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Sea Talon Successfully Passes Testing Milestone

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS060715-02
Release Date: 7/15/2006 5:39:00 PM

From Program Executive Office Littoral and Mine Warfare Public Affairs

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The Navy’s Sea Talon Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) system successfully completed a series of testing milestones off the coast of Riviera Beach, Fla., in April.

The Sea Talon system is being developed for use in the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) mission module on the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

“This marks another key milestone in the life of this essential program, which will provide an important new off-board anti-submarine warfare capability in the littoral battle space while lowering risk to ships and Sailors,” said Capt. Walt Wright, program manager for the LCS Mission Modules Program Office.

Using two Remote Minehunting Vehicle (RMV) semi-submersibles developed under the AN/WLD-1 Program as the backbone, Sea Talon creates an unmanned, distributed, underwater sensor network that uses unmanned vehicles for sensor deployment and sensor data communications. For Sea Talon, the RMVs are being fitted with the Remote Towed Active Source (RTAS) and the Remote Towed Array (RTA). Once fitted with these sensors, Sea Talon provides a net-centric capability that rapidly detects, tracks, classifies and localizes quiet diesel submarines in littoral waters while conducting above-water persistent situational awareness. It allows the unmanned system to locate submarines and transmit real-time data to U.S. Navy ships.

Recent testing conducted offshore from Lockheed Martin’s Riviera Beach, Fla., facility verified two important parameters for the Sea Talon program. The test demonstrated that the RTA and RTAS could be towed at multiple depths, and that the RMV’s stability was not affected during the towing of the active source and passive source receiver at various speeds and depths.

Sea Talon involves no new major technology development, but leverages already developed technologies from the AN/WLD-1 Remote Minehunting System originally developed for the LCS mine warfare mission module and the AN/SQQ-89A(V)15 surface sonar program for the LCS ASW mission package. This allows for commonality, utility and efficiency across the LCS mission modules.

“Sea Talon successfully leverages several important Navy programs and technologies, including towed array development, use of common software baselines to achieve efficient use of computer programming resources, and unmanned vehicle and architecture from RMS,” said Wright.

Further testing of the Sea Talon system is scheduled for late 2006 at the Navy’s test facility at Senaca Lake, N.Y.