Sonardyne positioning systems for South Korea's ASR-II

Sonardyne has announced that its underwater positioning and tracking technology will support search and recovery operations undertaken by the Republic of Korea Navy's (RoKN's) new auxiliary submarine rescue ship (ASR-II).

Under a contract with GE’s Power Conversion business, the ASR-II will be fitted with Sonardyne’s Ranger 2 Ultra-Short BaseLine system. This will interface onboard the vessel with GE’s Seastream Dynamic Position control system providing accurate and fast position reference updates during critical station keeping activities.

The Ranger 2 onboard the ASR-II will also be used to simultaneously track the position of, and communicate with, Sonardyne instrumentation fitted to the new, untethered Deep Search Rescue Vehicle (DSRV) that is being built to operate from the ship when it comes into service.

Ranger 2 uses Sonardyne’s 6G hardware and Wideband 2 signal technology to track underwater targets beyond 11km, with position updates acquired every second, allowing a vessel to work in any water depth, shallow or deep.

The ASR-II and its moonpool-deployed DSRV are being built under South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration as a replacement for the submarine rescue ship RoKS Cheonghaejin. The 5,200-tonne ASR-II is expected to be delivered to the RoKN by the end of 2022.