Cutting The Cost Of Nuclear Submarine Combat

SPACEWAR

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Arlington VA (SPX) Jul 07, 2004
The U.S. Navy awarded General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics, a $21.5 million contract modification to continue system integration and development of enhanced capabilities for the Acoustic Rapid Commercial-off-the-shelf Insertion (A-RCI) program.

The A-RCI program enables the Navy to significantly upgrade legacy submarine combat capability through annual software enhancements and periodic hardware upgrades at significant cost savings.

This program has been a major factor in establishing open architecture requirements for the Navy and these capabilities and systems are now on nearly all Navy submarines and many surface ships.

The initial system developed under the A-RCI program was the Multi-Purpose Processor (MPP), which replaced the signal processing and displays of the AN/BQQ-5 Sonar system on SSN 688 and 688I nuclear attack submarines.

The greatly increased performance, significantly lower cost, and open architecture features of the MPP-based systems led the Navy to extend the replacements to the sonar processing and display systems being developed for Virginia Class and Trident submarines with MPP systems.

Subsequent deliveries have continued to upgrade and greatly improve sonar capabilities and add advanced tactical decision aids and stealth monitoring capabilities.

Work under this contract will be performed in Fairfax, Va., and Anaheim Calif., and includes systems engineering, architecture design, software engineering, development, integration, and testing. The overall contract runs through Dec. 2008 and has a total potential value of $250 million, including the modification announced today.

SPACEWAR

Russia's Super Subs Sink

by Pamela Hess
Washington (UPI) May 26, 2004
The United States can call off the Hunt for Red October. The long proud and feared Russian submarine fleet is rapidly sinking to the bottom of the Barents Sea. This week alone, Russian news reports have revealed that the entire Akula attack class submarine class is being scrapped.