The evolution of the U.S. Navy's ASW sonobuoy capabilities has been both impressive and daunting. Source sonobuoys ping faster and with a greater numbers of pings. Receiver sonobuoys use many more beams to listen for echoes or energy of interest. On-aircraft radios concurrently monitor significantly more sonobuoys over a larger field. And overlapping ping strategies ensonify the water from multiple directions and frequency bands simultaneously. Combined, these advances in technology, capability, and strategy deliver tremendous additional amounts of acoustic data. This can overwhelm the ASW operator with information, making it difficult to adequately review all the incoming data, and perform the ASW search mission, using traditional methods and approaches. In a world of emerging and renewed threats, increasing technologies, and shrinking budgets, new methods and tools must be developed to assist the warfighter more efficiently accomplish his task. One approach to reducing operator workload is to use Transmission Loss estimation to help discriminate clutter from possible target echoes. Unfortunately, empirically measuring Transmission Loss or even the environmental state is not feasible or reliable. However, the additional data provided by the developments in the Navys ASW sonobuoy technology and strategy afford opportunities to develop statistical models that adequately estimate Transmission Loss
Benefit: A number of benefits are anticipated from the work proposed in the Phase I SBIR. First, the Navy will have a functional, reliable, and easy-to-use tool suite and methodology to help the ASW operator quickly discriminate clutter from target or target-like echoes. Second, the tool suite will be robust and operational across a diverse range of mission environments and operating conditions. Third, the approach incorporates emerging technologies and strategies which the Navy wants to exploit. These benefits and this approach combine to reduce operator workload and increase operator efficiency. The primary beneficiary of the SBIR study and resulting technology is the Navys MAC and MAC-E programs. However, other Navy programs will benefit as well, as the approach and methods are applicable to a broad swath of applications including P-8A, SH-60, and surface ship platforms. Such mutual and cross-program improvements are critical to quickly responding to real-world threats, empowering the ASW operator, and maintaining costs and schedules.
Keywords: Airborne ASW, Airborne ASW, mission planning tools, ASW Operator Workload Reduction, transmission loss estimation, tactical decision aids
