Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/274231
A queSt for SignAture mAnAgement Prominent among the many new systems on the future Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) will likely be a next generation signature management system. And it will owe its capability to a research vessel named Quest and an international experiment called RIMPASSE. M MaritiMe 38 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014 www.vanguardcanada.com by Vanguard Staff e very ship has distinct signatures, some of which change as it deploys around the world. So as countries such as Canada replace aging war ships, the ability to measure and understand a ship's signature without entering a fixed range has certain implications for ship design and onboard systems. For the better part of three months in the fall of 2011, mili- tary research organizations from 16 countries including Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway, France and the United States conducted a series of trials known as the Radar Infrared electro-Magnetic Pressure Acoustic Ship Signature Experiments, or RIMPASSE. Central to the experiments were two research vessels, Canadian Forces Auxiliary Vessel Quest, and a German ship, Planet. The objective of the experiments was to collect data from a number of locations and under various conditions to develop and demonstrate a prototype by 2016-17 that can then be developed by industry into a signature management system ready for ships expected to enter service in the early 2020s. "The type of integrated signature management system that we are talking about really does not exist in indus- try right now," Dr. Zahir Daya, advisor on signatures for Defence Research and Development Canada and the Canadian trial chief scientist for the RIMPASSE experiments, explains in his office in Dartmouth. "Industry will tell you they have different elements of it and that they can create the full thing, but access to research vessels with unique defence re- search capabilities is very limit- ed. This was such an important trial that countries lined up to participate so they could get hold of the data."