Lockheed Martin secures $107 million for deep water surveillance
By Marcus Boone ·
Soviet submarines were tracked by a hidden global acoustic dragnet the government denied for years, a system later bolstered by a $107 million Lockheed Martin contract.
Hydrophones lay silent across the deep ocean basins, waiting for the faint acoustic signature of a hull cutting through the dark. For decades, these long fixed arrays formed the nervous system of the Sound Surveillance System, known as SOSUS. They were designed to ensure that no Soviet submarine could move through the Atlantic or Pacific without the U.S. Navy knowing exactly where it was. For a long time, the government didn't even admit the system existed, let alone what it was doing.
Project Caesar
The public record indicates that the very name SOSUS was once classified. To the world, the installation of this massive underwater web was hidden behind the cover name "Project Caesar." The shore stations that processed the data were not identified as surveillance hubs, but as Naval Facilities (NAVFAC), purportedly dedicated to the benign pursuit of oceanographic research. It was a convenient lie that lasted until 1991, allowing the Navy to maintain a global acoustic dragnet while pretending to study the currents.
An FAS mirror program description records that the drive for this capability began in the wake of World War II, where the vulnerability of Allied supply lines to undersea threats made timely detection a "high priority in Anti-Submarine Warfare." The solution was to move the ears to the shore. By placing monitoring stations on land, the Navy made the system "basically impervious to destruction, foul weather, and ambient self-generated noise."
BEAM and PHONE
The technical operation of the system relied on two primary methods of listening. The first, BEAM, allowed operators to access form beams from multiple hydrophone arrays trained on the seafloor, providing signal gain through beam forming. The second, PHONE, provided omni-directional coverage by accessing individual hydrophones across the oceans.
As the Cold War progressed, the technology evolved from "single-beam paper displays" to computer-based workstations. The Navy had to innovate to "keep up with the threat" as submarines became quieter and captains developed counter-tactics to evade detection. This led to the implementation of faster processors and "cleaner code" to refine the art of locating a target in the void. By the end of fiscal year 1998, the Navy had standardized its equipment across all shore facilities via the Shore Signal Information Processing Segment (SSIPS) and the Surveillance Direction System (SDS), a move that significantly lowered infrastructure support costs.
North Pacific Whale Calls
When the Cold War ended, the purpose of a global submarine dragnet seemed to waver. The FAS mirror record notes that SOSUS arrays in both the Atlantic and Pacific faced an "uncertain future of shutdowns and closings." Facilities in Bermuda, Adak, and Keflavik were closed as the Navy consolidated the network through array retermination and remoting.
In this period of transition, the mission drifted. Some of the arrays were placed in a "standby status," where data remained available but was no longer continuously monitored. The human element shifted as well; the Navy began increasing the role of Reservists to "protect the capital investment and maintain the infrastructure in peacetime," according to a report from the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs.
Interestingly, the ears didn't stop listening; they just changed their targets. The record notes that SOSUS in the North Pacific began being analyzed for "low-frequency vocalizations from marine mammals living in the open ocean." The tools built to hunt nuclear submarines were suddenly repurposed to track the songs of whales.
September 2005
Despite the talk of shutdowns and the pivot toward marine biology, the appetite for deep-water surveillance remained high. On April 26, 1999, the Navy awarded a $107,031,978 firm-fixed-price contract to the Lockheed Martin Corp. in Manassas, Virginia. This was for Phase II of a new deep water, undersea surveillance system—a "long life, passive acoustic surveillance system" capable of multiple mission applications.
This new system was designed to provide long-term barrier surveillance and long-range coverage of open ocean areas, even in regions with high ambient noise. The contract included an option that could have pushed the total cumulative value to $153,234,288. The procurement was handled through the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command electronic commerce website, with two offers solicited and two received.
While the old SOSUS arrays moved toward standby or closure, this new investment in Manassas ensured the Navy's acoustic reach would not diminish. The work on this system was expected to be completed by September 2005.