• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

BAE SYSTEMS to evaluate improvements in Royal Navy high frequency communications

08 Oct 2001

BAE Systems has been awarded one of several Assessment Phase Study contracts to research and propose a compliant, "value-for-money" solution to the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence's SR(S)7397 naval High Frequency (HF) capability improvement requirement.

The programme will introduce modern HF techniques to meet NATO-mandated BRoadcast And Ship-to-Shore (BRASS) standards, significantly increasing data throughput capability.

Incorporating a robust HF waveform and error-free digital data transfer, SR(S)7397 will bring significant changes to the current HF capability by adding and improving functionality, system capacity, availability and overall reliability. This will all be achieved at a greatly reduced power output compared with current facilities. It will also allow the Royal Navy to remain interoperable with other NATO nations at HF and will introduce a high degree of automation.

Whilst SR(S)7397 will primarily be a ship-fitting programme to introduce greater HF functionality, shore facilities will also be investigated as part of this assessment phase. The submission of proposals, selection of a preferred bidder and contract award is due in the first half of 2002.
Background note

HF is the Royal Navy's primary Beyond-Line-of-Sight (BLOS) medium for passing command & control (C2) information to and from shore commands and vessels either not fitted with space-based communications or to vessels outside operational satellite footprint areas.

Currently, all Royal Navy surface and submarine platforms are fitted with HF transmitter/receiver systems to enable two-way data and voice communications. However, these systems tend to be manpower intensive, demanding highly skilled personnel to constantly manage links, and do not provide the necessary geographical coverage. Further, they do not support mandated NATO BRASS standards for interoperability and lack the throughput capacity to support the volume of data required for C2 in the progressively digitized battlespace.

The Communications & Defence Infrastructure (CDI) division of BAE Systems Avionics supplies tactical and strategic communications systems for all three domains, together with innovative information infrastructure and Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) systems, to support battlespace digitization. The division develops defence applications based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sub-systems and accepts development risk from customer organisations. CDI's approach features the creation of Integrated Project Teams (IPTs) with procurement specialists and user representatives, and the development of industrial alliances with other major industry centres of specialist expertise in associated fields.