newsSummer 2013

#36

www.sea.co.uk

25th Anniversary issue

Celebrating 25 years of engineering for success

What’s inside02 UK Maritime communications Market leader

04 20 years of supporting the Ministry of Defence

06 Procedural training

07 Space

Communications at SEA - a journey from research to delivery SEA has been working on leading edge communications since the mid 1990s. The early years provided advanced research to the Defence Research Agency starting a journey that today culminates in the technologically advanced External Communications System being rolled out to the UK submarine flotilla.

engineering for success

The initial research started life with ‘Auto Sub Comms’ looking at the difficult configuration and management problems with the Swiftsure class WT office. At the time the WT office was a user’s nightmare with a disparate collection of legacy equipment that was never designed to operate as a single integrated system. The WT operator was required to set the systems up manually, configure cabling by hand and be a highly skilled individual. Operational errors in configuring the system would result in the submarine spending unacceptably more time near the surface. The challenge the government scientists set for SEA was to find a way of solving these problems without a wholesale replacement of the radio equipment.

SEA’s engineers set to work developing a design architecture which over the years

has grown into the MoD’s proposed Common External Communications System (CECS) architecture. The design philosophy was to create a common baseband LAN linking together radio equipment, modems, cryptographic and terminal equipment in an open and scaleable manner that protected security boundaries. The challenge was then to develop interface equipment that could realise the vision utilising the existing installed equipment. This was significant technological challenge as the architecture required the baseband LAN to be transparent to the connected equipment. This meant design challenges to overcome latency, reliability, signal integrity and timing had to be overcome. By early in the 2000s it was possible to consider creating an operational system and Communications Coherency for Submarines was born.

This contract upgraded the Swiftsure and Trafalgar class WT offices and resulted in an at sea system in 2008. The resulting feedback from the Naval operators was unrestrained praise for a simple to manage and operate system.

As the UK submarine fleet was upgraded to Astute, BAE Systems competed the Astute Boat 4 ECS. SEA was successful, the compliant and scalable nature of its architecture has resulted in contracts for further Astute platforms with more under discussion. The flexibility of this architecture has resulted in the ability to adapt to new technologies such as advanced satellite systems.

UK Maritime communications market leader

02 | www.sea.co.uk© Crown copyright 2012

HMS Alliance SEA has been assisting the Royal Navy Submarine Museum to return the A-Class submarine HMS Alliance to its former glory. The Alliance Conservation Project is a £7M venture to save HMS Alliance, the last surviving British A-Class World War 2 era submarine in the world and the memorial to the 5,300 British submariners who have given their lives in service.

MDN provides increased capability for Satellite ProvidersSatellite communications providers would wish to increase capabilities in circumstances where conventional modems and other satellite terminals are not giving an effective service. MDN therefore represents an innovative new way to access satellite services and grow the user base.

As part of the restoration to enhance the visitor experience inside Alliance, the project aims to invoke a sense of what life was like for the crew on board by exhibiting objects from the decades of her service life. In support of this aim, SEA has provided expert knowledge free of charge in order to identify and track down the equipments that were used in the Wireless Transmission Office during its active service.

Whilst Alliance is the centrepiece of the museum, there are additional exhibits exploring many facets of the history of submarines including the Royal Navy’s

first submarine Holland 1, X-24 the only surviving World War 2 midget submarine and interactive galleries.

With the history of submarine communications currently not covered in any of the exhibits, SEA has also pledged to offer its subject matter knowledge such that an engaging and informative description of communications through the decades can be created. Despite the potential exhibit being in its infancy, there is already significant interest being expressed by the submariner community.

As well as donating to the project on an annual basis, Steve Hill, the Managing Director of SEA, stated: “the subject matter knowledge and support that SEA can provide to something as significant as HMS Alliance is important to us, not only to help the accurate representation of the conditions and challenges faced by those who served on her, but to engage and inspire the next generation of submariners and engineers.”

The vision for MDN was to produce a small, light and highly capable localised cellular network without compromising on performance. Unlike solutions based on picocells, MDN is specifically designed for light weight, low power, agility, ease of deployment, excellent area coverage and ease of application upgrade. MDN weighs less than 1.3 kg and delivers ‘High Speed Downlink Packet Access’ (HSPA) services to up to 16 users and produces a cell size up to a mile across.

In order to access customers, satellite providers need to attract user groups not normally associated with satellite service usage. Combining the satellite provider’s modem and MDN, the user experiences cellular carrier grade service over a transparent satellite network. MDN provides the means for users to deploy their own Smart device to access satellite services and is compatible with a wide range of Smart devices including Google Android phones (HTC, Samsung), Blackberry, tablet PCs with 3G enabled connectivity, Apple iPhone and security hardened iPad (IL3).

MDN provides the means to share a single satellite connection dependent on user demand. This means that only user data traffic rather than control data messaging is passed over the satellite network. Localised connectivity also provides network off-loading. Both of these measures help to improve satellite network utilisation and maximise revenues whilst reducing the cost to the end user.

The SEA SEACore Network can also accommodate diverse revenue models for satellite providers, whether as a bundled network service or as individual user agreements.

MDN is small and agile and user friendly. Once MDN is configured all the user is required to do is to turn on and go.

Bring your own network

engineering for success

SEA delivers systems engineering expertise into sensor research programmeSEA is leading the systems engineering aspects of the Dstl’s dismounted sensors research programme. Specifically, SEA is drawing on the expertise gained in the development of open systems architectures and related Systems Engineering methodologies for both the Future Dismounted Close Combat and Reducing the Burden on the Dismounted Soldier Research Programmes.

The research is being delivered by Team Prometheus. SEA is part of the leadership of this team working jointly with Roke Manor Research Limited (a Chemring Group company) and QinetiQ. The research is looking for innovative ways to enhance the situational awareness of the dismounted soldier, the output of the research will assist Army HQ with future capability decisions. As part of the Systems Engineering work SEA is responsible for assessing the benefits of technology to the overall capability of the soldier; SEA will base their approach to this task on their work last year with the Australian DoD.

SEA is also leading on developing human factors requirements and importantly the usability of technology during the dismounted battle. SEA’s human factors team, led by Caroline Arrowsmith, has built up considerable experience in providing human factors advice on dismounted combat, a capability SEA is exploiting in a number of other MOD research areas.

One year on and MOD is seeing benefits of SEA led research into delivering dismounted effectSEA won the contract for the Delivering Dismounted Effect (DDE) research programme from Dstl in August 2012 and is now approaching the end of the first year of this four year contract.

The outcomes from this research will directly inform capability decisions in Army HQ. The outputs of this programme will include a weapon demonstration system that will inform MOD when decisions relating to the future of the SA80 A2 assault rifle need to be made. Added to this the development of rapid OA techniques will provide Dstl with the ability to assess the benefits of conceptual technologies in the early stages of research and development.

SEA is using its experience of leading large research consortiums to ensure it not only delivers what is required by Dstl but also captures innovation from as many different suppliers. SEA is managing a strong, international industry-based consortium

that includes SDE, SCS, Roke Manor, MBDA, SAAB, Thales and Colt Canada. This combination of international suppliers and SMEs ensures Dstl and its customers benefit from true specialists in their field.

The focus for the first year has been to baseline the current capability and to identify candidate technologies to enhance the lethal and non-lethal effects of the dismounted soldier. SEA is keen to engage with any research provider who can provide input to the future programme of work. This programme will include a significant period of trials and experimentation to investigate the utility, feasibility and affordability of implementing different lethality system concepts within the future Army 2020 platoon.

20 Years of supporting the Ministry of Defence

04 | www.sea.co.uk © Crown copyright 2012

SEA continues to deliver maritime researchWhist developing research skills in other areas SEA has continued to maintain its pedigree for delivering high quality exploitable research for maritime customers.

SEA’s Maritime research heritage spans 21 years of above and underwater research, trials and technology demonstrators for a variety of customers. This includes a track record of working with industry and academics and, importantly, the pull-through of the research outputs so that our work makes a real difference!

SEA’s broad experience includes acoustics, oceanography, meteorology, autonomy, electronic warfare, sonar, non-acoustics, human factors, unmanned and off board systems and modern open system architectures. Supporting two recent

NATO studies, SEA staff worked on new approaches for flexible modular mission systems, and the design, certification, safe operation and training needed to launch and recover manned and unmanned surface and sub-surface vehicles from a ship. Other recent work for Dstl has included an advanced Mine Counter Measures (MCM) signal processing test bed, prioritising open system algorithm capability updates, assessing how the surface ship Sonar 2087 system can be used to complement existing Maritime Environmental Data Gathering systems and modelling acoustic communications in complex littoral waters.

SEA provides technical support to Army HQSEA, partnering with CGI, Unipart and Atkins, were recently awarded a contract to investigate the benefits of applying industry good practice of Integrated Business Planning (IBP) and Sales and Operational Planning (S&OP) to the activity and demand process in Army HQ. Given the working title ‘Activity & Resource Planning (A&RP)’ the desired outputs to be delivered are:

•Highlevelunderstandingofpeople, technology and infrastructure;

•Identificationofanimplementable process, including details of the functional breakdown and interactions to enable improved activity and subsequent demand forecasting to be undertaken within Army HQ;

•Identificationofthemanagement information required to support the implementation of the process;

•Identificationoftheexpectedbenefits of full implementation (and the dis- benefits of not doing so);

•Identificationoftherouteto exploitation.

This task is but one example of the type of output SEA has led and delivered through its research consortium partnership with Dstl and other customers this year. It is a prime example of how SEA identifies from across UK the right provider to deliver the right output at the right time.

© Crown copyright 2012

Augmented Reality Research moves into the Real WorldAs contractor for the Joint Focus Experimentation 3 (JFX3) project for Dstl, SEA is leading research into Augmented Reality (AR) technologies for Defence. AR covers a range of technologies which aim to augment a user’s real world environment with supplementary information.

engineering for success

Flight Deck Officer Training increasingly popular, latest DECKsim newsThe Royal Norwegian Navy has been using their DECKsim system since successful system acceptance in November 2012. The third system delivery of the portable variation of the DECKsim product range to Eurocopter Training Services was also achieved in March 2013.

SEA is demonstrating its continued commitment to the Royal Norwegian Navy by delivering a set of additional requirements to the original system specification in late August 2013. SEA is also pleased to announce the annual support and maintenance contract being agreed with the first official review taking place in early August 2013.

SEA is also currently investigating the next stage in the continued support and product development options for future work with Eurocopter Training Services.

Customer comments on DECKsim include “The gesture recognition system makes the students feel more in contact with the simulation - like they are the one in control.

It also helps the instructor, reducing the task loading” Bjorn Krantz, Head Instructor for Flight Deck operations. May 2013.

DECKsim’s popularity continues to grow and now has its own microsite.

For more information please visit www.sea-procedural-training. co.uk/Decksim.aspx or scan the qr code with your smartphone.

The JFX3 project is being conducted as part of the Dstl Synthetic Environments (SE) Tower of Excellence programme, which enables the MoD, industry and academia to work together to build capability through research into future training and simulation needs.

SEA and its project partners, CGI and QinetiQ, are currently conducting Phase 2 of the project and are building towards a field evaluation of AR technologies to be conducted on Salisbury Plain in August 2013. This initial qualitative field evaluation will assess a number of concept AR technologies and their potential to improve Situational Awareness whilst conducting a number of military tasks (e.g. navigate, detect, avoid and orientate). The evaluation aims to identify specific combinations of AR technology and tasks that merit further investigation.

Phase 1 of the JFX3 project was successfully completed in 2012 and

included a domain analysis study, which identified Defence stakeholder problems and developed Concepts of Employment showing how AR could potentially be employed to meet their needs. A review of this rapidly evolving area of technology was also conducted and a number of AR concepts were presented at a Stakeholder event in London in October 2012. Feedback gathered from the event has focussed the phase 2 project activities upon how AR could be used to improve Situational Awareness whilst conducting military operations.

The project team has developed a number of AR solutions using low cost Commercial-off-the-Shelf hardware and existing third party applications that will be used in the field evaluation. These will provide an initial insight into how additional information may be presented via visual, auditory or haptic devices (e.g. via a visual display, headphones, or tactile feedback via a glove

or belt). In addition to the field evaluation, the project is also assessing the barriers to AR adoption within Defence, considering such issues as security and integration with existing data sources and networks.

SEA is now investigating how AR technologies could be employed to support other Defence applications and markets.

06 | www.sea.co.uk

The spacecraft complex which departs from Earth in 2015 will comprise three principal elements:

• the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), ESA’s 3-axis stabilised spacecraft whose principal task is to map the planet in unprecedented detail;

• the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), JAXA’s spin-stabilised spacecraft which will study the plasma environment;

• the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), which is also provided by ESA and contains the very high power Solar Electric Propulsion system.

SEA is responsible for two Remote Interface Units (RIUs), one on the MMO and one on the MTM. These RIUs provide the control and telemetry interfaces between the spacecraft computer and the spacecraft equipment. As well as monitoring voltages and temperature and switching units on and off, it enables the spacecraft computer to control the electric propulsion.

The unit is probably the most sophisticated RIU ever constructed. The orbital geometry means that communications with Earth are interrupted for months at a time. This

leads to requirements for extensive onboard autonomy, so the RIU has complete internal self-test capability and cross-strapping between redundant circuits. This allows the spacecraft computer to be alerted to failures and to manage them in orbit, rather than waiting for intervention by the mission controllers at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt.

Three Engineering Models of the RIU were delivered to Astrium GmbH early in the programme. These are functionally identical to the eventual flight units, but are built with electronic components not certified for space flight (saving several million euros), and allow the Prime Contractor to exercise all the other electronic equipment and software. In May SEA delivered the Engineering Qualification Model (EQM), which has survived the full rigour of vibration and

thermal/vacuum testing. This is a major programme milestone and derisks the Flight Model manufacture and test.

To quote ESA, “The Remote Interface Unit (RIU), a novel, compact design for low mass,...”BepiColombo is a mission to the planet Mercury undertaken jointly by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), executed under ESA leadership.

© ESA copyright 2012

Systems Engineering Assessment LtdBeckington Castle, 17 Castle CornerBeckington, Nr Frome, Somerset BA11 6TA

Telephone: +44 1373 852 000 Fax: +44 1373 831 133 Email: info@sea.co.uk

www.sea.co.uk

For more information scan the qr code with your smartphone

a Cohort plc company

Business excellence recognisedAt the Cohort plc Business Excellence Awards SEA received:

•ASilverAwardfortheSEAChangeTeamfortheircontribution to more efficient working, cultural change and performance improvement at SEA.

•ABronzeAwardforSEA’sAstuteExternalCommunications System Integration Team for installing and setting to work this complex system on board a part-complete submarine in only three months.

Andy Thomis, Cohort Chief Executive, said: “I am delighted to recognise and reward these examples of true business excellence across the Cohort group. Deciding on the winners was a hard task but they are all richly deserving of their awards.”

SEA wins Sailing Challenge“All of us at SEA were thrilled to see how our team quickly got to grips with the boat - aptly named Crème de la Crème – and, in a demonstration of the true partnership we strive for on all our projects, our team excelled and we heartily congratulate all involved. SEA is delighted to support the Reginald Fessenden Challenge and contribute to the superb work of the Not Forgotten Association. SEA’s sponsorship is part of our charity focus this year, in celebration of SEA’s 25 years in business.” Steve Hill

SEA sponsors Army BoxingSEA is proud to announce that we have become an active sponsor of the Army Boxing association

“Boxing is the soldier’s sport. The profession of arms and boxing both require courage, skill and dedication. The Army therefore has an abundance of boxing talent. With the help of our sponsors Army boxing has turned that talent into a team of athletes competing at national and international standards. Against this background of excellence I am pleased to welcome Systems Engineering and Assessment Limited as a sponsor of Army Boxing.” Major General Paul Jacques

Dr David Tanner and runner up Pete McColm 5 Scots

To celebrate SEA’s 25th Anniversary the staff at SEA plan to raise £25,000.00 for various Charities throughout 2013.