Proposal No. OPP-9622604 Principal Investigator: Coakley, B. ABSTRACT This proposal seeks support for a design study of a submarine-mounted SWAth Bathymetric Imaging System (SWABS) to be used on US Navy nuclear-powered submarines during future unclassified science cruises to the Arctic Ocean. The system would be an adaptation of a demonstrated design, the SeaMARCTM towed side-looking sonar system. Towed platforms can be readily adapted for hull mounting on a submarine. The proposed 12kHz side-looking sonar will acquire co-registered bathymetry and backscatter of the seafloor across a swath up to 20km wide. If the SWABS is installed for the 1997 cruise, the remaining three cruises in the Submarine Science program (SUBSCI) could collect more than 800,000 km2 of data, covering a large fraction of the deep Arctic Basin operational area for these cruises. The final result of this study will be a set of documents that demonstrate the feasibility of installing a swath bathymetric imaging system on the submarine assigned to the 1997 SUBSCI cruise.
