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Рубрики Современность; Флот; Версия для печати

А тем временем в замке у шефа...

Архисвежая (Date Posted: 16-Mar-2012) статья из "International Defence Review" о современном развитии противоминных систем в США.

Пардон, но переводить лень :-))


Dragging under: US addresses MCM


The US Navy's ambitious in-stride mine warfare effort has had a tricky start and encountered several serious obstacles. Geoff Fein explores how the service plans to chart its way back to clear waters


The US Navy's (USN's) approach to detecting, identifying and destroying sea mines is in transition, moving from the legacy Avenger-class mine-hunting ships to the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) class outfitted with a new Mine Countermeasure (MCM) Mission package that will introduce new and advanced manned and unmanned systems to clear waterways of explosive devices.
Because of LCS' ability to sail near shore, the ship armed with the MCM package will be able to detect, identify and neutralise mines near potential Marine Corps amphibious landing sites, harbour entryways and shipping lanes. Due to the design of the systems, sailors, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) personnel and marine mammal search assets will no longer have to venture into a mine zone.
Although newly packaged for LCS, many of the systems that will come packed into the MCM's International Shipping Organization (ISO) containers have been maintained within the USN for at least a decade, back when the navy referred to the concept as organic MCM. At the time, the systems were envisioned to be part of a carrier battle group, Captain John Ailes, programme manager Mission Module Integration, told IHS Jane's . At the same time the USN began looking at an idea for a small, fast, reconfigurable ship that could change capabilities when needed.
As the LCS concept began to take shape the navy designated surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and the MCM mission as the first of what could be many different capabilities for the vessel. The ships are designed with vast mission bays that will house the individual mission modules. The modules themselves plug directly into the ship's command-and-control system through the use of common interfaces and open standards. That open modular approach would be the 'glue' that would allow the navy to change the ISO containers depending on the mission.
The three various missions are on their own timetable for introduction into the fleet. Between the Freedom (LCS 1) and Independence (LCS 2) designs, each class has been assigned a specific mission in the early stages of the programme. To date, the MCM mission will get its start on the Austal USA built trimaran, Independence .
LCS, with its MCM capability, is designed to eventually replace the 14 Avenger-class mine hunting ships along with the MH-53 helicopter used to tow sonars and neutralisers.
Nowhere is the navy's shift in mine hunting operations more apparent than in the number of autonomous or semi-autonomous systems deployed with the mission package. During his tenure as Chief of Naval Operation (CNO), Admiral Gary Roughead challenged navy leadership to focus on developing and deploying these types of systems as soon as possible. Navy laboratories, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), universities and industry were all tasked with finding ways to find and destroy mines while keeping sailors and ships at a safe distance. The Naval Surface Warfare Center at Panama City, Florida has been the site for development and testing of the systems.
Some of the technologies are currently being tested from navy ships - including LCS - while others remain in the developmental or prototype stage. While some USN officials promote the successes of continued testing, there have also been failures.
Locating mines, particularly near shore, is extremely challenging. The vast amounts of clutter, including rubbish bins, cars, refrigerators and other junk can appear as mines on sonar, but also hide explosives.
To locate deep mines the USN has been developing the AN/AQS-20A (also known as Q-20) sonar. After a lengthy development period the system has recently concluded testing. Developed by Raytheon, the Q-20 is a high resolution, side-looking, multibeam sonar system towed by MH-60S helicopters. This rapidly-deployable system provides real-time sonar imagery to operators within the aircraft in order to locate, classify, mark and record mine-like objects as well as underwater terrain.
Towing the Q-20 by helicopter enables the aircraft to return quickly to the ship to arm up should it detect a mine. The Q-20 can also be towed by Lockheed Martin's Remote Multi Mission Vehicle (RMMV), a diesel powered semi-submersible with a snorkel. "The [Q-20] gives you a very precise position on the latitude and longitude of each mine it finds," Capt Ailes said.
RMMV provides sustained capability over periods of time, Capt Ailes noted. It can be preprogrammed to run a specific route while towing the Q-20 or can be made semi-autonomous, enabling an operator to drive it.
"We have been in testing at sea with the capability aboard LCS 2. It's the first time we have had both the MH-60Ss out and the RMMV with the actual crew operating from the MCM [detachment]", Capt Ailes said.

Remote success

Once the RMMV is coupled with the Q-20 it is given a new nomenclature: the Remote Minehunting System (RMS). RMS has not been without its issues. In December 2009, the USN notified Congress that the RMS programme had grown by more than 50 per cent beyond original estimates, triggering a Nunn-McCurdy breach. The legislation requires the US Department of Defense (DoD) to certify to Congress that a programme is vital to national security and there are no other ways to achieve the capability.
The breach occurred when the USN decided to drop RMS from the ASW package. The action cut the RMS quantities the navy had planned to procure, from 108 to 54. "It made the unit cost go up significantly," Steve Lose, programme manager for the Remote Minehunting System (PMS 403), said.
RMS went through the whole recertification process, which was completed on 1 June 2011, Lose told IHS Jane's . At that time Dr Ashton Carter, then the DoD's acquisition executive, signed an Acquisition Decision Memorandum (ADM) making it the only programme overseen by PMS 403, Lose noted.
As a result of the ADM, the Milestone C decision for RMS was rescinded and the programme was sent back to Milestone B to begin a three-phased reliability growth programme. The new schedule is intended to get the programme back to Milestone C in Fiscal Year 2014 (FY14). "That's kind of the objective, with the threshold being first quarter of FY15," Lose said.
The ADM lays out what steps have to be taken and when, for RMS to advance, Lose added. "There was a reliability growth curve generated so we have targets we have to hit for each of the three increments." The USN successfully completed the first phase of in-water testing in late 2011 and the system is now in development for the second phase. In-water testing for that will begin in mid-2012 and finish in early 2013, he added.
The reliability growth effort is attacking and proving the reliability of RMS through a dual-pronged approach, Lose noted. First is a test, analyse and fix approach where the USN is correcting known failure modes discovered during previous testing. In parallel to that the navy is also doing design for reliability reviews, he added. "We modelled a design review process after what the [now cancelled] ASDS [Advanced SEAL Delivery System] programme used where we are looking at critical systems".
The navy has a lot of data on what has failed on RMS, so the higher failure rate systems are undergoing two phases of critical system reviews, Lose explained. "We completed the first phase and have completed the second phase although we have to conduct the design review for the second phase. Through those two methods we are improving the mean time between operational mission failures of the vehicle."
The initial increments goal was to improve the mean time between operational mission failures from 45 to 59 hours. So far the USN has demonstrated 63 hours, Lose said. "Ultimately we need to achieve a minimum of 75 hours or more between failures."
With a fair amount of testing still ahead for RMS, it would appear the programme would fall short of its schedule for delivering RMS to the MCM mission package. Not so, said Lose. While PMS 403 will be buying vehicles two years later, under increment two, the gap will be made up by buying RMS in quantities to catch up, he noted.
Under the first low rate initial production (LRIP) contract, the navy had two Engineering Development Models (EDM) and eight LRIP systems. The two EDMs have been upgraded to production-like, giving the service 10 vehicles, Lose said. "At the end of reliability growth we will deliver 10 vehicles to support the initial five mission packages." As part of the Milestone C decision, the USN will buy 10 more LRIP units in FY15, FY16 and FY17. By FY18, the programme will have caught up, he added. RMS initial operational capability (IOC) is now set for FY15.

Developmental testing

The mission package Initial Operational Test and Evaluation will use the same vehicles Lose is using for reliability growth. "In fact we are out today doing LCS developmental testing, so I have two vehicles onboard LCS as we speak," he said. Those tests are being conducted on Independence .
LCS will have a crew of 45 officers and sailors. Under the USN plan, they will be responsible for everything but operating the various mission packages. Each mission package comes with its own detachment of upward of 15 personnel. But as the navy has had the opportunity to conduct live missions and do shipboard testing of the mission package systems, questions remain as to whether the detachment numbers are enough. During operational tests, the MCM mission package detachment said the number of personnel assigned to the mission felt about right, Capt Ailes noted.
"As we go forward we have to ask, do we want to add a couple of people or do you want to stick with what we have and what does that do to the metric - the Area Coverage Rate Sustained," he said.
Although the Area Coverage Rate Sustained metric has been used from an operational standpoint, it has never been used to form an acquisition decision, Capt Ailes noted.
From the fleet perspective the metric is used to determine how long it will take before a battle group commander can be told an area has been cleared of mines so that aircraft carriers can be sent through, Capt Ailes said. The challenge from an acquisition sense, he added, is "how do you know that the performance you see during developmental test and during operational test is the same you'll see [during a mission]".
Area Coverage Rate Sustained takes into account such things as how long it takes to move the sonar from where it is stored on LCS to installing it on the helicopter; how often the helicopter has a maintenance problem; and how long it takes to put the sonar into the water, Capt Ailes said.
"In terms of the manning, we are looking at the whole business case; where does it make sense to invest money to get the most in terms of Area Coverage Rate Sustained," Capt Ailes said. "For example, the way we refuel right now, we take the vehicle out of the water, put it on the ship and refuel it. That takes a lot of time."
Capt Ailes envisions taking the approach used by helicopter pilots to refuel at sea. "What we do for helicopters is something we call helicopter in-flight refuelling. You bring a helicopter in, it comes down, you attach [a fuel line] to it and it goes off to the side and fuels. We do that every day in the fleet. If we do that with helicopters, shouldn't we do that with our unmanned vehicles?" Refuelling alongside the ship, instead of bringing the unmanned craft on board, could save time, he noted.
One of the big risks that the navy tracked for a long time was how hard was it going to be to pick up the unmanned systems out of the water using the Twin Beam Extensible Crane and bring them onboard. "We now pretty routinely pick up the RMMV out of the water. We have done it on LCS 2," Capt Ailes said.
The navy also wondered what would happen when operators drove RMMV into the wake of LCS. Tests have been done using Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, but they are not equipped with the same waterjet propulsion as LCS. "What we discovered was that it is very manageable. We are interested in seeing what happens in a very heavy sea state."

Laser-based location

Among the newer technologies being demonstrated for the MCM mission are Northrop Grumman's Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS). The system is flown on the side of a MH-60S and uses a laser to spot mines.
ALMDS searches the top part of the water column, making it complementary to the Q-20. So between ALMDS looking above a certain depth and the Q-20 the navy will have captured the full water column, Capt Ailes said.
Historically what the navy has done is to use a mine sweep system to find and cut the mine loose and set it adrift, Capt Ailes said. EOD personnel would then be sent into the minefield to put explosive charges on the mine and blow it up. "Now you can find it with a laser."
ALMDS is currently entering an operational assessment. Because it relies on light to detect mines, the number one challenge is to upgrade the system to improve its ability to discriminate targets, Donna Carson-Jelley, programme manager Mine Warfare Programs (PMS 495), told IHS Jane's . "That's the biggest challenge, what we call faults detection, with the current technology. We have plans to fix [that] as we go forward."
The USN has been working on algorithms able to better characterise and distinguish between objects, she said. "But we can't incorporate that right now because we need a significant hardware change which gives us more bandwidth, capacity and computer power. If we try to do something like that right now we won't get to test and we won't be able to support the LCS test plan."
The USN does have funding for the modification programmed into the budget so the service will work to introduce the capability somewhere in the production line, Carson-Jelley said. ALMDS is in increment 1 of the MCM mission package, so it will go on LCS and achieve IOC in FY14.
Both ALMDS and the Q-20 have been undergoing testing at NSWC Panama City in the navy's high fidelity minefield. While simulated explosives are not live mines, Capt Ailes said the navy tries to make them as threat representative as possible.
Once a mine is detected by either ALMDS or the Q-20, it is up to the Airborne Mine Neutralization System (AMNS) to destroy it. AMNS was developed by BAE Systems UK - under the name Archerfish - and Raytheon designs the launch and handling system. Just like ALMDS, AMNS is also flown from an MH-60S. The system is currently in live fire demonstrations and has successfully blown up three inert mines. AMNS is currently being operated during the test phase, from an MH-60S by the USN, Capt Ailes noted.
"We have proven the feasibility of this capability; it does work at the end of the day. We are still in developmental testing so we have a couple of integration issues we are ironing out between LCS and the helicopter," Carson-Jelley said. "We are not too concerned about them. We will have to do a design change."
AMNS houses four neutralisers, unlike the legacy systems that tend to house only one, she added. "So when you go out on a mission you are leaving with four weapons [instead of] one and can get more accomplished. But with that said we have to meet certain shock requirements and things we are not currently meeting but we know how to fix it to get there. There is a plan in place to do that," Carson-Jelley said.

Clean sweep

The MCM mission package will also carry two systems for doing sweeps: the Organic Airborne and Surface Influence Sweep (OASIS), which is towed from an MH-60S and the Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) comprising the Mine Countermeasures Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MCM USV) and Unmanned Surface Sweep System (US3).
While the navy might be questioned as to the need for two sweep systems, "you need both because tactically one tool serves some scenarios better than the other," Carson-Jelley said.
OASIS was developed and built by ITT, but will not show up in the MCM mission package until increment 3, which means it will not be part of the upcoming ship test. "We are still pre Milestone C, so we are still in the engineering development and manufacturing area. The good news in this programme is that we have deployed on an MH-60."
There were concerns early on that the tow tension would be too hard, however during the airworthiness testing engineers incrementally increased the stress on the helicopter, she noted. "So far we have achieved every prediction as we have incrementally [increased the tension]. It is actually performing quite well in the airworthiness test. We are pleasantly surprised about that because there was so much anxiety over whether this thing was going to be able to be towed."
OASIS is just under 4 m and weighs less than 421 kg with a tow tension of 2,721 kg. Even with the concerns regarding the tow tension, Carson-Jelley believes, from a tactics perspective, OASIS is easier to tow than the Q-20 sonar. "That's because with [OASIS] you are just putting out a signal. You are just pulling it along. You are not pulling information back. It's just there to blow up whatever is in its path", she said.
The USN has been using live OASIS systems for the airworthiness tests, which causes a challenge for the programme, Carson-Jelley noted. "The number one risk in the programme is that I don't have a lot of them. Both the helicopter and system teams have done an excellent job of protecting the systems. I have three EDMs, one of which we are getting ready to use for environmental testing so we will lose it."
The EDMs will never transition into production units, she added, because they are running into obsolescence issues as well as wear and tear from constant use. With the current defence budget climate, the first time Carson-Jelley will see Other Procurement, Navy (OPN) funds to buy production units, is in FY13. "I am not even going to have enough training assets to qualify IOC." That could impact training for squadrons to operate OASIS, she added.

Surf zone COBRA

Another system in Carson-Jelley's portfolio is AN/DVS-1 Coastal Battlefield Reconnaissance and Analysis (COBRA), which deploys from the MQ-8B Fire Scout vertical take-off unmanned aerial vehicle (VTUAV). COBRA has the potential to detect and localise minefields and obstacles in the surf and beach zone. "We did a little bit of testing to see how the current system works. That first block is essentially done."
Arete Associates, which makes COBRA, is in the midst of an LRIP contract with the navy. Carson-Jelley noted the contract was converted to a 'small business innovative research phase III opportunity' because it got the USN the right price. The next focus for COBRA is to get it to block 2, which will add a laser capability, she added. Currently block 1 is focused on the beach zone. "I think from an LCS perspective, and adding value to the mine warfare mission, block 2 will serve that mission a little bit better."
The COBRA payload includes a highly stabilised step stare digital gimbal, high resolution multispectral imaging digital camera with spinning six-colour filter wheel, a processing unit, and a solid state Data Storage Unit, according to Arete Associates.
The navy has been running tests with two UISS prototypes in Panama City, Captain Duane Ashton, programme manager Unmanned Maritime Systems (PMS 406) told IHS Jane's . "We demonstrated the ability to take this semi autonomous system and the sweep system and be able to demonstrate we could do it."
UISS will provide "stand-off, long-endurance, semi-autonomous minesweeping capability to counter acoustic and/or magnetic influence mines in the littoral region", according to the USN. UISS will be deployed from a USV. "The acoustic signal is generated by an improved MK-104 and the prototype magnetic sweep system is powered by a commercial off-the-shelf generator," according to the USN.
A few years ago there were reliability issues with the surface sweep component, but in the last couple [of] months the navy has seen great success during full power demonstrations of the sweep capability, Capt Ailes added. "That is an increment 3 capability. We are on track. We demonstrated we can drive the unmanned surface vehicle [USV] around, we can tow the US3, the power supplies and the power and magnetic part."
The USN now intends to hold a competition for UISS. The winner will have to provide, as government furnished information, everything learned from development of the USV and US3, Capt Ailes noted. What components the winner chooses to use, such as the Mark 104 acoustic system currently towed by a MH-53, will be determined during the competition, he added. "Through some market surveillance [we found] there is a lot of potential out there. We will ask industry to come up with an optimised system that allows us to be able to do that sweeping mission."
The navy will also look to include some flexibility and modularity in UISS as well so that in the future it might be feasible to add a mine hunting capability to the system, Capt Ashton said. "We want that modularity as we go forward so we can do mine hunting and ideally single pass to detect and engage and include neutralisation. The UK and others are interested in the ability to take this [USV], to have a capability to not only do sweep, but mine hunting and neutralising."
The solicitation will be issued this year. UISS will then enter into production in FY14 and reach IOC in FY16. "We will start with the development of an engineering development manufacturing model this year and get through all of that testing and move forward," Capt Ashton said.
With the CNO and the US Secretary of the Navy calling for the development of a fleet of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) by 2020, ONR and US Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) have been working in parallel to develop new ideas. Leading the way is the Large Displacement UUV (LDUUV). Capt Ashton said USN is about to announce the guidance for an analysis of alternatives for LDUUV and proceed to a Milestone A decision. "We are in [the] process of getting that approved."
Besides LCS, a number of other programmes have expressed interest in LDUUV including the navy's Ohio-class guided-missile submarines (SSGN) and the Virginia-class submarines for block three and four with their Virginia payload interface, Capt Ashton noted. "Right now we are trying to be platform agnostic for LDUUV. What we are trying to do is make sure through open architecture and interfaces and standards that we have modularity there as well."

Improved endurance

LDUUV has been described as a truck, in reference to the concept that it will have a large open payload bay that could carry a number of different sensor systems and power systems to improve endurance.
Another ONR effort that will be transitioning to a user operational evaluation system is the Persistent Undersea Littoral System (PULS). Currently PULS is an ONR innovative naval prototype developed to meet an urgent fleet need, Capt Ashton noted. "It's another thing we are very much interested in and moving forward on as well. The user operation evaluation system is a unique tool set to get a technology to the fleet so we can get techniques, tactics and procedures and get [operators'] input."
The surface mine countermeasures (SMCM) UUV is a two-man system that has search and localisation capability. It is being developed for use in the shallow water region, Capt Ashton said. SMCM UUV uses a low frequency broadband (LFBB) technology developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory. According to the USN, LFBB has shown "excellent mine hunting performance with a low false alarm rate", in what have been historically difficult mine hunting environments. IOC will be in FY17 and that will be part of increment 4 of the MCM mission package in the future, Capt Ashton noted. "This technology will be able to detect, characterise and identify buried mines. It is a huge capability gap we are getting ready to go after."
But for all the testing and development successes of the MCM programme, there are still issues. In particular, the USN had to find a replacement for the Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System (RAMICS). The Northrop Grumman system was touted by the company and the navy as a 'leap-ahead' technology to provide a rapid response clearance capability against near-surface and surface (floating) moored mines. Just like ALMDS, RAMICS would fly on a MH-60S helicopter.
ALMDS would supply the location and classification of the mine and RAMICS, equipped with a gated electro-optic Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensor for target re-acquisition and a 30 mm Mk44 Bushmaster II gun for neutralisation, would fire an MK 258 Mod 1 armour-piercing round to destroy the mine.
This was a supercavitating round, the design of which reduced drag and improved underwater flight performance, according to Northrop Grumman. Supercavitation takes place when the tip of the high velocity RAMICS projectile vaporises the water, allowing the projectile to travel through the resulting gas pocket in the water column.
The accuracy of the system should reduce the number of rounds needed to neutralise a given target.
"Our System Design and Development [SDD] contract with NAVSEA to create a sensor pod, integrate it with the 30 mm Mk44 Bushmaster II cannon, and conduct tests is complete," Northrop Grumman spokesman Joe Fleming told IHS Jane's . "We understand the programme is not officially 'terminated'. What we do know today is that it is not currently funded."
ALMDS is 80 per cent common with the RAMICS pod technology, so there is an affordability benefit going forward for both capabilities if RAMICS were to be funded in the years ahead, Fleming added.
Early testing of RAMICS, however, did not go well, specifically with re-acquisition of the mine target, USN spokeswoman Lieutenant Courtney Hillson told IHS Jane's . "Because of the high cost it would take to improve the performance of RAMICS, the Navy decided to put the programme on hold."
While the navy is currently not exploring other uses for RAMICS, Lt Hillson noted the navy is evaluating AMNS as a potential replacement to RAMICS. "The Navy is evaluating the feasibility of modifications to AMNS to provide mine neutralisation capability of shallow and surface mines. Analysis is currently underway and will inform a programme decision in the next year".
Also in Caron-Jelley's portfolio is the software development for mine warfare, which includes the Mine Warfare Environmental Decision Aid Library (MEDAL), a product determined to be needed after the Gulf War, she noted.
MEDAL will assist sailors to do mine warfare planning. "Essentially it is a software product. You put a lot of information in before you do your mission and essentially at the end it produces a track plan for the operator for where to drive the equipment in the water."



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