By Geoff Fein
Now that Raytheon [RTN] and HAVELSAN have partnered to market the GENESIS (Gemi Entegre Savas Idare Sistemi) integrated combat management systems for surface ships, the team is eyeing opportunities to modernize the more than 60 Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates owned and operated by navies around the globe, a Raytheon official said.
Additionally, Raytheon and HAVELSAN are waiting to see if the U.S. Navy will upgrade its fleet of frigates, Peter Smith, director, business development above water sensor systems, told Defense Daily at the Navy League Sea, Air and Space exposition in Maryland earlier this week.
According to the Navy, service officials are meeting this week in Mayport, Fla., to discuss modernizing the FFG-7-class ships.
“We’ll brief the CLASSRON (Class Squadron) in Mayport,” he said.
The frigate (FRG) CLASSRON is based in Mayport.
Smith noted Genesis could be backfit into existing U.S. Navy frigates as well.
There are 63 FFG-7-class ships globally, 30 in the U.S. Navy.
According to the Navy, 10 of the Oliver Hazard Perry-class ships will remain in service through 2019.
GENESIS was developed by the Turkish navy as an alternative to the combat management system (CMS) that was resident on their fleet of frigates, Smith said.
The TCG Gazantep (F-490) was the first Turkish navy frigate to receive the GENESIS upgrade, he added.
The modernization efforts for Gazantep including development, integration, hardware and software testing, training and maintenance services, were completed and delivered to the Turkish Navy in June 2007. Successful at-sea testing and subsequent deliveries of the second and third ships were completed in April and December 2008, respectively, according to HAVELSAN.
Turkey transferred GENESIS to HAVELSAN after successful completion of sea trials in 2007, according to Raytheon.
GENESIS is an open architecture, commercial-off-the-shelf based design with state of the art processing, Smith said.
“The weapons control processor was limited and the console displays were old,” Smith said of the previous CMS. “Genesis got rid of the old UYK-7.”
The modernization effort did keep one of the legacy AN/UYK-7 systems and it now serves as a backup to a Sun [JAVA] processor, he added.
GENESIS brings 10 new consoles onboard the ship, Smith noted.
“Raytheon put the system’s interface units in,” he added.
The first three ships to receive the GENESIS upgrade have been in operations since December 2008, Smith said.
GENESIS will enable full integration of the Phalanx weapon system, provide automatic decoy launching, and speed up the time for detect to engage from 108 second to 52 seconds and improve shore converter battery engagement from six minutes to six seconds, Smith said.
While Turkey plans to transition GENESIS from its fleet of frigates to its I-class submarines, Raytheon and HAVELSAN will begin marketing the modernization effort internationally, Smith said.
There are 33 Oliver Hazard Perry in use by allied navies, according to the Navy.
Raytheon will also be integrating the Mk 48 torpedo as part of the Turkish navy’s submarine modernization effort, Smith said.