A key element of "Sea Power 21" is the Sea Warrior initiative, which will "serve as the foundation for warfighting effectiveness by ensuring the right skills are in the right place at the right time." This initiative will focus the Navy's talents, imagination, and energies to achieve what Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vern Clark sees as "streamlined teams of operational, engineering, and information technology experts who collectively operate some of the most complex systems in the world."
If the Navy is to be successful in this, no longer can the men and women of crews be merely afterthoughts, plugged into warships' designs long after other important decisions and trade-offs have been made. Instead, human performance must be considered, up front, as a desired warfighting capability, much the same as any key performance parameter. Indeed, "Sea Power 21" underscores "the human factor in the development of advanced technologies [and] that the warrior is a premier element of all operational systems."
In short, the discipline of human system integration (HSI) is critical to mission success. To implement HSI correctly, the Navy must change dramatically how it designs, engineers, acquires, and support its warships.
Sailor Performance Is Critical
For more than 200 years, Navy engineers and managers have designed, engineered, tested, and acquired systems and platforms without regard to human operators' and maintainers' skills and performance, measuring success or failure by focusing on hardware and (since the advent of computers) software. Rarely did they consider accommodation of humans to be a key system element. As a result, manning and training costs have remained high and the service has had to cope with technological systems that are confusing to operators and difficult to maintain, or have unforeseen frailties.
The july 1988 downing of an Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes (CG-49), for example, was a tragic wake-up call. The ship's combat information center (CIC) personnel misunderstood the source of an important call on the identification of the track, believing that the identification of an Iranian F-14 provided by a person in the CIC was more reliable than it actually was. Later analysis showed how the CIC crew, operating in a high-stress environment, with both gun and communications circuits failing in a time-compressed situation, made decisions that led to the destruction of the airliner and the loss of 290 passengers and crew. Among other needs, the subsequent tactical decision-making under stress (TADMUS) study concluded the Navy had to take people into account in the initial design and engineering of its combat, communications, and training systems, particularly since advancements in information technology and processing were dramatically increasing the amount of data and information available to operators. TADMUS demonstrated that the Navy needed to do better, but only gradually has the idea of incorporating HSI in system and platform design gained currency.
Likewise, the financial cost of not accommodating people traditionally has been ignored. The Navy's conscription mentality usually results in it solving shipboard problems by throwing more people at them. With increasingly tight fiscal resources and the cost of a crew commonly comprising some 60% of the total ownership costs of a ship, the service gradually has come to realize that people need to be considered more as integral elements of the total ship system. Even so, more often than not HSI has been perceived as too difficult, too expensive, and too "touchy feely."
It Is Systems Engineering
Human systems integration is a specialized, formal engineering discipline, essentially the marriage of systems engineering and behavioral science. Its primary concerns are for the safety, performance, and interactions of people with the equipment they operate and maintain. The fundamental objective of HSI is to influence systems design and engineering such that human capabilities and limitations are taken into account to ensure the resulting systems will have the highest and safest performance at the lowest total ownership costs. HSI provides a disciplined engineering approach to an area traditionally perceived as being more intuitive and arcane than scientific and empirical. Incorporating good HSI principles in systems engineering leads to good human performance, which is one of the (if not the most) critical elements in overall systems performance and mission success.
The Vincennes tragedy generated numerous HSI initiatives and programs, and much has been achieved in the past few years. For example, the Navy now employs several top HSI specialists, and these people have been working to institutionalize this discipline throughout numerous Navy platform and systems acquisition programs. In addition, the Integrated Command Environment Project at Naval Sea Systems Command in Dahlgren, Virginia, focuses on a multimodal advanced computer interface/ interaction capability, human-performance modeling capabilities, and the human-centered design process.
All these programs have been valuable, but they are piecemeal initiatives. Much more is needed if "Sea Power 21" is to be realized.
Embracing Integration
In September 2002, Vice Admiral Phillip Balisle, Commander, Naval Sea Systems Command, announced the creation of the Human Systems Integration Directorate (NavSea 03). The directorate serves as NavSea's single point of contact with the Chief of Naval Operations, Commander, Fleet Forces Command, Office of Naval Research, other systems commands, Naval Education and Training Command, and other Navy, Defense Department, and joint offices for HSI-and human-performance-related activities. The HSI Directorate has been charged with examining the entire Navy acquisition process from the human-performance standpoint, and in its first year it has challenged the business-as-usual approach of the Navy to sustaining operational readiness.
The HSi Directorate assists program executive officers, program managers, and Commander, Naval Sea Systems Command, with all aspects of HSI. In addition, it helps align NavSea with the Chief of Naval Operations revolution-in-training initiatives. The directorate's top-level objective is to maximize warfighting capability at minimum cost through effective application of HSI, optimal manning, tailored training, and measured human performance. This objective will be reached by ensuring that the human element is given equal treatment alongside technology, equipment, computers, and computer programs during systems development.
In early 2003, NavSea 03 announced the establishment of the NavSea Human Systems Integration Clearinghouse for Issues and Policy. This web-based tool (www.hsiclip.org), based on previous work on the DD-21 program, provides a broadened forum in which design agents and the fleet can identify and vet unclassified human systems integration, personnel, and training issues that affect surface ship and submarine designs. The overall goal is to optimize sailor performance by identifying these issues, resolving them, and integrating improved design features and policies into shipboard combat, engineering, logistical, and administrative systems.
During the past year, NavSea 03 already has completed the following:
* Established NavSea 03 as technical authority for HSI
* Developed human-performance metrics and certification criteria
* Integrated HSI into corporate NavSea policy and guidance
* Published and distributed the Navy Ship Systems Program Manager HSI Guide
* Led the NavSea alignment and initiated technical and training support agreements with the Naval Personnel Development Command and five Navy learning centers
* Conducted 15 HSI program reviews, including the DD(X), San Antonio (LPD-17), Littoral Combat Ship, and CVN-21 programs
* Established HSI exit criteria for the DD(X) preliminary design review
* Provided HSI input for the Littoral Combat Ship/Flight OO request for proposal and CVN-21 operational requirements document
* Provided HSI recommendations for DoD 5000 series acquisition guidance update
* Provided HSI input to acquisition criteria for the Sea Warrior Implementation Road Map
* Provided HSI input to the Navy's ForceNet report to Congress
* Authored the signed Virtual Systems Command HSI memorandum of agreement
* Established the Human Performance Test Laboratory at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren
* Established interoperability training as a fundamental element of the overall interoperability program
* Conducted an aggressive campaign to educate the NavSea and program executive office work force
These are just the initial steps in a campaign to ensure HSI is an integral part of the Navy's culture.
Rice Bowls Abound
Although a counterrevolution to Navy HSI is not yet evident, the service confronts numerous challenges on this front. There is an across-the-waterfront dearth of qualified HSI engineers in the Navy's workforce and among defense contractors that, unless overcome, will hamstring future efforts. Several engineering schools throughout the United States are beginning to address this shortfall, but it will be several years before a significant number of HSI-trained system engineers enter the workforce. The Air Force and the Army award degrees in human factors at their academies, but the Naval Academy offers no courses on the subject. In the Navy academic community, there is one bright star: the Naval Postgraduate School new Master's degree program in HSI.
Despite increasing awareness of human operators as parts of systems, the hardware/software focus remains alive and well, as reflected in the Navy's various transformation initiatives, Sea Trials, and the panoply of joint experiments, fleet battle experiments, and science and technology demonstrations.
"What this spells is a lot of opportunity to place the latest whiz-bang technology at the disposal of the fleet," said Rear Admiral David M. Crocker, former Commander, Operational Test and Evaluation Force, in fall 2002. "Unfortunately, in my experience, it also can spell significant problems for the fleet if these things are fielded without the rigors of development and testing. I am certainly in favor of getting these leaps in capability to the fleet faster, but not at the expense of things like training, logistic supportability, proper integration, and human factors."
The vision of "Sea Power 21" will be achieved only if sailors are integral parts of the system from the outset.
Mr. Maxwell is the Deputy Commander, Human Systems Integration Directorate, Naval Sea Systems Command, and Mr. Bost is the Technical Director, Human Systems Integration Directorate, Naval Sea Systems Command.