By Geoff Fein
The Navy last month took delivery of its first of five low-rate initial production (LRIP) airborne mine neutralization systems (AMNS) and Raytheon [RTN] will have the remaining four systems delivered to the service by December, according to a company official.
Along with its next-generation AMNS, Raytheon has also delivered its next-generation minehunting sonar, the AQS-20A, Joe Monti, deputy director undersea and mine warfare systems, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
The latest variant of the AQS-20 Raytheon delivered to the Navy is the -9 configuration, which has a significant amount of upgrades over the -8 system, he said.
The AN/AQS-20A uses a combination of forward looking side scan sonars and also has electro-optical identification (EOID), deployed from either a MH-60S or the remote minehunting systems (RMS), Capt. Paul Siegrist, program manager unmanned maritime vehicle systems (PMS-403), told Defense Daily in a separate interview.
“[It’s] more effectively able to go in and detect, localize, and identify the mine in a single evolution in order to keep the sailor and ship out at sea,” Siegrist said. “Using either the helicopter capability…or more importantly, from the unmanned vehicle perspective, using the RMS to get into that minefield and keep the ships and sailors out of it.”
Among the technology improvements Raytheon has made to the -9 are upgraded processors and processing capability, Monti said.
“We now have approximately 50 percent reserve processing power for some future upgrades for the AQS-20,” he added.
Raytheon also did a tech refresh on the EOID system, and added environmental data collection capability.
“We improved the wing design so now we have a single wing design,” Monti said. “The single wing design gives us the benefit of having commonality across multiple platforms. We can use the same tow body for the MH-60S, the remote minehunting system (RMS) and the MH-53E.”
The company also improved some corrosion protection, which will increase the amount of time between having to do major overhauls on the system, Monti noted.
Weight was reduced on both the AQS-20 and the tow body, and improvements were made to the power supply fault isolation, which is going to help with the mean time to repair, he added.
“Look at it overall, what the -9 is bringing. It is bringing not only system performance enhancements but also bringing enhancements to the operability of system, maintainability of the system and commonality across platforms,” Monti said. “The single wing design is a pretty big deal because now we can use a single tow body across multiple platforms. It will help with total ownership cost and supportability of the system.”
Some of the components that are in -9, compared to -8, actually weigh less, Monti said. And as Raytheon continues to deliver LRIP systems, they are looking at the long-term producability of the system and where they can combine components and shave down the weight in some of them.
Cutting weight from the system is important, Monti said, “because for any system that [is deployed from a helicopter, weight] is one of the key metrics. We are very, very conscience of that.”
With delivery of the AQS-20 under its belt, the next major milestone for Raytheon will be when the AQS-20 program goes through developmental test and operational test in July 2010, Monti said.
“So as we do the work-ups for the July ’10 event we are going to be learning more and more about this system, as will the fleet,” he said. “I think as we learn more we will be able to factor in some of those future enhancers that the fleet and Navy may want in the future.”
The AN/AQS-20A executes developmental testing in FY ’09, Siegrist said.
“[AN-AQS-20A] proceeds to operational testing in FY ’10. Fleet introduction of the system will occur after successful operational evaluation,” he added.
And Raytheon is working with the Navy on improving commonality between the two minehunting systems, AQS-20 and AMNS, Monti added.
“If you look at both AQS-20 and AMNS as two Navy AMCM (airborne mine countermeasures) programs, the Navy has done a great job in driving commonality across both of these programs and not just in the portion that Raytheon does,” he said.
One common component is the towed bodies for both AQS-20 and AMNS, Monti noted. “Both are extremely similar and in some cases using exactly the same technology. So we have commonality there, which helps save, in the long-term, the government money.”
Additionally, the Navy has made the tow cable and the carriage stream tow recovery systems (CSTRS) in the helicopter exactly the same for AMNS and AQS-20, he added.
“In partnering with them, Raytheon and the government team have done a very good job in driving commonality towards the goal of meeting the warfighter’s requirements and maximizing efficiency and effectiveness,” Monti said.
With AMNS, not only is the Navy getting its first-ever helicopter borne mine neutralization system but it’s the first time from a technology perspective that the service will be using real-time video and sonar, simultaneously, to positively identify the mine as a mine before it is destroyed, Monti explained.
Whereas AQS-20 searches and locates mines in an area, AMNS identifies the mine and once confirmed, destroys the mine, Monti said.
AQS-20 and AMNS, when paired together, offer the Navy an end-to-end capability for the water column where the targets are, Donna Carson-Jelley, Navy program manager mine warfare, told Defense Daily in a separate interview.
And the two systems fit nicely into the Navy’s concept of operations requirement to find mines before moving forward with neutralizing them, she added.
“This particular capability, with both systems, is targeted for a specific place in the water column, Carson-Jelley said. “We have other systems that target other areas within the water column.”
Adversaries could lay mines in very, very shallow water all the way out to deep waters, and those mines can range from buried explosives to ones that float on the surface, to some that sit on the bottom, waiting for a ship to sail by, Monti said. “It’s extremely difficult to come up with one tool to address all those various conditions.”
“However, having said that, Raytheon through its IRAD (internal research and development) program is looking at future mine neutralization technologies to be able to address the larger set of threats,” he added.
Reuse is something seriously looked at for the future, Carson-Jelley added.
“Our focus today is about sticking to the promise and getting this system that we are developing and buying today out to the warfighters,” she said. “That’s the best way for us to get good feedback so that we know what is the right answer, what should we go forward and reuse in a different application once we get that feedback.”
The Navy has done some degree of testing with AMNS, Carson-Jelley noted.
“The system is currently planned to be delivered to the fleet in fourth quarter of FY ’11. The next test event occurs in FY ’10,” she said. “Coordination is on-going to schedule aircraft testing starting in the second quarter FY ’10.”