Anti-Submarine Warfare: Now More Accurate

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Sonobuoys are air-launched expendable, electro-mechanical anti-submarine warfare (ASW) acoustic sensors designed to relay underwater sounds of ships and submarines. The devices enable Navy ASW forces to track potentially hostile submarines operating in the open ocean and in coastal areas that could be a threat. Information from these systems can help enable precision attacks with air-launched torpedoes.

US Navy ASW experts are replenishing their supplies of advanced multistatic air-launched sub-hunting sonobuoys that work together with other sonobuoys to detect, pinpoint, and track enemy submarines. ERAPSCO will supply the Navy with 20,000 AN/SSQ-125 multistatic sonobuoys for airborne ASW operations under a $71.3 million order.

Navy fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters can drop a pattern of sonobuoys, which relay information back to the aircraft by radio link, to determine the exact locations of enemy submarines, according to militaryaerospace.com.

The AN/SSQ-125 sonobuoy is a source in a multistatic field, can generate a variety of waveforms, and is designed to work with the AN/SSQ-53F, AN/SSQ-77C, and AN/SSQ-101 (ADAR) sonobuoys.

A multistatic sonar system contains several spatially diverse monostatic or bistatic sonar components with a shared area of coverage, and enables Navy ASW operators to use sensor fusion to combine the power of the separate sonobuoys.