Page 102 - Australian Defence Magazine May 2022

102 SEAPOWER
COMBAT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
MAY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
9LV GENESIS
Though 9LV originated in Sweden it has a significant Aus- tralian flavour, following comprehensive co-development locally and leveraging the best from all of Saab.
Chosen for the Anzac-class frigates in the early 1990s, Saab worked closely with the RAN to develop 9LV to meet Australian requirements.
“Over that same period, and in response to unique Aus- tralian requirements, Saab progressively transitioned de- velopment work and the skills and capacity for future work to its subsidiary Saab Australia,” the company said.
“The culmination of this technology transfer ultimate- ly enabled the development of the 9LV Mk.3E CMS for the highly successful Anzac Anti-Ship Missile Defence (ASMD) upgrade.”
“In every sense, this CMS is unique to Australia, being developed by Australians for Australian requirements and the company continues to nurture the in-country capabil- ity, developing a range of new applications and features to evolve the CMS to meet the current and future unique re- quirements of the Australian customer.”
The 9LV Naval CMS had its origins in the late 1960s in a product developed by Saab of Sweden and Philips Telein- dustri AB of the Netherlands for the Swedish Navy’s Nor- rköping patrol boats.
These were a class of 12 fast missile and torpedo armed vessels, in service from 1972-2005.
Although it has been in constant evolution it was only when the air defence fire control and radar fire control di- rector were introduced that the name 9LV emerged.
LV is the Swedish abbreviation for air defence (luftvärn) while nine was the number given by Philips Teleindustri to the Swedish product.
9LV has been through many iterations, evolving as technol-
LEFT: Saab says the 9LV’s next-generation multi-function console provides a stable, intuitive platform for monitoring and control of multiple systems simultaneously
ogy has advanced. Generation one - as used on the Swedish missile and torpedo boats - employed analogue computers.
Subsequent versions went digital, initially using the Ada programming language, commercial processors and the OS-9 operating system, then Intel processors and the Mi- crosoft Windows NT operating system for the Mk.3 and the adoption of Open Architecture technologies with a Linux operating system for the Mk.4 – termed NextGen.
ANZAC APPLICATION
Australia’s exposure to 9LV came with the Anzac-class frigates, a derivative of the German Blohm and Voss (now TKMS) Meko 200 design.
The CMS wasn’t particularly strained as the new vessels came fitted for-but-not-with torpedos, anti-ship missiles and a close-in weapon system.
That was a consequence of a number of factors – budget constraints, the end of the Cold War and the joint program with New Zealand, then deep in its anti-nuclear peace phase.
In their early life, Australia’s Anzacs were colourfully described as ‘floating targets’ on account of their paucity of weapons, or ‘well-informed targets’ on account of their capable sensor and communications system.
Consequently, the Anzacs were slated for upgrade, a process which started in 1996 with the Warfighting Im- provement Program (WIP) which in 1999 morphed into the ASMD program.
Transitioning from a conventional rotating antenna radar to a phased array, this was a highly developmental upgrade which proved deeply troublesome but ultimately spectacularly successful.
This involved integrating the Australian CEA Technolo- gies CEAFAR phased array radar and CEAMOUNT con- tinuous wave illuminator with 9LV.
SAAB AUSTRALIA