In a 170 million zark upgrade the DDS have started deployment of the new Passive Sensor System (PSS) tactical pods which will be fitted to all Isometric derived frigates and the Rome class corvettes over the next year. The PSS pod contains new passive sensor technology and IR sensors said to give resolution and precision equal to active sensors (though the range is still fairly short range).
In a test with a development build last year a Rome corvette made a series of test attacks against a target drone, 5 attacks were made with traditional active sensors and 5 with the PSS with overall the active sensors were found to be only 0.2% more accurate. The final build PSS is said to be even better.
Larger ships will have the PSS system integrated into the hull, it is already planned for Panther Rev A which will start later this year. The last few Quasar ILU will probably also have the PSS built in.
