IN BRIEF
4 OCTOBER 2017 MILITARY & AEROSPACE ELECTRONICS www.militaryaerospace.com
news
Raytheon to build
lightweight Griffin
missile for UAVs, surface
warships, and aircraft
U.S. Air Force airborne weapons
experts are asking the Raytheon
Co. to build a lightweight
missile and glide bomb that
features low collateral damage and is suitable for launch
from a variety of unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs), military manned aircraft, and surface warships. The Air Force
announced a $104.9 million
contract to the Raytheon Missile
Systems segment in Tucson,
Ariz., to build, test, and support
the AGM-176 Griffin missile.
Griffin is a lightweight, preci-sion-guided munition that can
launch from the ground, from
the air as a rocket-powered
missile, or drop from the air as
a guided bomb. It carries a relatively small, 13-pound warhead for low-collateral damage,
as well as for use in irregular
warfare. The munition comes
in two versions. Griffin A is an
unpowered precision munition
that can be dropped by aircraft from a rear cargo door or a
door-mounted launcher. Griffin
Block II B is a short-range missile that can be fired from UAVs
as well as manned helicopters,
attack aircraft, U.S. Air Force
AC-130W gunships, and U.S.
Marine Corps KC-130J tankers.
New era dawns in ASW as manned
and unmanned submarines
team for bistatic sonar
BY JOHN KELLER
NEWPORT, R.I. — U.S. military
researchers are asking two U.S.
defense contractors to develop
bistatic sonar for anti-submarine
warfare (ASW) that teams manned
and unmanned submarines and
capitalizes on the benefits of active
sonar without compromising the
stealth of U.S. attack submarines.
Officials of the U.S. Naval
Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC)
in Newport, R.I., have announced
a $4.6 million contract to the BAE
Systems Electronic Systems segment in Merrimack, N.H.; and a $4.7
million contract to Applied Physical
Sciences Corp. in Groton, Conn.,
for the Mobile Offboard Command
and Control and Approach
(MOCCA) program.
NUWC awarded the contracts
in February on behalf of the U.S.
Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) in
Arlington, Va. MOCCA seeks to
enable manned Navy submarines to
use active sonar pings from nearby
unmanned underwater vehicles
(UUVs) to detect and track enemy
submarines at long ranges with-
out giving away their presence to
potentially hostile vessels.
The project seeks to use UUVs
as pingers and manned fast attack
submarines as listeners to conceal the presence of the manned
attack sub. Using this technology,
the manned submarine could detect
and target enemy submarines based
on sonar returns from the UUV
active sonar pingers.
Traditional active sonar bounces
sound waves off submarines, surface warships, and other objects for
detection and tracking. The problem
with active sonar, however, is it’s
like shining a flashlight in a darkened room: It can find objects effectively, but gives away its presence
and forfeits any pretense of stealth.
Passive sonar, on the other hand,
simply listens for sounds from
enemy submarines or surface ships.
It’s not as effective or as efficient as
active sonar, but it preserves stealth
and can keep the submarine’s presence secret from the enemy.
Military researchers are developing
bistatic sonar with manned and
unmanned submarines to enhance
sub-hunting capabilities.