The Next Generation of Ship-Handling Simulators
By GORDON I. PETERSON
Senior Editor
The bow of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer swung
slowly to starboard as the ship maneuvered down the Elizabeth River past
the Norfolk, Va., waterfront. The weather continued to deteriorate. A fog
bank lay ahead, but the lights of channel markers were still visible from
the bridge.
Suddenly, off the port bow, a sleek speedboat darted from behind a pier
and closed rapidly through the mist. Would it continue into the channel?
Cross the bow? Friend or foe? A host of possibilities flooded the conning
officer's mind before the high-powered "small boy" finally
turned away and faded into the haze.
It was a Mark V special operations craft--a "SOC." Probably
some SEALs up from Little Creek to conduct routine training in the local
operating area, she thought. It would be nice if the guys from SPECOPS
would check in by radio for once!
The young officer, distracted for a moment by the sudden activity,
returned to the challenge of navigating her ship safely to the open ocean.
It would not be easy. A light rain began as the gloom of twilight
thickened.
Just another day in the professional development of a surface warfare
officer? Yes--but one with an important distinction. This special
sea-and-anchor detail now can be conducted entirely on a prototype
"next-generation" bridge-training simulator developed recently
by Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), an industry leader in providing
information-technology (IT) services to commercial, federal, and military
markets.
This next generation of ship-handling simulators, company officials
say, will enable the Navy to make significant fleetwide improvements to
its virtual-reality training capabilities--and at prices affordable even
in today's fiscally constrained budget environment.
A Significant Investment
"Virtual ship" bridge-training simulators have been used by
the U.S. Navy, foreign navies, and the maritime industry for more than a
decade, but their very large and expensive computers dictated that they be
installed at only a handful of locations close to fleet areas of
concentration. Navy training facilities in Norfolk, Va., San Diego,
Calif., and Newport, R.I., for example, rely on large bridge simulators to
teach officers and Sailors ship-handling, navigation, and other
operational tasks.
The need for a smaller and less expensive ship-training simulator was
apparent, and the growing capabilities of the personal computer (PC) paved
the way for CSC to design and develop a new range of powerful training
tools.
"Over the past 18 months, recognizing that technology was moving
forward very quickly, we envisioned putting a PC-based simulator on every
ship in the Navy," said Maurice Gauthier, the vice president of CSC's
Advanced Marine Center in Arlington, Va. "We made a significant
investment to something that is absolutely marvelous--our CSC team really
hit one out of the park."
The opportunity to modernize ship-handling simulators was not only
apparent to Gauthier and his team of engineers, naval architects, and IT
professionals; several operational factors also came into play. During the
past year, the Navy experienced a rash of three collisions and five
groundings--leading Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark to declare a
Navywide safety stand-down in September to refocus the fleet on basic
navigation and ship-handling skills. The need to provide the fleet with a
more readily available tool for realistic training is therefore of growing
importance.
Much as naval aviators have, for more than 60 years, relied on
mechanical and, later, computer-controlled flight simulators to hone
instrument-flying skills and cockpit procedures, today's versatile
personal computer enabled CSC to develop a range of smaller, portable
prototype bridge simulators that can be set up just about anywhere on a
ship at a cost as low as $100,000.
"The young conning officer is now able to put in place skills that
are honed in a virtual environment ahead of time," said Joseph O.
Salsich, the center's director of training technologies.
Virtual Environment at Sea
CSC's compact system relies on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS)
computers programmed with Windows NT-based software developed by CSC to be
fully compliant with the Department of Defense (DOD) requirement for
higher-level architecture (HLA). The system's three state-of-the-art
cameras project high-resolution digital images of ships, ports, shipping
channels, and open-ocean areas across a 180-degree panoramic horizon. A
traditional monitor also may be used to display simulated operations. The
operator inputs ship-handling instructions with simulated bridge equipment
or by using a mouse linked to the PC.
The Advanced Marine Center also has made significant progress in the
application of head-mounted displays (HMDs) and other immersive visual
systems to enhance ship-handling training scenarios. Another person
wearing an HMD, for example, controlled the Mark V SOC encountered by the
junior officer conning the ship during her transit of the Elizabeth River.
Entering speed and rudder commands with a hand-held control, the Mark V
operator immersed himself in the destroyer's operations--interacting in
real time in a common virtual environment. Up to six entities can function
simultaneously on today's system, and that number will expand as more
robust software is developed.
Project developers at the Advanced Marine Center consulted closely with
the Navy when they planned the simulator's design features. "We
started having discussions with ship drivers, Navy decision-makers,
trainers and educators, and the people in charge of requirements,"
Gauthier said. "There clearly was a need for a shipboard simulator
capability--not just for the sake of better ship-handling, but also to
improve situational awareness during Navy operations around the
world."
Confidence Born of Experience
Typical training scenarios involve such traditional applications as
navigation and collision avoidance, harbor transits, anchoring, mooring,
formation maneuvering, underway replenishment, and rehearsal for
real-world missions.
At present, CSC has modeled 24 U.S. and foreign harbors portraying
precise digital replications of the ports' major land features, port
facilities, water areas, and aids to navigation. More ports will be added
to the system's global database during the year ahead. Different times of
the day can be injected during training exercises to reproduce lighting
and astronomical conditions during all seasons of the year. Weather,
tides, currents, and sea states all can be varied at the direction of the
system's operator.
"The ship, including its topside sail areas, will react to the
hydrodynamic and aerodynamic forces working on it as the ship handler is
trying to control it with rudder and engines," Salsich said. Line
handling also is simulated during docking scenarios. "If you throw
your lines to the pier too soon," Salsich noted, "they will fall
in the water."
CSC's ability to replicate the ship-handling characteristics of the
Navy's aircraft carriers, surface-combatant warships, amphibious ships,
and logistics-force ships is equally impressive. When a ship handler
enters rudder and engine orders, a realistic time delay occurs before the
virtual ship answers the helm. The PC-based simulator will be especially
useful in teaching less experienced junior officers the principles of
relative motion.
"One of the toughest things to fix in your mind when you're flying
a plane or conning a ship in formation is how to control relative
motion," Gauthier said. "How do you maintain a wingtip's
distance, fly down a constant line of bearing, or control your rate of
closure? These things are not always intuitive, and you can only develop
and hone them through hands-on experience."
Promising Technology
A prototype of CSC's new generation of simulators was installed last
year at the Surface Warfare Officer School (SWOS) in Newport, R.I., under
a cooperative agreement with CSC. Judging from student and faculty
reaction, the trainer receives high marks for the fidelity and versatility
of its simulations.
"The students are very impressed with it," said Capt. Robert
T. Moeller, the commanding officer of SWOS. "First and foremost, it
provides our junior officers an additional opportunity for ship-handling
training." With a heavy emphasis on core surface warfare competencies
and basic mariner skills--navigation, seamanship, and ship-handling--CSC's
PC-based simulator has proved to be a useful adjunct to the school's other
simulators located in Callahan Hall.
"From our perspective here," Moeller said, "we're mostly
interested in providing additional ship-handling training
opportunities--in terms of both quantity and quality--and this particular
system has shown us the early potential to offer those advantages."
The new simulator's fidelity in replicating sea states, port
depictions, and a ship's handling characteristics also received positive
reviews. "Our early impressions are that it does a very nice
job," Moeller observed. "The students' response has been quite
positive."
Given the simulator's relatively modest space requirements, versatile
applications, and comparatively low cost, knowledgeable sea-service
professionals say that it is not difficult to envision a day when most
Navy surface ships will be outfitted with a PC-based training system.
"I could certainly see a great value in that," Moeller said.
"The closer that technology allows us to replicate reality from a
training-system capability, the more attractive such a system
becomes."
CSC's prototype of its next-generation simulator also was a popular
attraction at the January Surface Navy Association's annual symposium in
Arlington, Va. More than 40 junior officers participated in a challenging
ship-handling skill demonstration requiring them to make an approach and
maneuver an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer alongside an
underway replenishment group--under the watchful eyes of professional
mariners.
Not surprisingly, the Navy's surface-warfare community has expressed
strong interest in the system. "It's a promising technology that
needs to be pursued," said Gregory Maxwell, the Surface Warfare
Division's training-section head in the office of the chief of naval
operations.
Full-Service Support
CSC is pushing beyond its initial success with its PC-based system to
develop several additional applications for interactive, virtual-reality
simulations involving such scenarios as damage-control training, marine
engineering, naval tactics, nonlethal warfare, and force protection. Last
year's deadly terrorist attack on the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole
has imparted an appropriate sense of urgency to its efforts.
"We can use this tool--computer simulation--not just to teach and
validate doctrine, but perhaps also to develop doctrine," Gauthier
said. The center's education, training, and simulation offices were
expanded last summer in recognition of what Gauthier sees as an
"extraordinary growth industry" in these disciplines today.
CSC's Advanced Marine Center caters to a broad range of maritime
clients in the United States and around the world. The U.S. Army
Transportation Command, for example, has installed a CSC "Virtual
Ship" VS-300 Ship Bridge Simulator at its Maritime Training Center at
Fort Eustis, Va., to train Army watercraft crews responsible for logistics
support to the U.S. armed forces.
Other CSC ship simulators have been sold to Japan, Poland, and Saudi
Arabia. A contract also is being finalized with Great Britain's Royal Navy
for a suite of three simulators.
The Changing Horizon
CSC, a $9.5 billion Fortune 200 company, realigned its federal business
organization into two focused business groups in 1998: defense and civil.
Aaron B. Fuller III is CSC's vice president and general manager for
warfighting and information dominance for air and missile defense, and
oversees programs for all of CSC's Navy and Marine Corps clients.
Operating from CSC's Federal Sector offices in Falls Church, Va., and
Moorestown, N.J., Fuller described his company's realignment as
positioning CSC to have an improved understanding of the military's needs.
"The bridge simulator is a perfect example of how CSC is
responding to those needs by putting the technology of information
dominance in the hands of the warfighters today to enable them to dominate
the full-spectrum battlespace tomorrow," he said.
"Our 'vertical' business model permits my team to focus on their
individual clients' concerns," he told Sea Power. On the reverse side
of the coin, Fuller observed, CSC's military customers know that all of
the corporation's extensive IT capabilities can be brought to bear to
deliver products and services.
With roughly three-quarters of CSC's business residing in the domestic
and global commercial market, the corporation's full-service IT solutions
offer tangible advantages to DOD. "CSC has its feet and its head
firmly planted in the commercial world," Fuller said. "This
arena is aware of technology trends and the edge of the envelope, and we
know where that horizon is changing because we play an integral role in
what I call 'fleeting-edge' engagements. This is a tremendous advantage to
the customer; there's no doubt about it."
"We're trying to stay in front of our clients' requirements--to
provide solutions early and affordably," Gauthier added. At its
Advanced Marine Center, the CSC focus on the naval market includes
concept-design and program-management support for the Naval Sea Systems
Command, naval architecture, marine engineering, combat-systems
integration, modeling, training, and simulation--what Gauthier describes
as a "soup to nuts" full-solution provider for the Navy.
"We are trying to provide for the sea-going side of the Navy what
the aviation community has had for many years," Gauthier concluded.
"Entering port during inclement weather, maneuvering at sea at close
quarters, and fighting fires and flooding aboard ship all are high-risk
operations. We have the ability, with a small investment for better
training, to bring that risk down to more acceptable levels." *
|
