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home > March 24, 2008 issue > article
Common sub radio room buzzes on the horizon
By Greg Slobodkin
Special to Defense Systems
The Navy’s Common Submarine Radio
Room (CSRR) appears to be moving full
speed ahead. With interoperability tests completed
for two classes of the fleet’s submarines
and a third under way, the automated communications
system has been designated as operationally
ready for the submarine fleet.
Meanwhile, the technology could also find a
home in the surface fleet. Elements of the system
are being included in Lockheed Martin’s
offering for the Joint Tactical Radio System
(JTRS) Airborne, Maritime and Fixed Station
(AMF). In addition, the system is being prepared
for a sea trial aboard the Littoral Combat
Ship later this year.
The CSRR is designed to automate communications
aboard subs while reducing errors
and manning requirements. “The automation of the system allows
the submarine force to support missions with significantly higher
communications requirements without additional manning,” said
Dan Brothers, assistant program manager for CSRR in the
Submarine Integration Program Office.
“The commonality of the system across all submarine platform
types results in lower cost to maintain technical documentation,”
Brothers said. That also results in “more focused training that allows
the operator’s experience to transfer to other submarine platforms,
and a common parts support system that reduces costs by allowing
larger procurements of spares and less inventory on the supply systems
shelves.”
Brothers said the system provides many benefits compared with
previous submarine external communications systems. Radio rooms
on Navy subs have been staffed with three sailors on each shift, while
CSRR requires only one operator.
Also, CSRR’s network-based architecture doesn’t limit the available
bandwidth for transmissions to 64 kilobits/sec, as older systems do.
And the architecture offers a management control workstation that
allows a single operator to manage as many as 30 simultaneous circuits,
compared with 5 to 10 circuits on older systems, Brothers said.
“There’s so much human error that can get
introduced when you think about setting the
radios at different frequencies and the need to
change those circuits is pretty frequent,” said
Wendy Underwood, director of communications
and networking at Lockheed Martin
Tactical Systems, the prime contractor for
CSRR. “What used to take an hour and a half
or more to cut over to a new mission plan can
now be done with the click of a button and a
drag and drop. It now happens significantly
faster with significantly fewer errors so that
warfighter effectiveness is increased.”
CSRR has successfully completed interoperability
testing on the Navy’s Seawolf-class
and Ohio-class — SSBN and SSGN variants —
submarines. Currently, there are three Seawolf
CSRR systems, two Ohio SSBN systems, and two Ohio SSGN systems
that are operational. The first full Virginia-class CSRR baseline
system started final testing in September.
CSRR is scheduled for an operational evaluation for the Virginia
class this summer and a sea trial for the Littoral Combat Ship.
Although a program of record doesn’t exist for the surface fleet,
Underwood said there is just as strong a need for a common radio
room in Navy surface ships as there is with submarines.
“Today, every new construction surface ship acquiring group in
the Navy decides how they want to procure the radio rooms,”
Underwood said. “They’re all making their own decisions, so
guess what? They’re all unique. But the Navy is recognizing that
with the success of CSRR, those same principles apply to the surface
ships.”
“Based on the success of implementing the CSRR system in the
submarine force and its cost and supportability advantages, the
Navy’s Program Executive Office for C4I is working to implement
a surface variant for new construction platforms and eventually for
modernization of older platforms,” Brothers said.
However, he said that this effort is still in its early planning
stages.
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