Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) experts in the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Virginia, have awarded their third industry contract for a programme that seeks to develop technologies to help detect enemy submarines in shallow coastal waters and harbours without using traditional acoustic submarine-hunting technologies like sonar.
The DARPA Strategic Technology Office has awarded Cortana Corp. in Falls Church, Virginia, a $496,500 contract for the Shallow Water Agile Submarine Hunting (SWASH) programme, which seeks to develop small, lightweight, low power non-acoustic ASW surveillance and cued search capability for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).
For the SWASH research programme DARPA also awarded a $249,735.48 to SRC Inc. in North Syracuse, New York, last October, and a $367,507 contract last September to Applied Physical Sciences Corp. in Groton, Connecticut. Cued search capability refers to a way of looking for submerged submarines using data from separate or remote sensors.
The companies will try to develop advanced ASW surveillance capability, which does not use traditional acoustics or sonar, for UAS operating over shallow-water coastal areas and harbors.
DARPA scientists are asking experts from Cortana, SRC, and Applied Physical Sciences to concentrate small, lightweight, low power ASW sensing approaches for UAS.
Source: Military & Aerospace Electronics