acquisition
strategy empowers industry to make "trade space" decisions that optimize cost
and performance at the ship level.
The Navy plans to
evaluate industry proposals in fiscal year 2001 and select the total ship system
solution that best satisfies DD-21 operational requirements--within established cost
and performance criteria. Prior to selecting the winning industry team, the Navy will
continue to develop advanced technologies that support its notional IUSW-21 concept; the
winning contractor will be free to use any of the technologies developed during this phase
of the program.
Industry decisions
related to the development of proposed USW system concepts are guided principally by the
need to meet DD-21 total ownership cost goals and the following top-level DD-21 program
objectives:
- A procurement cost of $750
million (in FY 1996 dollars) for the fifth ship built at each of the participating
shipyards;
- Operating and support
costs of $2,700 per hour underway (this is 70 percent less than the hourly underway cost
to run an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer); and
- A manning level of 95
people, including helicopter detachment.
In addition, the Navy
said, DD-21 must meet the following USW-related operational requirements:
- Submarine
detection/engagement;
- Torpedo defense;
- On-board (in-stride) mine
detection/avoidance;
- Off-board mine
reconnaissance;
- Survivability;
- Signature reduction;
- Aviation mission support;
and
- Interoperability with
off-board USW sensors, models, and databases.
Major
Technical And Operational Challenges
One of industry's most
important technical challenges is to engineer USW functionality into the DD-21 total ship
system architecture, according to Stevens.
"The USW system must
be fully integrated into the ship's combat system to support DD-21 performance, manning,
and overall life-cycle cost objectives. The scope of this integration includes operators,
maintainers, hardware, software, and connectivity with other theater assets," he
said.
Stevens sees potential
for reducing USW manning by developing technology for broadband signal processing, data
fusion, environmental adaptation, and the automated detection-classification-localization
of undersea threats.
"We must clearly
reduce the number of people dedicated to USW operations aboard DD-21," he said. He
noted, by way of comparison, that 20 sonar technicians (in a crew of 300 personnel) are
required to operate and maintain the AN/SQQ-89(V)6 USW system installed in an Arleigh
Burke-class DDG.
IUSW-21
and Ancillary Systems
The IUSW-21 program is a
risk-reduction effort to develop and demonstrate advanced technologies for potential
transfer to DD-21 industry design teams. The goal of this DD-21 "associated
system" is to minimize the risks involved in meeting DD-21 USW requirements. However,
the competing "Blue and Gold" teams are ultimately responsible "for
developing DD-21 USW system concepts," said Stevens.
According to Stevens, the
current focus of IUSW-21 investments are intended to:
- Improve USW performance
in shallow water by demonstrating a lightweight variable-depth transmitter and
broadband signal processing;
- Reduce USW manning
by developing technology for broadband signal processing, automated
detection-classification-localization, data fusion, and environmental adaptation;
- Provide in-stride mine
detection and avoidance capabilities through the use of organic (on-board) sensors;
and
- Develop concepts to
minimize impact on the DD-21 preliminary hull design by studies focused on, for
example, variable-depth sonar, multiple towed bodies, and conformal-array technology.
While these technology
investments are being pursued by a variety of organizations funded by the DD-21 Program
Office (PMS 500), the overall IUSW-21 program is being managed by an IUSW-21 "peer
group."
"We recognize that
... [the nation's] undersea warfare expertise is broadly dispersed across academia, Navy
and university laboratories, small businesses, and industry," Stevens explained. The
peer group, he said, represents all of these sectors, and provides the means of focusing
the collective expertise in a synergistic way. "Our peer group structure," he
said, "enhances our technology development process by making the latest information
available to the entire USW community in a timely way, eliminating barriers between
organizations, considering technical issues from different viewpoints, and providing the
best ideas and solutions from across the community."
Network-Centric
USW And Combined Arms
DD-21 will incorporate
the basic tenets of the Navy's Network Centric Warfare vision. Technological advances in
collecting, processing, and networking information among disparate sensors and
"shooters" (i.e., weapon systems) promise broad war-fighting improvements at the
tactical, operational, and strategic levels of warfare.
The Network Centric
Warfare concept is based on the principle that information superiority--resulting
primarily from the creation, accumulation, and control of battlespace
information--translates directly into combat power. This particular form of power is
expressed in speed of command, accuracy of information, and adaptability to changing
operational and environmental conditions. In short, the goal of Network Centric Warfare is
to mass "effects," rather than platforms.
A network-centric USW
vision is outlined in the Navy's 1998 ASW Focus Statement: "With declining defense
budgets, a combined-arms approach that integrates our ASW systems and sensors into a
network-centric architecture is imperative. Equally important is the reliance we will
place on working with our allies in refining a combined operational approach to ASW."
On its Far-Term (ASW)
Action list, the Navy plans to implement Network Centric Warfare by, among other things:
- The development of
networked search techniques that integrate acoustic as well as nonacoustic systems and
sensors;
- The adaptation of
operators, sensors, and weapons to the local acoustic environment in real time;
- Linking sensors and
shooters into a common, combined-arms network;
- Sharing a common and
coherent tactical picture, including environmental factors, with other fleet and force
assets; and
- Building future platforms
with rapid sensor-upgrade capabilities--achieved in large part through the use of
industry-standard packaging and common architectures.
The achievement of
environmental adaptivity serves as one example of how DD-21 may apply the Network Centric
Warfare concept to undersea operations. To a certain extent, DD-21 will be expected to
automatically recommend and adapt the combat system configuration that most effectively
and expeditiously optimizes its performance in a specific environment. This adaptivity
will address changes to sensor configuration and placement, processing, the display of
information, and the employment of tactics.
At the operational level,
the Navy and its sister services are working to develop and implement cooperative USW
tactics, techniques, and procedures through a "combined arms" approach aimed at
sharing data and information more effectively among the sensors and weapon systems
deployed to any given theater. This same integrated team approach is also being
increasingly applied in the policy directives and operational practices of Navy-Marine
Corps-Joint mine warfare forces.
In summary, the challenge
of controlling the littoral undersea battlespace is critical to naval, joint, and combined
warfighting effectiveness. Clearly the U.S. Navy must modernize its undersea warfare
capabilities in order to adapt to complex littoral environments and to keep pace with the
rapid advances in and proliferation of submarine, torpedo, and mine threats throughout the
world. Incorporating IUSW-21 advanced technologies and applying new operational concepts,
like that envisioned by Network Centric Warfare, will help meet the operational
requirements not only of the Navy's next-generation surface combatant, DD-21, but also of
other future ship types and classes. |
