Anti-Terrorism - Survivability and Denial

Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc. (SPA) proposes to investigate the feasibility of a low cost, ship-wide fiber optic sensor network to detect and control damage during unconventional and conventional attacks. U.S. Navy ships and personnel face increaseddangers at home port and abroad from unfriendly regional powers and sophisticated terrorist organizations. The chance of a near term future attack on U.S. Navy ships, like that on the USS Cole (DDG 67), appears highly likely given the increase in terroristactivity around the globe. An integrated and automated damage control sensor network will reduce the physical crew requirements for U.S. Navy ships and will increase the effectiveness of damage control efforts by providing accurate and real time damageinformation to damage control teams. SPA's Phase I effort will focus on designing and prototyping a fiber optic based sensor network that will detect structural damage, shipboard fires, compartmental flooding and door/latch closure using fiber Bragggrating (FBG) based sensors. SPA will conduct a sensor network design study for a CG or DDG class ship, which will be based on a proprietary large-scale optical wavelength division-multiplexing scheme. The design study will provide detailed systemarchitecture, system performance metrics, and total system life cycle costs. The proposed system will enable reduced manning on U.S. Navy ships, thereby reducing personnel casualties during an attack. Through reduced manning, the proposed system willreduce the O&S costs for the U.S. Navy while increasing the survivability and availability of U.S. Navy ships through automated damage monitoring. The proposed technology is applicable to the monitoring of commercial ships (bulk, freight, oil, etc.),large civil structures (buildings and bridges) and aerospace structures (aircraft and spacecraft).