Saab to demonstrate acoustic target for U.S. Navy

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Saab has announced that it will demonstrate its anti-submarine warfare (ASW) training system, the AUV62-AT (acoustic target), for the U.S. Navy this summer.

The AUV62-AT, an artificial acoustic system that mimics a submarine, will be evaluated by the Navy against Naval systems through the Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) Program. The AUV62-AT will be operated by Navy personnel, with Saab engineers there to support it if there is any maintenance required.

“With submarine usage on the rise, anti-submarine warfare training is more crucial than ever,” says Görgen Johansson, senior vice president and head of Saab´s Business Area Dynamics.

“Some of today’s submarines are armed with heavyweight torpedoes that can destroy a massive vessel rather than simply disable it. AUV62-AT prepares operators for this threat.”

The AUV62-AT package trains operators in a variety of capabilities, including submarine surveillance, detection, identification, classification, and target engagement. According to Saab, the AUV62-AT “mimics a submarine in a way that is compatible with any torpedo- and sonar system on the market today.”

The system, in service today with several countries across the world, “fully replaces the use of a submarine in the role as a maneuvering training target.” It can be launched from a ship, a submarine, or from shore.

According to Chris Lade, Defence Sales Manager at Saab Sea Eye, the AUV62-AT is based around the Swedish Type 62 torpedo, but Lade says that what’s inside the AUV62-AT is “very different to what you would have in a torpedo.”

“It’s able to act as both an active and passive sonar target,” Lade tells AUVSI during the Surface Navy Association’s 30th Annual National Symposium.

“So, if the antisubmarine warfare assets — be they helicopters, surface vessels or submarines — have active or passive sonar, then this works for them as a training asset.”

Lade says that the system is quite complicated, due to a lot of processing within the vehicle itself.

“On the active side, when it receives an active sonar ping, it processes that ping and gives a return to the ship or platform that’s transmitted, in the same way that you would get a return of a submarine if it was submarine shaped. On the passive side, you can load in both narrow band and broadband passive signatures,” Lade explains. “So, you replicate the submarine that you want to train against.”

Lade points out that from an antisubmarine warfare capability point of view, one of the major challenges is that antisubmarine warfare is a very “perishable skill,” so training needs to be kept up. An issue that antisubmarine warfare platforms run into is the availability of submarines, but that’s where the AUV62-AT shows its value.

“Although you can never really replace training against a submarine, it goes a long way to doing that,” Lade says. “You can improve your quality of training, so that when you do get to operate with a submarine, you’re at a higher level.”

While Lade is not sure exactly what platforms the AUV62-AT is going to be tested against, he does say that the AUV62-AT is seen as a “stop gap” before the Navy is able to introduce a new training target. That stop gap could last more than 10 years, Lade says.

The AUV62-AT has been tested in various scenarios, including its successful operation in the Unmanned Warrior exercise in 2016. It operated for two weeks, with 95 percent reliability, which meant very little downtime.

Lade says that the AUV62-AT was operated from a vessel used for launch and recovery, which Saab never operated from before, which demonstrated the vehicle’s flexibility.

“You could put it into a task group, and all you’ve got to do is get it into the water and bring it out of the water,” Lade says. “And then you can do ASW training within the task group.”

In order to deliver this kind of capability, or others, to its customers, it is crucial for Saab to receive feedback from whomever it is working with. Lade says that it is important for commercial companies and the military to have a “linkage,” and a trusting relationship to make sure that everyone involved is getting what they need from different technologies.

“You need that trust, that exchange of information, so we’re hoping we’ll get a lot back from the demonstration later this year with the U.S. Navy and AUV62,” Lade says. 

Lade, maybe more so than others, is especially invested in seeing this technology benefit the military, as he spent 30 years in the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy.

“I’m ex-navy, I want this kit to work for the guys on the ground.”