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30 octobre 2015 5 30 /10 /octobre /2015 08:40
Il-38N photo Alex Beltyukov

Il-38N photo Alex Beltyukov

 

October 24, 2015: Strategy Page

 

On its Pacific coast Russia is deploying, for the first time, its new IL-38N maritime patrol aircraft. These aircraft will operate from two bases. Since 2014 new crews have been training off the north coast (the Arctic Ocean) an area in western Russia that has climate and sea conditions most similar to the Pacific coast. The new crews need a lot of time in the air to get the most from the new and quite powerful electronic sensors the aircraft has. The Russian Navy has been receiving the IL-38N since 2011 but only at the rate of one every few months.

 

This was all part of a program to take elderly IL-38s and upgrade them to the IL-38N standard. This was all the navy could afford as a new maritime patrol aircraft would be too expensive. The Russian Navy only had about 18 IL-38s operational to begin with and that’s all that will be upgraded. The upgrade program is nearly complete. Now there are additional upgrades available for the IL-38N, mostly to the sensors and other electronics.

 

The IL-38N is a four engine aircraft roughly equivalent to the American P-3s. However the IL-38s have not had their sensors and communications equipment updated since the late 1980s. In addition only 59 were built in the first time, between 1967 and 1972. In addition to the 18 Russian IL-38s this upgrade was also been installed on five Indian IL-38s back in 2003. That was more of a chore than expected and it took until 2010 to get the upgrade working reliably. Getting the upgrade for more Russian aircraft was mainly a matter of finishing all the debugging and then getting the money. The Il-38N upgrade was first proposed in the 1980s, but the end of the Cold War and a shortage of money in the 1990s delayed work for decades.

 

The latest upgrades enable the aircraft to detect ships within 320 kilometers. There is also a new thermal (heat) sensor, more powerful computers, and increased capability in all sensors. In 2014 Russia used the new sensors in the IL-38N to map magnetism and gravity in the Arctic Ocean. Such data, when used to update Russian maps of the underwater “climate” make sonar (underwater radar using sound) and MAD (detecting submerged subs based on how these metallic objects disturb the magnetism in the water) more accurate. The frigid waters off Russia’s north coast have different properties (as far as submarine detection sensors go) than warmer water in the temperate or tropical areas. The water off the Pacific coast is also cold and the weather, in general, is probably the worst on the planet. Only the North Atlantic comes close.

 

Il-38Ns can detect surface vessels and aircraft and submarines up to 150 kilometers away using radar and over 300 kilometers away if the other aircraft or ships are broadcasting (radio or radar). Sensors carried include a synthetic aperture/inverse synthetic aperture radar (for night and fog operations), high-resolution FLIR (forward-looking infrared), LLTV (low light television) camera, ESM (electronic support measures) system, and a MAD (magnetic anomaly detector). The aircraft can carry anti-ship missiles, in addition to torpedoes, bombs, depth charges, and electronic decoys.

 

The Il-38N is a 63 ton, four engine turboprop aircraft with a crew of ten, endurance of about ten hours, and it can carry nine tons of weapons. The 63 ton American P-3 has very similar characteristics. Russia built 176 Il-38s while the U.S. built over 600 P-3s. Most IL-38s were built in the early 1960s and have long since worn out and been scrapped or lost to accidents. Meanwhile the Indians are replacing their Il-38s with the new American P-8, a twin engine jet based on the American B-737 transport. The P-8s are replacing all the American P-3s as well. This was the type of aircraft the Russians could not afford and apparently still cannot afford.

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9 avril 2014 3 09 /04 /avril /2014 07:20
Boeing to target current P-3 operators for MSA sales

 

 

Apr.8, 2014 by Jon Hemmerdinger - FG

 

Washington DC - Boeing’s maritime surveillance aircraft (MSA), which is based on a Bombardier Challenger 605 platform, will be an ideal aircraft for countries that already operate Lockheed P-3 Orions, the company says.

 

Speaking at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition near Washington DC, company officials add that potential customers will also be countries in the Asia-Pacific and Persian Gulf.

 

“Likely customers are going to be [countries] with a challenging maritime environment,” says Jeff Brown, Boeing’s director of business development for electronic and information solutions. He adds that the MSA will be an ideal platform for performing surveillance of economic maritime zones within roughly 170nm (320km) of coasts.

 

“A plane like the Challenger can get to station quickly and spend a longer amount of time there” than turboprop-driven alternatives like the P-3, says Brown.

 

He declines to name potential customers, but Flightglobal’s MiliCAS database shows that Persian Gulf and Asia-Pacific operators of the P-3 include Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. P-3 operators in other regions include Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal and Spain.

 

A prototype MSA achieved first flight on 28 February, following modifications to a Challenger 604 test asset performed by Toronto-based Field Aviation. The test aircraft was subsequently flown to a Boeing facility in Yuma, Arizona, where flight testing will continue, Field says.

 

Flight testing is scheduled to conclude by the end of 2014, with production to start in 2015, Field says.

 

Boeing says it has targeted 20 to 30 potential customers, and estimates the market value to be $10 billion over 10 years. The aircraft will be marketed to coast guards, militaries and other government operators, according to Field.

 

The base version of the MSA will be manned by two pilots and three system operators. It will be offered with a Selex ES Seaspray 7300 maritime surveillance radar and a FLIR Systems Star Safire 380 electro-optical/infrared sensor. Options will include two additional crew stations and equipment such as satellite communications and a side-looking airborne radar, says Field. Future aircraft could also be outfitted with weapons mounted on wing hardpoints, it adds.

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3 octobre 2012 3 03 /10 /octobre /2012 17:15

MK-54 torpedo-test-03-2012

 

October 2, 2012 By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. – aol.defense

 

The Navy's jet-powered P-8 Poseidon patrol plane boasts plenty of advances over the P-3 Orion turboprops it will replace, but for the sensor operators the favorite feature will be very basic: They won't throw up as much.
 

The P-3's notoriously rough ride at low altitudes and the gunpowder-like stench from the launch tube shooting sonar buoys out the back meant that, "typically, every mission or two you'd have somebody get sick [and] start throwing up into their air sickness bag," said Navy Captain Aaron Rondeau, a P-3 veteran who now runs the P-8 program. "We haven't seen that much with the P-8."


With its more modern and less rigid wing, "it's a much smoother ride than the P-3," Rondeau explained, and the buoys are now launched by compressed air, without the old system's stink. And that just means, he said, that "If your aircrews aren't sticking their heads in barf bags, they can do their missions better."

Not everyone really cares whether the operators barf in the back and believe in the P-8's higher-altitude approach. "I don't think it will work as well," noted naval expert Norman Polmar said bluntly. "It's rather controversial."

In particular, after some waffling back and forth, the Navy decided to leave off a sensor called the Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD), which can detect the metal hulls of submarines -- if the plane flies low enough. MAD was crucial to the P-3's traditional low-altitude tactics. Significantly, the P-8 variant that  Boeing is building for the Indian Navy will still have it; only the US Navy P-8 will not. Both Rondeau and Boeing argue that the P-8 can more than compensate with more sophisticated sensors and by using its superior computing power to interpret their data.

So with the P-8, the Navy is not just replacing a sixties-vintage propeller plane with a more modern jet, derived from the widely used Boeing 737. It's also betting on new technology to enable a high-altitude approach to both long-range reconnaissance and hunting hostile submarines.

Traditional "maritime patrol aircraft" like the P-3 spend part of their time at high altitude but regularly swoop down, sometimes as low as 200 feet above the waves, to drop sonar buoys, scan for subs with the magnetic anomaly detector, launch torpedoes, and simply eyeball unidentified vessels on the surface. But jets like the P-8 are significantly less fuel-efficient at low altitudes than turboprops like the P-3.

"There's a misconception," said Rondeau. "Some people think that that means P-8 can't do low-altitude anti-submarine warfare [ASW]. We can, and it's very effective down low, [but] we will eventually get to the point where we stay at higher altitudes."

For some of the new sub-hunting technologies, Rondeau argued, going higher actually gives you a better look. Today, for example, one key tool is a kind of air-dropped buoy that hits the water and then explodes, sending out a powerful pulse of sound that travels a long way through the water and reflects off the hulls of submarines, creating sonar signals that other, listening-device buoys then pick up. (The technical name is Improved Extended Echo Ranging, or IEER). Obviously, an explosive buoy can only be used once, and the sonar signal its detonation generates is not precisely calibrated. So the Navy is developing a new kind of buoy called MAC (Multistatic Active Coherent), which generates sound electronically, allowing it to emit multiple, precise pulses before its battery runs down.

"It will last longer and you're able to do more things with it," Rondeau said. And because a field of MAC buoys can cover a wider search area, he said, "we need to stay up high... to be able to receive data from all these buoys and control all these buoys at the same time."

An early version of MAC will go on P-3s next year and on P-8s in 2014, but only the P-8 will get the fully featured version, as part of a suite of upgrades scheduled for 2017. The Navy is deliberately going slow with the new technology. Early P-8s will feature systems already proven on the P-3 fleet and will then be upgraded incrementally. The P-8 airframe itself is simply a militarized Boeing 737, with a modified wing, fewer windows, a bomb-bay, weapons racks on the wings, and a beefed-up structure.

This low-risk approach earned rare words of praise from the Government Accountability Office, normally quick to criticize Pentagon programs for technological overreach. "The P-8A," GAO wrote, "entered production in August 2010 with mature technologies, a stable design, and proven production processes." (There have been issues with counterfeit parts from China, however).

"We had to have this airplane on time," Rondeau said: The P-3s were getting so old, and their hulls are so badly metal-fatigued, that they were all too often grounded for repairs.

So far, Boeing has delivered three P-8As to the training squadron in Jacksonville, Florida. They were preceeded by eight test aircraft, some of which have just returned from an anti-submarine exerise out of Guam. The first operational deployment will come in December 2013, to an unspecified location in the Western Pacific. There the Navy will get to test its new sub-seeking techniques against the growing and increasingly effective Chinese underwater force.

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