System upgrade announced before baseline design set
The US Navy is seeking funds to launch a major mission system upgrade to its future submarine-hunting fleet of Boeing P-8A Poseidon multi-mission maritime aircraft, even though the baseline design for the modified 737 airliner will not be finalised until late June.
The navy plans to conduct a week-long critical design review on the P-8A from 11 June, to enable Boeing to freeze its design and start building the first test aircraft before year-end, says Chuck Dabundo, the company's deputy programme manager. A one-week rehearsal conducted in mid-May went smoothly, he adds.
Meanwhile, the USN's fiscal year 2008 budget request includes funds to launch the first of several planned upgrade "spirals" aimed at keeping the P-8A fleet current with emerging threats. The Spiral 1 upgrade request introduces new multi-static software algorithms to improve onboard processing capability for the acoustic sensors that will hunt for submarines from 2015, says Capt Mike Moran, the navy's P-8A integrated product team leader.
The goal of the development spirals will be to keep the P-8A focused on the submarine threat, rather than introducing capabilities in other mission areas, says Moran. The USN has no current interest in introducing new sensors for detecting targets on land or the water's surface, such as the Boeing-Raytheon littoral surveillance radar system. "It's hard to get away from the anti-submarine warfare area," he says.
The upgrade strategy emerged after the navy indefinitely deferred adopting so-called "Bellringer" algorithms in the baseline P-8A fleet. Moran says the software package used in other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance applications to provide operators with an automatic target recognition capability does not meet navy requirements.
The USN will, meanwhile, seek to relaunch a programme to replace its Lockheed EP-3E Aries II electronic surveillance aircraft in the FY2010 budget cycle. It had planned to join the US Army's Aerial Common Sensor programme, cancelled in January 2006, but the services will now pursue separate aircraft replacement programmes while talk remains of incorporating a common sensor. The USN has yet to state a preference for a turboprop or jet solution, but Boeing has previously proposed a signals intelligence version of the P-8A.
Source: Flight International
