By DAVID F. WINKLER

Dr. David F. Winkler is a historian for the Naval Historical Foundation.

 
In recent issues of such naval publications as Sea Power and the Naval Institute's Proceedings considerable attention has been given to the IT-21 (Information Technology for the 21st Century) concept and program, and to the IT-21 systems installed on ships of the Enterprise Carrier Battle Group. Indeed, the installation of this latest Internet technology on the "Big E" has made this ship, nearly the oldest in the Navy, one of the most combat-capable in today's active fleet.

Of historical note, this was not the first time that USS Enterprise--the nation's, and world's, first nuclear-powered carrier--introduced revolutionary integrated combat system technologies to the fleet. In 1955, Commanders Eric Svendsen and Irwin McNally drafted specifications for what would become one of the most revolutionary command-and-control systems in naval history--the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS). What made this system possible was the introduction of solid-state digital computers that were far more compact, energy-efficient, and durable than their vacuum-tube analog predecessors.

The two commanders foresaw a system in which the data collected from various lookouts--as well as from radars, sonars, and other sensors of all the ships in a task group--could be shown on the same display to give the tactical commander a real-time overview of the current situation.

There was one obvious drawback--namely, that erroneous data could be inputted and displayed to distort the picture in accordance with the "GIGO" principle--garbage in, garbage out. However, the potential usefulness of the system persuaded the Bureau of Ships to establish a special project office in 1956 to design, develop, and procure a working NTDS prototype. Thanks to generous funding and a relatively loose working environment that inspired innovation, the office aimed to have a system ready for testing in April 1959. The system was assembled, with contractor assistance, by officers and technicians at the Naval Electronics Laboratory (NEL); initial testing then proceeded and proved NTDS to be a viable concept. Adm. Arleigh Burke, then chief of naval operations, was sufficiently impressed that he ordered the system to be installed on five ships to undergo testing at sea. The ships, in addition to the Enterprise, were the conventionally powered carrier USS Oriskany, the nuclear-powered cruiser USS Long Beach, and the guided-missile frigates USS King and USS Mahan. Lt. Peter K. Cullins, who had learned computer programming and NTDS operations at NEL, oversaw the NTDS installation on the Oriskany and Enterprise in 1961; other officers supervised installation of the equipment on the other three combatants.

USS Enterprise, commissioned on 25 November 1961, was the first NTDS ship to go to sea. Because she initially was the only NTDS ship on the East Coast, she spent much of her time demonstrating the system's capability to NATO observers and in developing what came to be called NATO Link 14--a teletype link that provided the NTDS air and surface picture to non-NTDS ships. In 1962, Oriskany, King, and Mahan steamed together off the West Coast to conduct a service test to determine if several ships could work together to develop, and use, a common data picture.

The service tests proved that the combat information centers of several ships in the same task force could indeed "act together" in coordinating their collective sensors and weapons against what was then a rapidly growing Soviet air and submarine threat. It was not until several years later, though, that the system really proved its worth--and justified its cost--in operations off the coast of North Vietnam when Long Beach and other NTDS-equipped ships took turns at tracking all aircraft over North Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin in what was called the "Positive Identification Radar Advisory Zone," or PIRAZ. In addition to tracking U.S. air strikes, the forward-deployed PIRAZ ships vectored fighters against enemy MiGs, and occasionally engaged the enemy aircraft with missiles. Indeed, Long Beach made history in May 1968 when she tracked a MiG on her NTDS consoles, and destroyed it with a Talos missile. The unfortunate MiG was the first aircraft ever shot down in combat by a ship-launched surface-to-air missile! *

Information in this article is derived from Malcolm Muir's "Black Shoes and Blue Water: Surface Warfare in the United States Navy, 1945­1975," published by the Naval Historical Center in 1996, and from information provided by Rear Adm. Peter K. Cullins, USN (Ret.), a National Historical Foundation member.