AN/AQS-13
Helicopter dipping sonar system
The AN/AQS-13 was a series of helicopter dipping sonar system for the United States Navy. These systems were deployed as the primary inner zone anti-submarine warfare (ASW) sensor on aircraft carrier based helicopters for over five decades. Companion versions with the AN/AQS-18 designation were exported to various nations around the globe.
In accordance with the Joint Electronics Type Designation System (JETDS), the "AN/AQS-13" designation represents the 13th design of an Army-Navy airborne electronic device for detection sonar equipment. The JETDS system also now is used to name all Department of Defense and some NATO electronic systems.
Purpose
Airborne sonar systems provide a light-weight, mobile detection sensor for locating and tracking submarines. Although limited in performance compared to larger, ship-mounted sonars, these helicopter-borne systems have the advantage of rapid deployment/retrieval times, and rapid transition between search areas. Additional advantages over ship sonars include absence of flow noise and engine noise, and the elimination of Doppler shift induced by a moving signal source. Deployed from Aircraft Carriers or other ships, these systems enable the helicopter to locate, identify and attack submerged targets within the flight radius from the home ship.
Description
The AQS-13 systems are all primarily active sonar transmitting in the upper end of the medium frequency sonar range.
The public source identifies “AN/AQS-13” as helicopter dipping sonar system. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around AQS-13, Helicopter and dipping.
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This entry incorporates text from “AN/AQS-13” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.