Simulation of Modeling Upgrade Design Analysis of Maritime Helicopters for Anti-Submarine Missions

Future global crisis and conflicts in littorals will require aerial platforms, including helicopters, with enhanced antisubmarine capabilities in order to counter the increased submarine threat. The design and manufacture of new aircraft with enhanced capabilities is highly expensive and time consuming. A mid-life upgrade of existing platforms is generally the preferred option. The pre-upgrade design analysis process is intricate and iterative. This requires the mission systems integration that would enhance the anti-submarine mission capability. An intelligent, knowledge-based software tool that ensue speed and accuracy needs to be developed for the pre-upgrade design analysis. The software tool should be objectoriented that represents a collaborative design optimisation environment and enables analysis during each anti-submarine mission (ASW) or the flight path. This paper presents a simulation model that assesses the flight performance of an upgraded maritime helicopter during various flight segments of an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) mission environment. The simulation model is component of "Intelligent Decision Support System" (IDSS) a Software tool in development. The assessment is based on existing methodologies such as momentum theory, RF method etc incorporated into the Design Parametric Analysis (DPA) sub module of the IDSS. The Seahawk (S-70-B-2) is taken as case study.