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Right now, in many American ships beyond the top-tier AEGIS destroyers and cruisers, the detect-to-engage sequence against anti-ship missiles requires a lot of manual steps, involving different ship systems that use different displays. When a Mach 3 missile gives you 45 seconds from appearance on ship’s radar to impact, however, seconds of delay can be fatal. Seconds of unnecessary delay, are unacceptable.

Hence Raytheon’s Ship Self Defense System (SSDS), which uses software and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics to turn incoming data from several systems (radar, radar warning receivers, combat identification, electro-optics) into a single picture of prioritized threats. SSDS will then recommend an engagement sequence for the ship’s crew, or (in automatic mode) fire some combination of jamming transmissions, chaff or decoys, and/or weapons against the oncoming threat. The entire ship’s combat system concept, including the sensors and weapons, is known as Quick Reaction Combat Capability (QRCC) – and SSDS is the key element that ties it all together.

SSDS began Operational Evaluation (OPEVAL) in 1997 on USS Ashland [LSD 48], a Whidbey Island Class amphibious assault ship…

CEC Concept
(click to enlarge)

It has since evolved to the current Mk 2 set, which includes Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and tactical data links (Links 4A, 11 and 16) that can gather and fuse data from other ships, aircraft, and helicopters when creating the overall combat picture. Current variants also meet Category 3 of the U.S. Navy’s Open Architecture Computing Environment (OACE) standard, which will allow simpler and cheaper upgrades, enhancements, and plug-ins over a ship’s lifetime. Weapon systems integrated with SSDS currently include the AN/SLQ-32 Electronic Attack System, the NULKA missile decoy system, Mk 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, Rolling Airframe Missile, RIM-7 Sea Sparrow Missile System and the RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile.

Qualification of the SSDS Mk 2 MOD 1 was completed on the USS Ronald Reagan [CVN 76] carrier in March 2003; variants of the SSDS system are deployed on a number of CVN-68 Nimitz Class super-carriers, as well as some LSD-41 Whidbey Island Class amphibious assault ships, all LPD-17 San Antonio Class amphibious assault ships (SSDS Mk 2 MOD 2), some LHD-1 Wasp Class amphibious ships, and now the LHA-R escort carriers with secondary amphibious assault roles. Components of SSDS have also migrated to the future combat systems of the USA’s new Littoral Combat Ships and the 14,500t DDG-1000 Zumwalt Class destroyers.

Recently, Raytheon Co. Integrated Defense Systems in San Diego, CA received a $17.3 million modification to previously awarded contract (N00024-07-C-5105) for FY 2008 production of 4 SSDS MK 2 Tactical Ship Sets. They will also conduct a special study to define engineering changes to the SSDS MK 2 product baseline in support of Combat System configuration on the first-of-class LHA 6, the US Marines new LHA-R ship that supports amphibious assault and functions as a mid-size aircraft carrier. Work will be performed in Portsmouth, RI, and is expected to be complete by Oct. 2009. This contract was not competitively procured.