By Geoff Fein
The Navy is developing a number of new radar and sensor systems that will expand the capabilities of future surface combatants such as DDG-1000, as well as studying ways to leverage aviation sensor technology for shipboard use, a Navy official said.
The Navy has been developing S- and X-band radar for Raytheon‘s [RTN] Cobra Judy. Cobra Judy was originally developed in part to gather data on United States missile efforts and missile defense testing. Another mission of Cobra Judy has been to verify arms control treaties. The shipboard radar can be deployed anywhere on the globe.
Pairing S- and X-band radar enables the volume search that S-band brings, as well as the discrimination X-band brings, Anne Sandel, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for Integrated Warfare Systems (DASN IWS), told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“That’s why you see the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) spend that much on the X-band investment for ground-based and sea-based radar. Because when you are looking at a ballistic missile defense (BMD) environment, X is what you want because it gives you that discrimination–being able to determine if it is a decoy or something you should be concerned about coming from the exo-atmosphere,” she said. “S gives you that bigger volume, enabling yourself to do the anti-air warfare mission, or potentially a ground-based mission like you are seeing in the Marine Corps.”
The two sensors are a tremendous asset for Cobra Judy for BMD, and when they are linked in DDG-1000 or possibly in CG(X), the two sensors will provide multi mission capability, Sandel added. “You haven’t [limited] yourself by the sensor design to just do one thing well. You can do many things well because you have the radar resources to apply against it.”
Among the benefits of having X-band onboard DDG-1000, for example, is the ability, in a littoral combat environment, to distinguish atmospheric interference, or clutter, from an incoming land-based artillery shot or a ballistic missile, Sandel said. “They will have that ability to discriminate.”
“That sensor enables you to look at your environment in a way that you haven’t had the ability to do,” she said.
While the emphasis currently within the Navy is on developing S- and X-band radar, Sandel noted there is great interest, a lot of attention and investment, study and analysis, looking to leverage the aviation sensor technology and apply it onto ships.
“You have to imagine a ship designer would be just thrilled to be able to give them an array face that is going to be half the space and weight requirement that we currently [have],” Sandel said. “The marriage of that AESA technology and the capabilities that those aviation radars bring to bear for other applications are tremendous.”
Raytheon makes the AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar.
Additionally, investments in the Marine Corps’ Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar as well as the Dual Band Radar are going to bring to bear an incredibly affordable solution in the near term for CG(X), the Navy’s proposed next generation cruiser, because of what has been done for the past five to 10 years in other areas, Sandel added.
“The Dual Band Radar suite for DDG-1000 was a significant game changer for us in the way we developed and designed radars,” she explained. “That enabled us to move out, I believe, in an extremely technically savvy way for Cobra Judy. That, plus your AESA capabilities, are going to bring to bear potential solutions for CG(X) that will help us move into 2025 and the threat environment in a way that we didn’t envision 10 years ago.”
Currently, the Navy is modifying its current fleet of cruisers. Sandel said that while Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] Spy radar is a very capable and powerful system, the Navy is running up against trying to increase the system’s computational power. That effort is bringing in additional processing that wasn’t available when the ships were originally deployed, she said.
The cruiser modification effort includes moving toward open architecture systems so that the hardware and software are separated. That will enable upgrades to software and hardware to occur without having to upgrade everything at once, Sandel said. “We are also bringing on additional processing capability to be able to take on additional missions.”
The Navy also has an Electronic Warfare (EW) road map under development to begin looking at where EW will be in the coming decades, Sandel said.
“The resource requirements community and the fleet have come to us and to the acquisition side and said there is a need to refresh and understand and develop EW…what is your road map and where will you be in 2025? And that is currently under development,” Sandel said.