It does!

A naval task group will know where its helicopters are, and will you that it is investigating in a certain area.

You could be dealing with a lone ship, or a landbased heli or an MPA. I’m sure there are scenarios where it is a usefull selfdefence measure. While IDAS (based on the IRIS-T air-to-air missile) is primarily targeted against air threats, such as ASW helicopters, it is also for use against small or medium-sized surface vessels or coastal land targets.

IDAS eh? Well, we will have to see who buys it. Just as well that in these littoral days, naval helicopters will tend to have defensive avioinics, flares, chaff etc, I guess.

Surely any submarine that fires a missile gives her location away, whether or not it hits the target?

Not if it is in a one on one with a single ASW helicopter or MPA. Incidentally, the above – about missile firing giving away position – would apply to SSBNs and SSGNs too, or any sub firing an encapsulated antiship missile.

Puma series of FCS provides closed loop guidance.

Intersting, so this could be used also to control a medium gun (e.g. 76mm). Analogies to use of Oto 76mm in antimissile role….

imho both systems are not identical.
the information around are very strange. afaik there are some documents around (even some labeled with thales) which says, that both uses tacticos. but on the other hand a lot of sources are quoting sewaco-XI for lcf and sewaco-fd/tacticos for the f-124.
the f-124 cms is often quoted to be more advanced than the cms of the lcf and to support this claim the doctrine based automation of the f-124 cms is used as example.
to me it’s unclear how big the differences are (only software or software and system architecture) but it seems to be clear that they use not the same systems because in this case there is no reason what may caused the big trouble with the f-124 cms.

Under the SEWACO designation, Thales Nederland produces integrated sensor, weapon and command systems of varying configurations intended for corvettes, frigates and higher level combat ships. Full advantage is taken of the integration of the various subsystems. System functions can be carried out using distributed data processing, depending on the operational status of the combat system components. The heart of the system is the TACTICOS combat management system (see separate entry under that name).The first integrated SEWACO system was developed for the Royal Netherlands Navy frigates of the Tromp class. This system has been followed by new generations of SEWACO systems in which new technologies have been incorporated, for example for the sensors, computers and displays. In the latest generation, SEWACO FD, the processing power for the command and control software is fully distributed over the system components.A SEWACO system in general comprises four major parts:sensors consisting of primary 2-/3-D radar systems for long-, medium- and short-range air and surface warning, secondary radar sensors such as IFF and helicopter transponders, hull-mounted sonar systems and passive sensors such as ESM and IR sensors. Automatic initiation and tracking of air and surface targets is released by built-in track capability or additional primary and secondary video extractorsa combat management system evolved from DAISY via Foresee and STACOS to TACTICOS (see separate entries), comprising operator consoles, plotting table, conference display and the command and control software packageweapon control systems comprising active and/or passive target tracking and/or illumination systems, weapon interface systems for interfacing with

http://www.janes.com/articles/Janes-C4I-Systems/SEWACO-sensor-weapon-control-and-command-system-Netherlands.html

SEWACO-FD > Command and weapon control system architecture
TACTICOS > Combat Management System

Detailed info Sewaco/Tacticos here and here and here (oncl different applications for different navies)

Weights and volumes are one matter, system integration in a whole different matter.

I can try and succeed installing a huge amount of weapon systems, and still fail to accomplish system integration.

Provided it’s a matter of bigger magnitudo, all european DDG developed in the last decade, from german F124, to british Daring and french/italian Orizzonte, are ways far from being really operational, in spite of years of efforts, simply because theyr CMSs crash almost every time they simulate a tactical scenario.

The F124’s CMS was infamous in its first years because it crashed just trying to plot something, let alone depicting a complex scenario…

And having CIC and CMS highly automated and integrated does not help you sorting out troubles, it does quite the opposite indeed.

That may be due more to these ships employing more fully distributed systems than due to integration issues: In the German Navy, it’s mostly an evolution from dedicated mainframe architecture (F122) through a distributed specialized-hardware system with a unified central bus (MEKO, F123) to more-and-more software based distribution with specialized interface structure (F124, F125). The problems stem from the new base layer of the F124 software architecture – unlike other ships, F124 uses a fully distributed system. I.e. the base layer has to coordinate available resources here in addition to the usual stuff. The hardware isn’t just a single system with multiple redundancy backups, but about 30 different cores spread throughout the ship. Intention is that the ship can lose like half its processing hardware due to damage and still have the same processing available to the CMS. The CMS of Horizon and Daring use similar systems. Interestingly, while both F124 and LCF use Tacticos, the latter has not experienced the problem the former has.

The issue seems to be integrating so many systems and sensors on such a confined platform, but that should be resolvable with some effort.

Vessels such as Meko 140, Lekiu class, Ulsan class (and BNS Khalid Bin Walid derivative) seem to have similiar numbers of systems and sensors.

Kirov saga: how it was started

German F-104 Starfighters in the agressor role 🙂