Anti-Submarine Warfare : The Market for Airborne ASW Sensors

Airborne platforms are some of the most mobile, flexible and cost-effective anti-submarine warfare systems available today. Whether they are shore-based long-range maritime patrol aircraft or ship-based shortrange helicopters, aircraft form the primary means of defense against a submarine attack and are the key weapon in an offensive against enemy submarine forces. They owe this position to a synergistic range of capabilities that provide an unchallenged series of tactical options for an ASW operator.

Aircraft feature the mobility required to quickly counter developing threats and exploit fleeting contacts and are equipped with sensors that enable them to re-acquire and prosecute contacts. They also have the ability to carry a range of weapons that have a reasonable capability against most types of submarine. Even better from the aircraft crew's point of view, the submarines they are hunting can't shoot back - or at least not now. That situation may change within the period covered by this forecast.

Ironically, this primacy of aviation assets as an ASW tool has evolved despite the extreme difficulties facing the sensors such aircraft deploy. Aircraft, by their nature, fly above the sea; submarines, by their nature, sail underneath it. Between the two is a virtually impermeable barrier that defeats most attempts to detect one from the other. Under certain circumstances, aircraft can visually detect submarines; under equally constrained circumstances, submarines can hear aircraft. Anything more than that represents the interesting technical challenge that drives the market for airborne ASW sensors.

Today, interest in the use of remotely piloted vehicles is resurgent in naval circles. The German K-130 class corvettes are designed to handle such craft; they are frequently considered to be a likely part of the payload of the Littoral Combat Ship, and a number of other nations are considering their use in a variety of roles. The role of the QH-50 as a weapons delivery platform could be revived; alternatively, the tremendous advances in computer power and datalinking since the 1960s could be utilized to design a full ASW remotely piloted vehicle.