Identify these equipments please.

[dy031101]

I've been messing with Shipbucket drawings recently......

There are a few equipments that I couldn't find info on, circled in the below pic (the left half of the pic is from Virginia class cruiser, the right half is from Kidd class destroyer).

Would someone please tell me what they are?  If I know at least what they are, perhaps I'll be able to Google them......

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Thanks Weaver...... I can't believe that I would nelgect that I was using a Kidd class Shipbucket pic......

[Weaver]

The LH one in the Virginia pic and the one in the Spruance pic are Whiskey-3 (WSC-3) Satellite Comms aerials: the one in the Virginia pic is side on and the one in the Spruance pic is face-on.

edit: surprisingly hard to find a pic of one on the web.... This is a WSC-1 on a Canadian Halifax, but it looks much the same. The back of the dish is perforated.








The RH one in the Virginia pic looks like a Nav radar to me, but off the top of my head, I can't recall the US designation (can look it up when I get home though).

[dy031101]

The RH one in the Virginia pic looks like a Nav radar to me, but off the top of my head, I can't recall the US designation (can look it up when I get home though).

Thanks- I too am wondering if the Virginia class cruiser has seperate radars for surface search and navigation......

There is another radar on the top half of the foremast, and both radars are facing forward...... I wonder if I can move one of them to the rear (and make it face rear).

[Henry Yeh]

Surface search/navigation radar also has the important function of collision avoidance. It's advisable to keep it forward .

[Hobbes]

Separate radars for surface search and navigation are common. Surface search is meant to have longer range, which means a lower update frequency. Navigation has limited range but high update frequency. Some navy ships have more than 1 navigation radar to avoid blank sectors.

[Amphion]

These days it's also common to mount a navigational radar in an aft quadrant, low on the ship, to act as a anti-pirate warning. Especially true in the merchant fleet.

[Weaver]

Nav radars can also be used for helicopter control, the radar tracking the helo and provide approach info to the ship controller. This is the reason why nav radar are commonly offset at 45 deg to port on RN ships: they still have a perfect forward arc, but can also see backwards into the helo approach pattern. French warships often have a separate set on top of the hanger or on the quarterdeck behind the pad, depending on the design.

Some warships mount multiple nav radars as a deception measure. The radars are effectively militarized versions of widely used commercial sets such as the Decca 1006, so if the ship switches off all it's radars except Nav and proceeds slowly, it's electronically indistinguishable from a civilian vessel to enemy SIGINT/ESM.

The radar near the top of the Virginia's foremast is an SPS-55 surface search set. The one on the front of the bridge is a Marconi LN-66 navigation set, according to the only reference I could find that bothered to identify it.

By the way, the right hand pic isn't a Spruance, it's a Kidd.