From Turbulence To Testing To Combat Success

A Key Enabler for Operational Superiority and Warfighter Readiness

By GORDON I. PETERSON

Gordon I. Peterson is a technical director at the Anteon Corporation's Center for Security Strategies and Operations.

Should President Bush order U.S. military action against Iraq during the months ahead, a comparatively small group of U.S. Navy scientists, engineers, and technical specialists can be secure in the knowledge that they played a key role in enabling the Navy's carrier battle groups and amphibious ready groups to conduct combat operations with maximum effectiveness.

In today's Navy of computerized, highly networked, and software-intensive combat systems, it falls to the Combat Direction Systems Activity (CDSA) in Dam Neck, Va., to ensure that all non-Aegis ships (more than a third of the fleet's surface force of combatants and amphibious ships) are now able to go to war with seamless interoperability.

"There is no margin of error in what we give to the warfighter," said Capt. Daniel S. Beach, CDSA's commanding officer. "They are laying their lives on the line."

Beach's conviction reflects his 25 years of experience both as a surface warfare officer (with combat duty as executive officer of the guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd during the Gulf War) and as an acquisition official (including a recent tour as the deputy program manager for the Navy Area Theater Ballistic Missile Defense Program). The Global War on Terrorism has only served to heighten his command's awareness of the importance of its work.

"We are fighting a war," Beach told Sea Power. "Every day I want to know that we are doing something for the warfighter. My men and women come to work for a purpose--to produce warfighting readiness and operational superiority."

"Face to the Fleet"

For nearly 40 years, beginning with its role as the Navy's software-development activity for the Naval Tactical Data System during the 1960s, the men and women assigned to CDSA have delivered, maintained, and supported mission-critical combat-direction systems for the Navy.

A December 2000 organizational realignment elevated CDSA to shore-command status under the Dahlgren (Va.) Division of the Naval Sea System Command's Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC)--tacit recognition of the importance of CDSA's mission as a combat systems integrator, battle force tactical training facility, and multifunctional land-based test site responsible for the certification of combat systems interoperability for deploying Navy carrier battle groups and amphibious ready groups.

Although CDSA's mission has grown in recent years, the command's steady focus on operational readiness endures. CDSA's facilities on the Atlantic Ocean shoreline at Dam Neck--five miles south of the Tidewater's Virginia Beach resort area--are strategically located within a 40-mile radius of the homeports for approximately 50 percent of the Navy's ships. "We face to the fleet," Beach said, noting that CDSA uses its proximity to senior Navy and joint commands, the Virginia Capes operating range, and tactical training commands to leverage its contributions to fleet readiness.

"Our location on the land-sea interface provides easy access to fleet units and allows them to draw on our systems-engineering expertise, infrastructure, and intellectual capital," Beach said.

With its high-performance computing systems, access to all shipboard radar systems currently deployed in the fleet, and experienced staff, CDSA has emerged as a key player in the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Distributed Engineering Plant architecture and the Navy's "D-minus-30" (month) cycle for ensuring battle force interoperability at the "beyond-platform" level.

Electronic links with Norfolk Naval Base, NSWC Dahlgren, Naval Air Warfare Center Patuxent River, Md., and the Aegis Combat Support Center on Wallops Island, Va., provide for a broad range of electronic signals for joint testing and training across the full spectrum of naval warfare.

In addition to its technical support and responsibilities for interoperability testing and certification, CDSA's on-line systems provide the capabilities needed to support tactical team training for Navy, joint, and coalition forces. Under Beach's leadership, CDSA also is expanding its efforts to partner with local Tidewater academic institutions, shipbuilders, and defense contractors to allow cooperative testing, training, and research--leading Rep. Edward L. Schrock (R-Va.) to applaud the command's teaming initiatives in southeastern Virginia. "The regional economic influence of CDSA is well underway," Schrock wrote Beach in September.

Among CDSA's more noteworthy assets, in addition to its robust connectivity to the Distributed Engineering Plant, are its High-Performance Computing Facility, the Multifunctional Land-Based Test Site, the Collaborative Engineering Center, the Tactical Combat Control Department, and the Kaler Battle Force Tactical Training Facility.

"In terms of our fleet-support capabilities and location," Beach said, "I like to think of CDSA as one of the jewels in the NAVSEA crown."

Measurable Improvements

CDSA serves as a "one-stop" shop in the DEP and the D-minus-30 cycle for interoperability testing and certification for the non-Aegis ships it is assigned to support. The command creates and maintains computer programs for several combatants and multiple versions of programs for each platform. CDSA's technicians, its small uniformed staff, and 131 Navy civilian scientists and engineers offer expert assistance in such functional disciplines as engineering, software development, logistics, configuration management, and systems integration.

CDSA's contributions to the Navy's resolution of its interoperability deficiencies reflect a shared vision for what are, by design, software-intensive combat-direction systems. "As we approach system-of-systems solutions and try to make stand-alone systems work together," Beach told Sea Power, "many of the solutions are to be found in the software side of the interface. I want this command to be recognized for the leadership it is providing for solutions to the integration and interoperability challenge."

During the past five years, CDSA has taken important strides toward fulfilling this vision by evolving into a state-of-the-art software production and systems integration facility. In September 1997, it became the first Navy tactical software developer to earn the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute's (SEI's) Capability Maturity Model Level III (CMM III) rating. The command now is seeking to improve its customer-support performance to achieve an SEI CMM Level IV rating.

In addition to frequent face-to-face meetings with battle force staffs during the D-minus-30 cycle, new technologies have proved beneficial to CDSA's configuration management, testing, and certification work. Collaborative engineering, distance learning, and the wider bandwidths provided by Information Technology 21 allow Sailors at sea to obtain engineering information directly from the Navy's shore-based engineering community when needed.

The many hundreds of volumes of printed technical manuals formerly issued to all ships--heavy, difficult to keep current, and consuming valuable space--have largely given way to the use of compact discs. Sailors and contractor maintenance personnel also are provided the names, e-mail addresses, and telephone numbers of NAVSEA experts ashore to permit "one-touch" support.

"We have seen major measurable and tangible improvements in battle force configuration management, early shore-based testing, and providing the warfighters with a documented certification of their interoperability capabilities and limitations," Beach said. "We now must improve the way we push this knowledge back into our Navy schoolhouses and in-port training exercises.

"Developing the knowledge is only one step in the right direction," he continued. "You must share it and have it incorporated in the warfighter's planning and training cycles so they can learn how to exploit the capabilities of their combat-direction systems to the maximum extent."

Vision 5

Looking to the future, Beach is making major investments in the education of the CDSA workforce to continue the command's quest for excellence. He also seeks, consistent with CDSA's core capabilities and mission, to improve its ability to expand its workload supporting new Navy, joint, and coalition requirements.

"We have more than doubled the amount of money we invest in training and education since 2001," Beach said, "and we have grown from 88 to more than 130 scientists and engineers [in CDSA's 330-person workforce] in the same period." Key to this strategy is the ability, before they retire, to rejuvenate CDSA's aging workforce by encouraging CDSA's more senior and highly experienced staff to recruit and mentor new employees.

During the next five years, CDSA's "Vision 5" business strategy seeks to increase its Department of Defense Working Capital Fund to $500 million annually (from a current base of $120 million), to expand its capacity to five major business centers, and to increase its staff to 500 uniformed and civilian employees.

If successful, CDSA's reputation and demonstrated technical excellence could point the way to expanded participation in top-priority naval, joint, and coalition warfare programs, including several related to still-emerging homeland-defense and port-security mission areas.

CDSA has recorded several noteworthy achievements during the past year in fulfillment of its strategy, including the first proof-of-concept demonstration, in December, of NAVSEA's Global Test and Training Network-Pierside (GTTN-P) concept. During that demonstration, the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard, moored pierside in San Diego, Calif., was able to establish connectivity with CDSA and successfully complete an interactive interoperability test scenario.

The success of the demonstration showed that the ship and CDSA's land-based test site could, from a combat systems perspective, exchange information as if they both were participating simultaneously in a live exercise. Such capabilities could allow the Navy to use its ships as interactive test platforms to augment Battle Group Interoperability Testing at land-based sites.

A month earlier, CDSA's Integration and Interoperability Branch showcased its simulation capabilities internationally with a major training demonstration--in Wilhelmshaven, Germany--involving NATO's Naval Armaments Group and units of the Federal German Navy.

In May, the guided-missile destroyer USS Porter, supported by CDSA staff, participated in a unique joint-service Ballistic Missile Defense interoperability test event that networked the Porter with the U.S. Army's Patriot surface-to-air missile laboratory in Huntsville, Ala., and the "Arrow" Weapon System support facility at the Space and Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, Calif.

Similar efforts on behalf of Navy ballistic missile defense programs continued apace during 2002. In October, for example, CDSA led an in-port exercise for the Nimitz Carrier Battle Group in San Diego, with CDSA personnel training the Battle Group in the creation, detection, tracking, and engagement of simulated ballistic missiles through use of the Shipboard Theater Air and Missile Defense Exercise Controller (STEC). This was the first Navy in-port exercise that provided ballistic missile defense training to an entire battle group.

"Trying to make all of our complex systems work together and interoperate is a huge technical challenge not too far removed from putting a man on the moon," Beach observed.

Despite the challenges and what, at times, seems like an insurmountable workload, Beach and the other military and civilian professionals of CDSA Dam Neck face the future with optimism. "This command, along with many others, is a part of the solution set that will continually improve the warfighting capability of the fleet," Beach said. "I would like to see the continued evolution of our technical capacity to provide our warfighters with solutions to their problems." *

"I Need to Get This Fixed!"

The Navy's need to remedy major and growing deficiencies in battle force interoperability came to a head during the 1990s when, owing to inadequate configuration control and a proliferation of software baselines in new and legacy weapons and combat-direction systems, several ships were unable to deploy with their carrier battle groups.

Beach had firsthand experience with such problems in 1998 when he served as commanding officer of the Spruance-class destroyer USS Deyo, a unit of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Battle Group. Interoperability shortfalls surfaced when the battle group went to sea during the final stages of its training and workup cycle for deployment--far too late in the process to allow for effective remedial action.

"Our battle group commander took the group to sea and found that not all units could integrate and interoperate," Beach recalled. "Each ship seemed to have a different combat-direction-system software baseline. There were huge numbers of dual tracks [i.e., duplicate radar tracks for a single target] and many communication problems. I remember our battle group commander [then Rear Adm. Scott A. Fry] saying, 'This can't happen; I need to get this fixed!'"

At times, Beach said, he felt that his destroyer's less-capable combat-direction systems gave him a better grasp of the operational battlespace than did the more sophisticated systems on his Aegis counterparts. "We had relatively good success on Deyo," Beach said, "because the battle group experienced such turbulence in keeping the composite tactical picture together."

In response, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jay L. Johnson ordered NAVSEA to take the lead--working in close coordination with the Navy's other systems commands and fleet commanders--to resolve all major interoperability issues and impediments. This led to NAVSEA's development of the Distributed Engineering Plant--or DEP--a nationwide network of shore-based technologies, facilities, and capabilities that has successfully moved battle group interoperability testing and evaluation ashore during the past two years.

The "D-minus-30" process also was established so that planning for a deploying battle group's upgrades to combat systems, testing, and certification for interoperability would begin 30 months before its scheduled deployment.

Catapulting USS Tarawa Into the 21st Century

The ongoing efforts of Combat Direction Systems Activity Dam Neck to improve the effectiveness of the fleet's legacy combat-direction systems were spotlighted with its cost-effective upgrades to the amphibious assault ship USS Tarawa's Integrated Tactical Amphibious Warfare Data System during the 1998 to 2000 timeframe. Tarawa, commissioned in 1976, faced shortages of critical spare parts for its aging system. Its software could no longer be maintained, and its interoperability deficiencies were growing--but the ship was slated to remain in commissioned service for a number of additional years.

CDSA adopted a two-track approach to assist Tarawa by: (1) upgrading the ship's Combat Direction System (CDS) to state-of-the-art capabilities, but in a way that (2) would not break the bank. Actual work to implement design improvements began early in 1999 and continued for 20 months. The goal was to finish upgrading the CDS in time for the ship's scheduled deployment in August 2000.

The collective efforts of the Tarawa's crew, port engineers, the Southwest Regional Maintenance Center, and the NAVSEA/NSWC team allowed CDSA to develop and install a state-of-the-art Advanced CDS that incorporated large-screen color displays and a wide range of improved decision-making aids. All work was accomplished at approximately one-third of the cost of comparable upgrades to theTarawa's sister ships USS Saipan and USS Nassau.

In September 2000, then-Capt. Garry Hall (now a rear admiral), Tarawa's commanding officer, reported "flawless" results in the CDS upgrade to commander, Amphibious Group Three. "The improvements in command and control afforded by the installation of Advanced Combat Direction System and the command station over the legacy Integrated Tactical Amphibious Warfare Data System has catapulted Tarawa's warfighting capabilities into the 21st century," Hall wrote.

In his view, CDSA Dam Neck's technical and training support made Tarawa "... the most battle-capable amphibious vessel in the fleet."

New Milestones in At-Sea Training

During Exercise Foal Eagle 02 last March, the Combat Direction Systems Activity (CDSA), Dam Neck, Va., and the Aegis guided-missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur recorded several significant milestones in computer-simulation support of live exercises. CDSA led a team of government and industry partners in designing and fielding a system that linked the Curtis Wilbur, while operating at sea, to a widely distributed computer simulation already providing interactive training support to shore-based air and missile defense units on the Korean peninsula. The linkage was established without impeding the ship's mobility or its ability to train in other areas of naval warfare during the exercise.

Numerous "firsts" in the missile-defense segment of the Foal Eagle exercise were attained as a result. The USS Curtis Wilbur was the first ship to:

* Participate interactively while at sea in a computer-assisted live training exercise being conducted ashore;

* Exchange Link 16 Theater Ballistic Missile (TBM) tracks over Satellite Tadil J with shore-based Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries in a live exercise environment while at sea;

* Attain a shift of reporting responsibility for TBM tracks among U.S. Air Force Airborne Laser (operating as a computer model), an Aegis ship at sea, and U.S. Army Patriot batteries ashore during a field training exercise;

* Install and operate the "Ku Band" wide-band communications system, and be the first to use it for the exchange of exercise simulation-and-control data; and

* Enter, from sea, Battle Force Tactical Training (BFTT)-generated simulation entities into a widely distributed training simulation running ashore for integration into the overall simulation architecture supporting a field training exercise.

All of the Curtis Wilbur's TBM exercise play was performed while the ship was fully engaged in all other aspects of the U.S. Seventh Fleet's live exercise play in the antiair warfare, undersea warfare, amphibious warfare, electronic warfare, naval surface fire support, and antisurface warfare mission areas.Special Report: Combat Direction Systems Activity, Dam Neck, Va.