Sperry Corporation

USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Kenneth W Groves

John D Lea

A stern torpedo defense system uses a pair of passive sonar towed tactical etectors in tandem alignment to detect the presence and trajectory of a stern torpedo attack. The detectors are towed below the wake of a surface ship and include arcuate arrays of transducer elements mounted in low self-noise, roll pitch and yaw stabilized platforms. The region aft of the stern of the ship is examined by an overlapping plurality of preformed passive sonar beams of preselected beamwidth. Signal processing means monitor the power level of the beams and detect the presence and trajectory of an attacking torpedo so that suitable ordinance may timely and effectively be deployed to destroy the torpedo and thereby thwart the attack.

Anti-torpedo stern defense system

A multibeam acoustic apparatus utilizing a linear array of hydrophone elements in a sonar system includes a cascaded ladder capacitance-inductance network for coupling electrical signals to and from the individual hydrophone elements. The hydrophone elements are connected in series and the natural capacitance of these elements provides the capacitive characteristics of the network. Shunt inductors supply the inductance characteristics and provide a phase characteristic inversely related to frequency. Variable cumulative phase delays are provided for signals applied to successive hydrophone elements whereby a sonar beam is formed in a direction determined by the frequency of the exciting signal.

Sonar beam steering circuit

A sonar array wherein the capacitance associated with the hydrophones of the array are utilized as shunt elements in an artificial transmission line in order to form an acoustic beam. Series inductance elements to the transmission line are variable with d.c. current flowing through coils wound about a magnetic core about which coils forming the series inductance of the line are also wound, thus permitting the sonar beam to be steered to any desired position.

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Forest Hills, NY, United States of America

Kenneth W Groves