§ Sir Geoffrey PattieTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the outcome of the recent competition on the submarine hull-mounted sonar system.
§ Mr. SainsburyMy Department has today announced the placing of a contract worth about £10 million with Plessey Naval Systems Limited for the development and manufacture of a new sonar for Royal Navy hunter-killer submarines. The equipment is to be known as Sonar2074 and will include new arrays and associated processing and display equipment.
The contract, which is firm-priced, was awarded to Plessey following a competition. The work will last about five years and will be carried out at the company's factories at Templecombe in Somerset and Newport, Gwent.
Sonar2074 will be retrofitted in three Trafalgar and Swiftsure class submarines and is being procured at around one third of the cost of the equipment which it replaces. The new processing and display equipment will also be considerably more compact than the existing systems, a major advantage in the confined space of a submarine.
The reduction in the cost of this sonar and its much smaller size owes much to the research work on computer technology and signal processing carried out at the Admiralty Research Establishment at Portland. This work is also being applied in the development of other new sonar systems for RN submarines and surface ships.
Good sales potential is envisaged for a suitably modified version of Sonar2074, particularly the compact processing and display sub-systems.