Appendix E 



Integration and Operational Evaluation of the Maritime Surveillance System 5000 

 with Side-Looking Airborne Radar for Iceberg Reconnaissance 



Lisa K. Mack and Donald L. Murphy 



Introduction 



Since 1983, International Ice Patrol has used the Motorola AN/APS-135 Side-Looking 

 Airborne Radar (SLAR) as its primary iceberg detection sensor (Table 1). Robe et al. 

 (1985), Rossiter et al. (1985) and Alfultis and Osmer (1990) document the iceberg 

 detection capability of the SLAR under a variety of environmental conditions. Though it 

 uses dated technology, the SLAR is fundamentally sound and has several more years of 

 useful service. However, the image display system, that used dry process photographic 

 film, was difficult to maintain and no longer met Ice Patrol's needs. Prior to the 2001 ice 

 season, the U.S. Coast Guard integrated Swedish Space Corporation's (SSC) Maritime 

 Surveillance System (MSS) 5000 with the SLAR to provide real-time digital data 

 acquisition, display and archiving. 



Real Aperture Radar (Motorola) 



Frequency: X-Band 



Peak Power: 200 kilowatts 



Polarization: VV 



Range Resolution: -30 meters 



Azimuth Resolution: 0.5° 



Table 1 . Summary of the specifications of the AN/APS- 1 35 SLAR. 



This report describes a series of iceberg detection tests conducted prior to, and in the 

 early part of the 2001 ice season to document the system's performance. Since no 

 fundamental changes were made to the SLAR, the tests focused on the use of the MSS 

 5000 display to detect icebergs. Ice Patrol's objective was to ensure that MSS 5000 

 allowed operators to detect icebergs at least as well as the film recorder and to expand 

 Ice Patrol's knowledge of the capability of the SLAR. The tests also provided an 

 opportunity for the operators to gain experience using the new system, which provides a 

 vastly improved, but more complex, user interface. From January through May 2001 , Ice 

 Patrol conducted three evaluation flights in conjunction with routine airborne 

 reconnaissance using icebergs off the Labrador and Newfoundland coasts as test 

 targets. The objectives of the evaluation flights were to compare iceberg detection by 

 MSS 5000 with SLAR film and to evaluate the ability of MSS 5000 to detect small 

 icebergs (< 60 meters in length), the iceberg size on which Ice Patrol bases its 

 reconnaissance strategy. In addition, the test flights provided the operators an 

 opportunity to determine optimum gain and sea state settings for iceberg detection under 

 various sea conditions. 



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