DARPA looks to go deep with ASW sensor network

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has disclosed plans for a deep ocean sensor network that could provide a long-range anti-submarine surveillance capability sufficient to protect 'blue water' Carrier Strike Group operations.

This new initiative, which envisions a distributed system of sensors and sources on or near the ocean floor, harks back to the SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System) deep-water long-range detection capability deployed by the US Navy during the Cold War. It also signals a revival in interest in blue-water anti-submarine warfare (ASW), an area that has largely taken a back seat in the two decades since the end of the Cold War and the demise of the erstwhile Soviet submarine fleet.

SOSUS used chains of bottom-mounted hydrophone arrays, connected by undersea communication cables to facilities on shore, to achieve long-range detections and cue area ASW forces. It is thought that DARPA's latest effort is looking at a deep-water sensor system that would afford a greater level of tactical utility.

In a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Deep Sea Operations (DSOP) released on 15 January 2010, DARPA's Strategic Technology Office suggests that as "technology drives peer-nation parity in traditional domains, the deep ocean offers an unused operational space to achieve significant gains in strategic capability".