Page 56 - Australian Defence Magazine Nov 2020

56 C4I SUBMARINES
NOVEMBER 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
submarine force, rollout across their fleet takes some time to accomplish and the result is that both American and Australian submarines effectively re- ceive an upgrade every four to six years.
“THALES AUSTRALIA MANAGED THE UK AND FRANCE WORK AND HAS COMPLETED THE MAJORITY OF THE SONAR UPGRADE WORK UNDER SUBCONTRACT TO RAYTHEON AUSTRALIA.”
major software component, including in- formation assurance, and Lockheed Mar- tin Manassas Rotary and Mission Systems is the developer of the common infra- structure services application. Lockheed Martin Australia is also serving as the Prime Systems Integrator for the Attack class, applying the lessons learned from Collins into its replacement.
A number of Australian companies have also been involved in the development of software applications over the years the
“We’re working through delivery of
TI18 (the technical insert developed in
2018) at the moment, but TI14 is the
latest rolled out to our most recently
updated submarines,” CAPT Lindsay
detailed. “TI18 is the next one to come
along and that will be first installed in
HMAS Dechaineux, which has just commenced her full- cycle docking in Adelaide and will come out in mid-2022.”
ACP has been extant, including Thales Australia and in the small to medium enterprise (SME) space Adelaide-based Ultra Electronics owned Acacia Systems is involved in the development of a combat system application which will be trialled on a current APB15 baseline submarine.
A further example of Australian input into the Subma- rine Combat Control System used today reaches back to development of what was known as the Combat System Augmentation (CSA) program that bridged system en- hancement from the legacy Rockwell system to introduc- tion of AN/BYG-1. The CSA program delivered a locally- developed weapon control Graphical User Interface (GUI) to improve the original Rockwell combat system.
BELOW: Communications and sonar upgrades are planned to be completed by 2026.
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
The software for each APB is developed in the US under the oversight of a joint project team working in the US Navy’s Submarine Combat Control Systems Program Of- fice (PMS-425) and the Naval Undersea Warfare Centre Division in Newport Rhode Island. Australia provides col- laborative input to the process through Navy and CASG, together with Raytheon Australia as the Collins-Class com- bat system in-service support agent.
General Dynamics is responsible for the development of the core tactical software and Progeny Systems is the developer for the payload control system, which effectively provides the interface between the tactical system and the weapon. Progeny Systems is also responsible for a further
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