General Dynamics Canada - Underwater ISR – Littoral and Deep Sea Solutions

General Dynamics Canada has 40 years of experience in the development and production of sonar systems for surface and sub surface warfare environments. From the delivery of acoustic software applications to large scale integration of ship sonar systems, General Dynamics Canada successfully works with customers to satisfy their unique requirements and most important, to deliver sustained  operational mission superiority. Unlike many legacy sonar systems today, General Dynamics Canada's solutions are tuned for Littoral water detection, which can be one of the most challenging undersea environments for mine and submarine detection today.

As a full defence solution provider we specialize in engineering product offerings that reduce cost, improve time-to-market and reduce overall program risk. At the same time, we offer custom engineering solutions and program systems integration services that will keep your program on spec, on time and on budget.

Our experience delivering systems for various platforms and countries has required a flexible and adaptive approach to product and system development. A legacy of successful installations and operational histories provides the foundation for low-risk solutions to meet the needs of present day customers. Whether the requirement is for low cost upgrades to existing sonar systems or fully integrated multi-sensor detection and engagement suites, we have the proven track record to meet and exceed your operational expectations.

Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) product suite

General Dynamics Canada's ASW products include the torpedo detection system, as well as airborne acoustics, sonobuoy processing and submarine detection systems.

Torpedo detection system

The General Dynamics Canada Matador has an acoustic processing system optimized for torpedo detection. Designed to be used with towed array sensors, the open architecture and flexible interface design allow the system to be configured to the sensor and its capabilities. The sonar detection displays provide a single-view summary of all of the acoustic data, with processing and presentation optimized for passive detection of torpedoes. The operator tool suite allows rapid detection of torpedo signatures, accurate identification of torpedo bearings, and an interface for managing torpedo Alerts and Alarms. An optional interface allows the Alerts and Alarms to be transmitted to an external torpedo defense system.

Airborne acoustics, sonobuoy processing and submarine detection

General Dynamics Canada’s UYS-504, a sonobuoy acoustic processor solution for fixed and rotor wing aircraft, is capable of processing any sonobuoy in fleet today. Our scalable architecture allows processing for up to 64 sonobuoys of any mix, whether analog or digital, passive or active. Other key functions include: colour spectral analysis, command function select, multistatic active processing, wideband coverage for active intercept, or energy maps overlaid on geographic display, auto-diesel detection aids and interfaces for data management system and UHF / HF.

For improved operational readiness General Dynamics Canada offers an acoustic sonobouy trainer for the development and execution of virtual ASW missions by simulating target signatures and generating sonobuoy data for direct injection into sonobuoy processors via analog or digital interfaces.

Mine and obstacle avoidance product suite

General Dynamics Canada's range of mine and obstacle avoidance products includes hull-mounted sonar and software-defined sonar systems.

Hull-mounted sonar

TrailBlazer Sonar® is a high frequency, high-resolution sonar system targeted for mine and obstacle avoidance (MOAS) on patrol vessels, corvettes, frigates and destroyers operating in littoral waters. It will detect surface, moored and seabed mines and will provide high resolution real-time 3D forward looking sonar capability for safe navigation. It allows shallow water hydrographic feature detection which will provide small seabed features for subsequent examination. This detection is undertaken ahead of the vessel for optimized survey vessel safety and mission efficiency. In addition it will detect bottomed small submarines including bottom crawling clandestine craft in shallow water. This system uses the phased array transducer based upon software-defined sonar transceiver as the core electronics platform that delivers a common, open architecture, digital signal processing waveform suite with graphic user interfaces (GUIs) tailored to MOAS missions. 

General Dynamics Canada's latest Underwater ISR products leverage Software Defined Sonar (SDS) architecture. SDS allows the digitization of the analog signal very quickly and moves the analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) and digital-to-analog conversion (DAC) closer to the transducer. This delivers the best of both worlds: on the hardware side you get one platform for many different applications, which lowers costs, and allows the device to be field upgradeable; while on the software side, you get a reconfigurable architecture that enables extremely complex applications. In the end, SDS enables the use of complex algorithms and waveforms that legacy hardware cannot process, giving the end user an operational mission advantage, while lowering the cost of ownership and future capability upgrades. 

Underwater ISR solutions

General Dynamics Canada can provide complete Underwater ISR solutions for any mission profile or platform, or for airborne ground replay and analysis. This full-spectrum capability is supported by leading-edge technologies in acoustic range prediction, embedded training and simulation.