Lockheed gets $77m for undersea warfare combat system production

The US Naval Sea Systems Command has awarded Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems a $77.7 million contract for production of the US Navy’s AN/SQQ-89A(V)15 surface ship undersea warfare system (UWS).

The AN/SQQ-89A(V)15 is a combat system that allows surface combatants to search, detect, classify, localize and track undersea contacts, and to engage and evade submarines, mine-like small objects and torpedo threats.

The contract is for development, integration and production of future advanced capability build and technical insertion baselines of the AN/SQQ-89A(V)15 USW systems.

The program brings the newest production variants of the AN/SQQ-89(V) system to the fleet in an ongoing multi-year back-fit effort to upgrade installed legacy USW systems on destroyers and select cruisers.

The system has been deployed on Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG 7) class frigates (all currently in foreign naval service), Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) class destroyers, and Ticonderoga (CG 47) class cruisers, and will be deployed on the future Guided Missile Frigate (FFG(X)) class.

The latest version incorporates hull-mounted sonar (AN/SQS-53C), wideband omni-directional receivers supporting acoustic intercept, and the Multi-Function Towed Array (MFTA), also integrated with an acoustic intercept capability. It expands sensor performance by building on Open Architecture Level 3 Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) processing. The AN/SQQ-89A(V)15 also incorporates expanded active processing capability with the integration of Echo Tracker Classifier (ETC) for both the hull sensor and MFTA.

As of December 2018, 46 destroyers and cruisers (43 DDGs and 3 CGs) have received AN/SQQ-89A(V)15 back-fits.