Strike Group Active Sonar Exploitation

AN/SQQ-89 surface combatant active sonar processing does not currently leverage off-board transmissions from other combatants in the strike group. Leveraging off-board sources using bistatic (or equivalently multistatic) sonar will improve AN/SQQ-89 strike group ASW capabilities in a number of tactically relevant scenarios, some of which are discussed in the Phase I report. A system using both bistatic and monostatic sonar has several advantages over a system using only monostatic sonar. It decreases time to detect, improves detection, increases detection ranges, increases holding times, and improves tracking performance. It also reduces environmental impact because multiple ships detect from one ships transmissions, thus reducing the required number of active transmissions for a particular ASW mission. Strike group robustness is increased because it is possible to respond to a transmitter failure by using another ships transmitter for continued target prosecution. This SBIR primarily leverages known AN/SQQ-89 active transmissions for enhanced ASW operation. Requirements and a concept of operation for AN/SQQ-89 bistatic processing are proposed for development. Example high-payoff bistatic detection scenarios are discussed and proposed for further development and performance evaluation. Additional acoustic processing functionality required for bistatic processing is proposed for coding and performance evaluation.