Benefits of Sharing Detections for Networked Track Initiation in Anti-Submarine Warfare

Abstract : This report presents a quantitative study of a class of networking benefits in anti-submarine warfare. We show that sharing detections can produce an advantage over sharing only track-level information. We also indicate the conditions under which the advantage should be present, and estimate the magnitude of the advantage. This is achieved by focusing on the step of centralised track initiation, using metrics based mainly on sonar coverage area. We analyse multiple monostatic sonar to give a concrete example aligned with current practice. The conclusions may be summarised in the statement that a 30% detection probability can be tactically useful, provided that there are other sonars with a similar P(d) for the target concerned that are sharing information on detections. This result may provide a practical way around the great and continuing difficulty in obtaining acceptably high P(d) values at tactically useful distance from a single sonar.