Threat Spectrum Direction Finding Unit

Today there is a need to perform mission-adaptable, covert surveillance in various contested environments to localize vehicles and weapons fire (mortar and rifle). Tomorrow’s mission will be different depending upon the type of conflict and geographical location. Current sensor systems meet a narrow range of objectives and compromise personnel safety in order to hand-emplace the sensors. Other systems lack the sensor diversity necessary to reliably detect, locate, and classify possible threats in various deployment environments. Development of a covert, air-deployable sensor system capable of operating in diverse environments and designed for standard and evolving, interchangeable modular sensor units would significantly increase battle space awareness, yielding early detection of threats and reduced casualties. Expendable sonobuoys have proven to be extremely reliable technology. In times of conflict, e.g. Vietnam, sonobuoy technology has been successfully adapted to special land, river, and harbor surveillance operations. Furthermore, the Navy has laid the groundwork for the development of “stand-off” sonobuoy capability to provide safe deployment and monitoring of sensor fields. The effectiveness of land sensors derived from sonobuoy technology was verified during recent demonstrations when multiple sensors were successfully volcano launched and deployed for operation. The Threat Spectrum Direction Finding Unit program will continue to expand the sonobuoy philosophy of reliability in low-cost, expendable devices using families of modular sensor systems to mitigate the surveillance dilemma described above. The Phase II portion of the program continues the Phase I research and design efforts into subsysem and system development and demonstration tests.