Arming the Software Warrior

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^ hether they are called §^ls, CDC (combat direction nter), TWCS (Tomahawk _(T^eaPon Control System), TFCC ^^achcal Flag Control Center), batti^{0rne ot}her acronym, Navy

Management systems are

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

°attl_e

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- g_et) ^,0 Participate fully and is _are^eral*y focusing on a limited _aj_r^{a ar,}d number of targets. The itiili • ^are i^ntensely involved in f_a ^v,hual combat and are, in l_au ’ ^s°nie of the projectiles q^^nched by the battle manage- _Craj. ^system. Even on board air- •he ^Carri^ers, the operators in ^rect'^COnibat information (or di- s_Urf'^0tl) center come from the th_e ^{aCe C0|}ntnunity rather than e_S( ^av'^ation one. With the wid- fq_Ce^Variety to choose from, and it, tyith budget cuts and an \y_arj?^as'ⁿg threat, the surface itiin ^{316 comm}unity must deter- atatv ^{t0 c}i° ^w'th battle C(j_s. §^ernent systems, how to ^train°^rT'i^{Ze t}b^em’ ^anci how to ej_e effectively to become profi- I 'n their use.

Che days of knighthood, the ci_en ^l0r developed his profi- ^and ^l'^y ‘hrough service as a page ^|e_arn^Sq_f,^Ulre- ^{As a} P^a8^e’ he be_c, ^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 Sy^s 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 i^nsta 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