USN tests UAV drone hunter for ASW

[Haijun watcher]

Defense News

Off the California coast, the US Navy tests hunting subs with an aerial drone
By: David B. Larter ? 21 hours ago
WASHINGTON � The U.S. Navy and General Atomics in November used sonobuoys dropped from an MQ-9A Block V Reaper to track a simulated submarine target on a U.S. Navy Pacific test range, in what the contractor says is the first time an aerial drone has deployed a self-contained anti-submarine warfare system.
The Reaper deployed a mix of 10 sonobuoys � deployed to measure water conditions and monitor for targets � then received and transmitted the data in real time to a monitoring station at Laguna Flight Operations Facility located at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona.
The test was part of the development of the MQ-9B SeaGuardian drone, which is part of a research and development project in conjunction with the Navy�s Naval Air Systems Command. If the Navy can make this concept of operations work, it has the potential to significantly lower the cost of submarine hunting and free up larger, more expensive manned sub-hunting platforms such as the P-8A Poseidon, to act as a command-and-control platform.
The Reaper managed to acquire and track an expendable anti-submarine warfare training target for three hours using the General Dynamics UYS-505 acoustic processing software.

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