ATI's Developments in Mine Warfare course

Summary: The key essentials and system concepts of mine warfare are presented in this 4-day course. This course reviews mine threat, mine countermeasures, and mine neutralization, emphasizing sonar and unmanned vehicles. The course will summarize various minehunting sonar detection and classification techniques ranging from CTFM sonars to broadband systems. Methods of navigation associated with underwater vehicles and minehunting will be introduced. Techniques utilized for mine neutralization will be presented, including new approaches using unmanned vehicles. The course is designed to provide a practical understanding of the theory and current state-of-the- art technology in mine countermeasures. A complete set of notes will be supplied to all attendees. Instructors: Bud Volberg received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California. He is the president of Invotron, Inc. His past experience includes president of Acoustic Systems, Inc., chief scientist of Integrated Sciences Corp. Senior Scientist for the Naval Ocean Systems Center, founder of AMETEK Electronics Division, and head of solid-state research for Stromberg-Carlson. Throughout his career, he has been a consultant to major corporations and government. He has participated in the design and development of ASW sonars and MCM sidelooking, forward looking, and bathymetric sonar systems. Other work has involved the design of mine neutralizers, undersea work systems, waterside security, and under-ice sonars. Garry A. Kozak attended Wayne State University, Detroit, majoring in Electrical Engineering. He has over 30 years of service to the oceanographic community, including 28 years in search and survey operations with side scan sonar. For the past 25 years he has been employed by Klein Associates, one of the leading manufacturers of side scan sonar systems. He has specialized in M.C.M. and C.O.O.P application of side scan sonar and has over 24 years of hands-on experience in detecting mine-like objects. Course Outline: Minehunting Environment and Non-Acoustic Sensors. Mine countermeasures doctrine. Where are the mines? What else should be measured? Review of the oceanic environment as it relates to magnetic, optic, and acoustic sensors: ambient noise, bottom backscattering, absorption, and simple propagation. Non-acoustic sensors utilizing various magnetic methods. Sensing using cameras, scanning lasers and lidar. Examples of hardware. Acoustical Relationships. Fundamentals of various sonar techniques including side looking, forward looking, nonlinear, bathymetric, CTFM, and mammal sonars. Echo, passive, shadow and sub-bottom modes. Transducer relationships, near-field and farfield, single scanning beam and multiple beamforming methods. Design considerations for side looking sonar and synthetic aperture sonar. Nonlinear sonar. Sub-bottom detection systems. Target Characteristics. Characteristics of various targets. Formation of echo structure. Extracting target information. Platform Noise and Domes. Platform noise. Individual component noise. Vehicle noise. Helicopter noise in the ocean. Dome use and materials. Signal Processing. Detection threshold and the ambiguity function. Using the target echo structure to detect shape parameters. Human aural signal processing using a dolphin-like signal. Navigation. Pingers, markers, localized transponders. Long and ultra-short baseline methods. Doppler navigation sonar. Electromagnetic methods such as parabolic, range-range, azimuthal systems. GPS. Neutralization. Mine neutralization and removal techniques. Approach methods using divers with hand-held sonars, ROVs, tethered and untethered vehicles. Supercavitating projectiles. Minehunting Sonar Systems. Conventional U.S. surface MCM systems and systems. The U.S. Mine Countermeasures Marine Mammal Systems. Examples of newly developed MCM systems including a newly integrated MCM/Stealth system. Estimating Sonar Performance with the sonar equation. Side-Scan Sonar. Principles of side-scan operations. Examples illustrating the interpretation of sonar records: target and shadows, surface effects, sidelobes, design-related effects, towing effects, correction of distortions. Application of Side-Scan Sonar to Minehunting. Detection of mine size objects and sonar parameter effects. Choice of frequency and range/resolution issues. Search tactics and patterns. Comparison of mine sonar systems. Positioning. Q-routes. State-of-the-art and future trends. Single Beam vs. Multi-Beam focused side scan sonars. Tuition: Tuition for this four-day course is $1595 per person at one of our scheduled public courses. Onsite pricing is available. Please call us at 410-956-8805 or send an email to ati@ATIcourses.com. Register Now Without Obligation