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The Helicopter Long Range Active Sonar (HELRAS) DS-100 has been demonstrated to be the highest performance helicopter dipping sonar in the world. The wet end comprises a descending vertical transmit array of seven projector elements and a receive array of eight hydraulically driven arms which expand to a diameter of 2.6 m when deployed.

The DS-100 is capable of operating at depths to
500 m and has figure of merit (FOM) sufficient to achieve second convergence zone detection in deep water and unparalleled direct path coverage. Low-strength targets moving at slow speeds are detected through the use of high-resolution Doppler processing and long shaped pulses. Extended duration wide bandwidth FM pulses (up to
5 seconds) are available to detect the near-zero Doppler target as well.

The low (1.38 kHz) active center frequency designed into the DS-100 using proprietary transducer and beam-forming technologies allows multiple boundary interactions, reduced reverberation contamination of the received signals, and
interoperability with shipboard sonars and sonobuoys in bistatic or multistatic employment.

In addition to its long-range surveillance and search capabilities, the DS-100 is well suited to redetection, target localization and weapon delivery against deep and shallow water targets. The sonar system is fully compatible with MIL-STD-
1553B databus architectures, and its advanced reeling machine evolved from the field-proven AQS-13/18 series.