| Smaragdadler |
08-13-06 07:31 AM |
The source date for the quote on the last page is may 2006. Here is an longer article from 2003. That's all I know for now.
Quote:
INTERNATIONAL DEFENSE REVIEW - NOVEMBER 01, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Submarine missile development launched
German-based naval shipbuilder Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW), missile company Bodenseewerke Gerätetechnik (BGT) and Norway's Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace (KDA) are forming a joint company in November for the development of the IDAS (interactive defense for air-attacked submarines) submarine weapons system.
IDAS will be a fiber-optically-guided missile system for submerged submarines, designed to allow the submarine to engage airborne anti-submarine warfare (ASW) threats (primarily ASW helicopters). It will also provide a capability to carry out precision strikes against surface ships or coastal targets.
As such, IDAS will bring a "revolutionary change to anti-submarine warfare, while at the same time giving the submarine an escalation capability against surface and coastal targets," company officials claimed. "IDAS may extend the submarine's role significantly so that it becomes a precision asset in modern scenarios for asymmetrical warfare."
The three companies started work on Phase 1 of the IDAS experimental study in July. This phase is being fully funded by the German federal defense procurement agency (BWB) under a contract between BWB and HDW, said HDW's program manager Joachim Reuter.
Phase 2 of the study is to start in January 2004 and this will be funded jointly by the BWB, by the Norwegian Ministry of Defense and by the three companies involved. The study, involving a combined investment of EUR18 million (US$21m), is to be completed by December 2006. If full development starts without delay the IDAS system could be available by 2009, according to BGT's project manager Klaus-Eberhard Möller.
IDAS replaces an earlier effort by HDW to develop a self-defense missile system for submarines, known as Triton (see IDR 9/1999, p27). That program, carried out in partnership with EADS Lenkflugkörpersysteme (LFK) and based on the Polyphem fiber-optically-guided missile, was halted two years ago when LFK decided to end its involvement - "not for technical reasons, but as part of an effort to rationalize their project portfolio," officials said.
HDW said it subsequently approached BGT and that this has led to the launch of the IDAS project.
"When we were approached by HDW we realized that this missile would not be built in large numbers, so development cost would be a major design driver," Möller said. "There is no existing missile that can do this, so we must use as many existing components as possible to keep the cost low."
The resulting weapon will have a length of 2.45m, a diameter of 18cm and a weight of 118kg, including a 60kg rocket motor, a 13kg warhead section and a 13.5kg guidance section. Möller described the "technical range" as being more than 15km. The missile, featuring foldable strakes and fins, would be capable of 5g turns and would have a velocity of over 200m/s, he said.
Up to four IDAS missiles will be able to be carried in one IDAS launch container, which in turn can be fitted without major modification to any standard torpedo tube, HDW said. After launch, the missile unfolds its wings and rudder/fins, ignites its rocket motor, breaks the surface and continues towards the target, all the time under positive control from the submarine's combat information center.
The IDAS missile will employ the imaging infrared (IIR) seeker of BGT's IRIS-T short-range air-to-air missile, which BGT has developed in partnership with Norway and several other nations. The candidate warhead (shaped charge, 7kg explosive mass) would come from BGT's sister company Diehl Munitionsysteme (Reutenbach, Germany) and has already been developed for another type of missile, Möller said.
The electric fin actuator and control actuator systems will come from BGT's Armiger new-generation anti-radar missile.
The IIR seeker is "fully developed and qualified for IRIS-T," Möller said. He added that detection and tracking of helicopters has been proven in numerous flight tests, and that the seeker would be resistant against countermeasures. It would have a high detection range against low-signature targets, he said. IDR understands that when the missile vertically pops out of the water, it executes a quick 360º horizon scan for targets, making use of the seeker's capability to look at angles of more than 90º off-boresight.
"Usually the submarine launches an IDAS missile when a helicopter dipping sonar is activated in the water nearby. The missile is cued onto the bearing on which the dipping sonar helicopter will be. But in some scenarios, this helicopter is not actually the highest-priority threat. A second helicopter may be in the area which usually will be the weapons platform, ready to drop a lightweight torpedo on the submarine. If the IDAS missile sees another helicopter, it will attack this target. A second missile will have to be launched against the original target. The operator can manually override the missile's computer via the fiber-optic guidance link," Möller said.
Even if the helicopter does not deploy an active dipping sonar, it may still be detected by the submarine via the distinctive acoustic rotorblade signature that can be picked up by the boat's low-frequency towed array or flank array sonars.
The fiber-optic wire is paid out between the submarine and the missile via four bobbins: A-bobbin inside the missile, D-bobbin in the submarine, and B- and C-bobbin inside a so-called compensation buoy which is released by the missile at a water depth of approximately 10m. This buoy serves to compensate for waves and for drift, Möller said. Should the wire be cut regardless, the on-board guidance computer will continue the flight towards the target using the latest known information of its position, until the seeker achieves lock-on and the interception maneuver is initiated.
The IDAS missile's rocket motor features a three-stage burn sequence. This is achieved by successively filling the fuel section with three different types of solid propellant grain. The first stage (approximately 25%) is for the underwater trajectory. The second stage (also around 25%) is to accelerate the missile after breaching the sea surface. The third and final stage (approximately 50%) is to sustain the weapon through its flight against the target. The missile has four jet nozzles.
The IDAS development team is planning to conduct a series of test firings at the Elpersbüttel naval test station on Germany's North Sea coast, starting in early 2005. The station is operated by the BWB's WTD 71 test establishment. In a first phase, submerged IDAS missile firings will be tested, for which an IDAS launch container will be positioned on the seafloor. The second phase will involve the missile performing underwater maneuvering after being launched. In the third phase, the full operational sequence will be tested, including the transition from underwater to airborne flight, compensation buoy separation and fiber-optically-controlled flight. For the trials, a parachute recovery at the end of each flight is planned. Each phase will likely involve several missile launches, Reuter said. JJL
HDW and BGT do not expect to benefit from the submerged rocket motor firing tests that were done during the late 1990s by LFK and its rocket motor supplier (Bayern Chemie) under the previous Triton program. "IDAS will use a different motor, but we also want to prevent getting into any kind of legal trouble with LFK - after all, they terminated the project," IDR was told by company representatives.
HDW and BGT will have equal shares in the new IDAS GmbH company, while KDA is expected to be the minority partner. The exact division of ownership is still being negotiated.
HDW will be responsible for integrating IDAS into the submarine and will do the marketing. BGT will be doing the missile design including the fiber-optic system. KDA, as supplier of the MSI 90U submarine command and fire-control system in the German (and Italian) Type 212A submarines and Norwegian Ula-class submarines, will provide the IDAS weapon control. It is also planned that KDA may become a subcontractor to BGT for IDAS missile components.
http://p214.ezboard.com/ffighterplan...icID=403.topic
|
|
