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RTI Product Development
Supporting AAC’s tenet of getting technology to the fleet – better, faster and most cost effectively – are the six Product Development areas:
- Research and Development
AAC’s Research and Development (R&D) Group provides the innovative new technologies and adaptations of current technologies that have propelled the company to the forefront of the acoustic industry. The R&D group collaborates with major universities, government research foundations, and other private organizations to leverage existing technology and/or provide new products to meet and exceed the goals set by the customers.
- Mission Package Services (MPS)
MPS is a robust set of system services designed to provide a common platform on which concurrent tactical, training, and mission support sessions can be managed. MPS capability provides for common Application Program Interfaces (API) for software tools, which enables adaptability, portability, accessibility and improved reliability.
MPS is an open architecture standards based set of application, operator, and host platform interface services which allows applications to mature independently of any particular target platform. This standardization allows configuration of applications across multiple disparate platforms, computing environments and combat system architectures.
AAC’s current version of MPS is a robustly integrated system services platform which is hosting virtually all of the US Navy’s surface Undersea Warfare, Mine Warfare and Surface Warfare applications. MPS is deployed or is in the process of being deployed across the Navy’s cruisers, destroyers and future ships including the Zumwalt class destroyer and the Littoral Combat Ship. With MPS installed in the Navy’s ASW Surface Combatants, any technical improvement provided to a particular ship class or configuration can be easily adapted to support the same or similar mission applications in other ship classes or configurations as required.
- Distributed Enterprise Services (DES)
AAC’s Distributed Enterprise Services (DES) leverage the installation of MPS on one platform with its installation on various platforms so that an improvement to one is adapted, tested and installed on the rest.The use of common architectures and software applications across the Surface ASW community also makes distributed processing of sensor data possible. DES enables ships connected to a network to seamlessly share raw or processed sensor data to gain a greater understanding of the underwater tactical picture across a wide geographic area. Data, pulled in real-time from the source, can be analyzed in a remote location. This ability to pull data from remote sensors in real time will support remote acoustic analysis and fusion, distributed ASW target engagement and weapon assignment, as well as the Common Operating Picture.
- Sensor Hardware
AAC's sensors include hull and towed Acoustic Intercept (ACI) arrays based on Sparsely Populated Volumetric Array (SPVA) technology and a Compact Variable Depth Sonar (CVDS) system. The ACI arrays are mounted on the bow of a ship and towed behind the ship to provide 360 degrees of coverage for passive detection, classification, and localization of torpedoes. The CVDS is a passive/active towbody consisting of an ACI sensor and a high powered active source that is cued by passive detections to classify and localize torpedoes while reducing false alarms and providing refined salvo discrimination capability. The ACI sensor systems installed on submarines have proven effective for contact avoidance while surfacing. The ACI sensors, successfully integrated into Navy surveillance systems, provide exceptional detection, classification, and localization capabilities for Homeland Security targets of interest such as surface swimmers, divers, unmanned underwater vehicles, and unidentified surface vessels.
- Undersea Warfare (USW) Software
The USW product line delivers to the U.S. Navy a wide spectrum of systems that provide anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability, marine mammal detection (MMDM) capability, and defense against torpedo attack (TDCL). AAC’s USW products have been deployed on a wide variety of current U.S. Navy surface and sub-surface platforms such as DDGs, CGs, CVNs and SSNs, and will be used on future platforms such as DDG-1000 and LCS.
- SimStim
Simulation Stimulation (SimStim) capitalizes on existing Navy certified databases for contact acoustic models and OAML-based ocean models/databases for environment simulation. SimStim provides front end stimulation for a wide variety of acoustic and non-acoustic interfaces, such as:
- Passive and active acoustic arrays (line, spherical and volumetric arrays)
- Data links for Airborne (SH-60 to ship), Battle Group (BFTT) and Combat Control Training (ACTS)
AAC is the primary provider of Acoustic SimStim systems to NAVAIR including the Tactical Operational Flight Trainer (TOFT) for the MH-60R platform as well as the P3C Tactical Operational Readiness Trainer (TORT). The NSSN Virginia class submarine sonar suite has utilized AAC’s Acoustic SimStim systems products. In addition, AAC’s On-Board Trainers are installed on Trident/SSN platforms.
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In our mission module spiral
improvement, we develop core capabilities flexible
enough to work across many platforms.
I have the
confidence of knowing that the technology AAC
provides translates to a more agile and capable
Navy. ~ Clair Guthrie, Vice President of
Engineering - AAC |
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