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Arming the Software Warrior

By Lieutenant Commander Eric Johns, U. S. Navy
October 1988
Proceedings
Vol. 114/10/1,028
Article
View Issue
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This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected.  Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies.  Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue.  The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.

 

^ hether they are called §ls, CDC (combat direction nter), TWCS (Tomahawk (TeaPon Control System), TFCC ^achcal Flag Control Center), batti0rne other acronym, Navy

Management systems are

Port ^ a'one or quietly in sup a battle group, cannot

°attle

for^ 111081 heavi|y by surface „ .es- The systems fight many ^ against many other units sen$ VC extens've manning,

„ . °r, and communications re- erm'CrnentS' ^he submarine, op-

Sq the communications expo- get) ,0 Participate fully and is areeral*y focusing on a limited ajra ar,d number of targets. The itiili • are intensely involved in fa v,hual combat and are, in lau ’ s°nie of the projectiles q^nched by the battle manage- Craj. system. Even on board air- •he Carriers, the operators in rect'COnibat information (or di- sUrf'0tl) center come from the the aCe C0|ntnunity rather than eS( av'ation one. With the wid- fqCeVariety to choose from, and it, tyith budget cuts and an \yarj?as'ng threat, the surface itiin 316 community must deter- atatv t0 ci° w'th battle C(js. §ernent systems, how to train°rT'iZe tbem’ anci how to eje effectively to become profi- I 'n their use.

Che days of knighthood, the cien l0r developed his profi- and l'y ‘hrough service as a page |earnSqf,Ulre- As a Pa8e’ he bec, ed the rules of behavior and dlTle acquainted with his leader’s weapons. As a squire, he improved his weapon skills and accompanied his leader to battle. Finally, having proved himself, he was knighted. The submarine and air communities have held true to the warrior cycle. The division officer fa­miliarizes himself with his air­craft or submarine. As a depart­ment head, he will use the same or nearly the same equipment but will be called on as an expe­rienced warrior to lead and train others in battle. As executive officer, the warrior is groomed for command, again in virtually the same suit of armor he put on as a division officer. Finally, fully qualified, he is given his own command of a system he has grown up with for 15 years.

The surface warrior is not given this opportunity to train and grow. Frequently, he is not even assigned to a battle man­agement-equipped ship until he is in his second department head tour on board a major combat­ant. Fie does not have time to become proficient. He must struggle to survive by relying on the system’s basic capabilities.

To overcome this lack of skill, the surface community must take three steps:

► Provide consistency in the career path.

► Control the variety of weapons.

► Improve the developer’s ex­planation of battle management system capabilities to the user.

The surface community has taken the first step in providing a more consistent career path by designating engineering and combat systems/operations paths at the department head level.

But it needs to start earlier and follow through to the command level. It is well and good to de­tail an officer on the combat systems/operations path, but what does it really mean? As a department head, he serves as combat systems officer on a frigate and then as an operations officer on a large amphibious ship. His executive officer tour is in a cruiser and then he com­mands a destroyer. He has gone from antisubmarine warfare to amphibious operations to antiair warfare (AAW) and back to ASW and has not mastered any of these warfare areas. To achieve proficiency, he must maintain consistency. It is possi­ble to do so. Table 1 shows ca­reer progressions for an engi- neering/amphibious ship, an ASW/escort, and an AAW/strike warfare/battle group specialist. These paths would provide a consistent progression in a prin­cipal warfare area while allow­ing the opportunity to gain expe­rience in the others. This would be particularly true for billets on the destroyers and guided-missile destroyers that can be assigned to either combatant group.

Initiating this career path has its drawbacks as well as its ben­efits. In particular, the officer must select his career path much earlier, during or before the first division officer tour. This early

Commander Johns is currently officer-in-charge of the FFG-7-cl®* Combat System Test Center. Selected as EDO, he graduated from 1 Naval Postgraduate School in 1982 with a master’s degree in weap0 systems engineering. His next tour was at the Naval Ship Weapon Sys terns Engineering Station as a Terrier Combat Systems Ships Quahtic tion Trials Officer-in-Charge, USS Norton Sound Aegis/Vertical Launc System (VLS)/Tomahawk Project Officer, and the Spruance VLS insta lation planning officer. Commander Johns also served a tour in the Coit^ bat Systems Department at the Naval Surface Weapons Center Dahlgren, Virginia. Prior to that tour, he served tours as Boilers Off*6® Main Propulsion Assistant and ASW officer in the USS Hoel (DDG-‘-

(keep it simple, stupid) principle. The Navy should go back to using its computers for number-crunching, for handling large quantities of tracks, and for processing sen­sor data. Let the tacticians, not the theoreticians, say what they need and keep them intimately involved in develop­ing it. In so doing, the Navy needs to reaffirm that for many years to come the key element in any system is the Mk-1 Human. His capabilities, using partial data to make a judgment, anticipating an action, operating in harsh en­vironments, and without power, must be fully exploited.

selection forces a heavier burden on command and recruiting to identify abilities earlier and to allow flexibility in obtaining training early in an officer’s ca­reer. The aviation community already employs this type of se­lection. Early in flight training, a choice is made among helicop­ter, multiengine, and jet aircraft. After earning their wings, the pilots are further specialized into the various communities (attack, patrol, ASW, etc.) with little expectation of changing. In the past, surface officers optimally served in all three departments throughout their careers. How­ever, the transfer between battle group and support/amphibious ships began rather recently to enhance the concept of a single surface community. This “new” career path would return to a previous concept that served the Navy well.

To support this concept, the surface fleets would have to undergo a minor reorganization as well. This would basically require expansion of the tac- tical/administrative squadron practice currently in use. The tactical squadrons would merely specialize into escort and battle group squadrons.

With better defined roles for the ships, their battle manage­ment systems can also be more effectively planned. The major combatant combat system would obviously serve as an excellent basis for the battle group ships. Similarly, the Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7) battle manage­ment system would serve as the basis for the escorts. It is rela­tively small and optimized for

other steps. With today’s meth­ods, the warrior cannot use the system improvements, because the descriptions are buried in the documentation. He is not famil' iar enough with them to recog­nize them, and, at any rate, does not have time to read them. A weapon thus lost in paperwork is as worthless as one dropped over the side.

An equipment installer would not think of putting a new sys­tem on board a ship without a complete set of technical and operating manuals. Computer programs can change the opera­tional characteristics and capabn' ities as much as an equipment change can. These changes may be subtle in their implementa­tion, but they have a significant

minimum manning in light to moderate AAW/antisurface war­fare threat levels, but fully capa­ble of conducting ASW opera­tions. Figure 1 shows how the FFG-7 battle management sys­tem could be readily adapted to support the Knox (FF-1052) class. It would be an outstanding candidate for the class that re­places them. This consolidation of systems would serve two goals. It would limit the devel­opers while giving them a more clearly defined set of require­ments and would provide stabil­ity to the users as they progress toward command.

The improvement in transfer­ring the knowledge of the weapon from the developer to the warrior must accompany the

Table 1 Proposed Surface Career Paths

CO

Tour

CO Deep-Draft Amphib/CLF

CO Escort Squadron

CO CG/Battle Group Squadron

CO

Tour

CO Small Amphib/ CLF

CO DD/FFG/FF

CO DD/DDG

PCO

 

 

 

 

Shore

Shore

Shore

XO

XO Amphib/CLF CO MSO/ATF

XO DD/FFG/FF

XO CG/DDG

PXO

 

 

 

 

Shore

Shore

Shore

2nd

Dept

Head

Tour

CG/Large CLF/Amphib- Chief Engineer Staff-Material Off.

DD/FFG-Combat Sys Officer

Staff-Chief Staff Off, Combat Systems Off

DDG/CG-OPS, WEPS Staff-Chief Staff Off, Combat Sys Off

1st

Dept

Head

Tour

Large CLF/Amphib-MPA, 1ST LT„ DCA DD/FFG/Small AUX-Chief Engineer

DD-OPS, WEPS, CICO FFG-CSO, SCO Staff-OPS

DD-CSO DDG-CSO, FCO CG-CICO, FCO Staff-OPS

 

Dept Head School

Dept Head School

Dept Head School

 

Shore

Shore

Shore

Div

Officer

Tours

Eng. Division Officer Any Ship Class/IST LT. on Combatants

Any Class-CICO, NTDS, ASWO

DD/FFG- FCO, ORDO, Gunnery, Comms, NAV, MSLO

Any Class-CICO, NTDS CG-MSLO, EWO, COMM, NAV

DD/DDG-FCO, Comm, Nav Gunnery

 

SWOS Basic

SWOS Basic

SWOS Basic

 

tactical impact. Operators must know what the existing program does and must be informed of the changes incorporated in a new program delivery. Users must require computer program development agencies, with their knowledge of the system, to provide proper instructions with the changes. The operators must then read the information and be certain they know what it means. Recently, a program was delivered with the explanation that “under some instances it may be preferable to use this version.” Even after reading all of the documentation provided, the ships’ crews did not know when to use each version.

Keeping the computer pro­gram versions straight goes along with keeping the crews properly informed. With the in­terrelationship of multiple pro­grams, using the wrong combi­nation can do more harm than good. A great deal of effort is put into providing a coordinated set of programs to the ship. This is defeated when the ship keeps the last three or four versions mixed in with the latest delivery “for backup.” This backup re­quirement indicates the user’s inability to understand the weapon. When something new does not seem to work, the re­sponse is to use the backup rather than to find out how the

new system should work. The result is a less capable system.

As the battle management weapons cover a wider range of capabilities and the warriors be­come more comfortable using them, the last step is to be able to handle the weapon when it is not fully functional. During a tactical action officer training exercise, the Link-11 subsystem failed. The instructor who was acting as battle group com­mander was at a loss as to how to report contacts not being held by the student’s sensors. When the instructor was advised to use the “red-white-blue-green” grid coordinate system, he was to­tally unaware of its existence or of how to use it. Rather than being part of an integrated, mu­tually supportive battle group, the instructor left the student to operate alone when the capabil­ity was available to compensate for the casualty.

To cope with such casualty situations, the warrior must practice them. In the 1970s, the Navy faced a major problem in the engineering area. The 1,200 PSI propulsion systems intro­duced in the 1960s were posing major hazards because the oper­ators did not know how to use them. Operation and casualty control sequence manuals were developed that consolidated the important features of all the var­

ious manuals into one source.

All levels of the training and inspection communities then en­forced the use of the manuals.

The Navy of the 1990s faces the same problem with its battle management systems. The Ol­iver Hazard Perry, Spruance (DDG-963), and Ticonderoga (CG-47)-class systems will all be five to 15 years old. No longer manned by crews that received the detailed training new crews receive, a gradual loss of knowledge through re­peated incomplete turnovers will occur. As a result, their opera­tors need the equivalent of the engineering sequence manuals. These should have the proce­dures for setting up a checklist of the various subsystems to meet threat conditions. Addi­tional procedures should provide methods to manage casualty sit­uations, which would then serve as the basis for routine battle management system tactical and casualty control drills. In partic­ular, casualty control drills should be stressed. By routinely using the systems in their casu­alty modes, the operators are forced to learn to identify and handle unusual occurrences.

This preparation would com­plete the requirements to up­grade and effectively train the software warrior. He will contim ually grow because he will be operating the same equipment over a long period of time. Knowing his system’s capabili­ties allows him to make the sys­tem meet his needs and not the developers’ theories. This expe­rience and controlled growth can be'passed on to successive gen­erations of warriors through well-defined procedures. The result will be warriors trained as division officers, tested as de­partment heads, and armed as commanding officers and battle group commanders to fully flex the battle management weapon that has been entrusted to them'

Lieutenant Command^

Eric Johns, U. S.

Digital Proceedings content made possible by a gift from CAPT Roger Ekman, USN (Ret.)

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