Simulation programs help prepare the crew. From individuals to entire units, the result is an orchestral synergy that permits the joint force commander to rehearse missions.
"Initial contact on submarine, Sierra 45, bearing 345," the captain announces to the control room watchstanders. "Sierra 45 correlates to the enemy submarine reported by Maritime Patrol Aircraft. Designate Sierra 45, Master 5. Track Master 5, make tubes one and two ready for an ADCAP [advanced capability torpedo] attack, submerged settings."
"Captain, we have confirmed this is the same hostile contact detected, tracked, and driven from the Sea Base by the USS Ramage [DDG-61] and her helos and then tracked by theater long-range sensors and MPA [maritime patrol aircraft]. The theater ASW commander has authorized attack on all hostile forces in our area.
"In the control room it sounds like coordinated antisubmarine warfare—submarine, surface ship, fixed wing, and rotary wing platforms all prosecuting the same submarine in a pre-deployment training exercise. So, what is new?
This submarine crew is in a building at the submarine training site, the surface ship is alongside the pier in its homeport, and the aviation crews are in simulators thousands of miles away. Sound far-fetched? Navy Continuous Training Environment and Fleet Synthetic Training already enable Tomahawk strike training in port. In the near future, these systems will be available to support synthetic ASW.
Realistic training in port allows crews to build mission-critical ASW skills while optimizing flying hours, steaming days, required maintenance, and personnel tempo associated with comparable Fleet exercises. (PERSTEMPO is a measure of the amount of time the ship is away from homeport divided by the total time.) The training begins with a complex set of skills—including sensor employment, target localization, and weapon employment—that an individual must master to become personally proficient.
After individual Sailors are trained, the unit level team must be trained and exercised together. Then the various unit teams can be brought together to coordinate and collaborate as they develop tools for mission success. Then, and only then, can the various platforms be exercised together.
This building-block approach to developing Fleet readiness is not new. What is new is that training technologies in development can empower today's Sailors to master more of these complex problems in port, saving precious at-sea days for advanced training events.
Our submarine training strategy today allows for developing those multi–warfare area knowledge, skills, and abilities for individuals from apprentice to master. And then we can leverage these same tools and curricula for subsequent team, unit, and Fleet networked training.
Individual Knowledge and Tools
The submarine training continuum uses state-of-the-art commercial hardware and the latest tactical software to overcome old problems with scalability, affordability, and currency. The submarine sonarman learns the basic concepts of underwater acoustics by using the Interactive Multi-sensor Analysis Training (IMAT).
This personal computer program delivers context-based learning in a multimedia environment. It allows the Sailor to understand the physics of sound by visually demonstrating how sound propagates in the ocean environment. The student can alter ocean parameters that affect sound speed and can see the resultant sound propagation. The program uses Navy standard, physics-based models and high resolution databases to accurately portray complex concepts.
These advanced techniques dramatically reduce the time needed to comprehend the complex principles of acoustic beam formation, or of bottom bounce ray path interaction with the ocean bottom. Because IMAT content can be employed on PCs, learning can be reinforced on board the ship to develop individual skills or support continuing operator and officer training.
Tools such as IMAT have allowed the training community to blend instructor-led work with computer-based training, thereby enhancing the individual's experience. After the operator has a firm foundation in the theory of sonar principles—including propagation in water—he can move on to mastering specific tactical systems.
The Learning Continuum
This strategy prioritizes the maturing of individual sonar operators' skills. The underlying belief is that the operator must understand principles—but the measurement of training success is whether he acquires the skills necessary to become an immediate contributing watch team member.
The next step on the path to becoming a proficient Fleet operator is the Acoustic Analysis Trainer (AAT). This system employs Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) computers to host the same towed array tactical software that is used on the submarine. Instead of using tactical equipment designed to fit into the submarine hull's small confines, while also accommodating durability concerns and maintenance reliability of shipboard applications, the AAT uses readily available 21-inch monitors and a commercial operating system on computers networked together.
This arrangement allows students to learn basic and advanced towed array operations and acoustic analysis sonar skills with a trainer that can be reconfigured (an electronic classroom) rather than a tactical team trainer. Once mastered, the skills provide a broad foundation on which to continue building for unit-level development.
The AAT can be shared among up to 12 different operators, or an entire sonar team can use it for scenario-based training. After the operators have developed proficiency in their towed array system operations and acoustic analysis, they join additional members of the integrated combat team.
Moving up in complexity and team integration, the Sonar Employment Trainer (SET) provides a simulated underway sonar room and a variety of realistic tactical scenario exercises. It can create intense realism, which prepares students to transition to the integrated team trainer or their at-sea tactical systems.
The SET includes robust simulation software: the All World Environment Simulator (AWESIM), which stimulates tactical software components incorporated into the system and generates four dual-display sonar units; and the Sonar Tactical Decision Aid (IMAT integrated into the tactical system). The AWESIM component operates in real-time and features high-fidelity environmental models to support training scenarios involving a wide variety of oceanographic areas, targets, and acoustic factors.
Weapons Control
Similarly, the submarine weapons control arena employs a building-block approach. First the operator learns the fundamentals of target motion analysis and weapons control, through individual content and tailored modules of instruction delivered through the Integrated Learning Environment. Then he progresses to the Common Basic Operator Trainer (CBOT), which teaches him to operate the combat control system. He practices in all modes and capabilities, including weapons pre-launch planning and post-launch operations on all offensive submarine weapons. After that the team practices together, prior to full unit training.
Integrated Team Training
An important breakthrough in our strategy is the ability to network individual trainers, allowing for team integrated training. Thanks to Submarine Skills Network (SUBSKILLSNET), CBOT can be scaled up for limited team training in a school, or else reduced to a footprint and run on personal computers on the submarine. From remedial work to learning new functions, individuals can train on any combat system function. SUBSKILLSNET can be operated on a local area network, or several laptops can be connected to a router to operate a scenario simultaneously.
Because of this flexibility, an operator can conduct mission rehearsal while in port—and/or crew proficiency can be significantly improved before SUBSKILLSNET practices the entire team in a shore-based simulator. The system can emulate many shipboard systems and equipment.
Full navigation team training can be practiced and added to the sensor and combat system simulations. The piloting party can navigate in and out of 26 ports with full visual scenes, GPS, radar, sonar, combat control and electronic navigation support, either on the ship or in a classroom, without relying on specifically designed trainers. SUBSKILLSNET provides a reconfigurable training system that can be used at any time.
The Common Operational Analysis and Employment Trainer (COAET) combines the AAT, CBOT, SUBSKILLSNET, and portions of SET to provide team training at a much lower cost than that of a full team training simulator developed for unit level training. The COAET provides three distinct modes: team, analysis, and sonar tactical decision.
In team mode, the trainer uses the tactical towed array software stimulated as in SET, integrated with SUBSKILLSNET-created interfaces to CBOT. Team mode includes spherical array emulation, giving the operator basic skills at reduced cost—as well as mission planning, real-time environment update, and a periscope mockup with high resolution simulation.
In analysis mode, the system operates like the standalone AAT trainer. Combining this mode in the COAET reduced the number of trainer spaces required to have this asset. In sonar tactical decision mode, six sets of officer-of-the-deck and sonar students can learn basic, intermediate, and advanced skills in operations of tactical decision aids while interacting with Navy-approved ocean models and databases. After individual, sub-team, and team have been developed, the unit can conduct mission rehearsal in simulators.
The Unit Level
The newest and most sophisticated simulator for ASW training is the Submarine Multi-Mission Team Trainer (SMMTT). This commercial server-based simulator fully exploits Navy-approved ocean models and databases. It generates target signatures that interact with a synthetic ocean, and it produces signals that are received by the sonar system as if they came from individual sonar array hydrophones. This element level information is processed by a COTS equivalent of the actual sonar system on the ship.
The sonar and combat control systems can be set to run the same tactical software version as that on an individual ship. SMMTT simulation development and tactical software load parallels and supports the Fleet modernization schedule. This coupling maximizes the training's effectiveness, because the trainer compensates to minimize the differences between the ship and the trainer for each session.
Further, through network connections SMMTT can tie into the Weapons Analysis Facility in Newport, Rhode Island. Actual torpedo hardware and software are used in the Newport simulator, interacting with a high-fidelity ocean model to replicate in-water performance. The trainer is connected to Newport using a wide area network. Target parameters from the SMMTT training environment are fed into the Newport ocean model, where operator and weapon performance are evaluated and fed back into the SMMTT simulation. Thus, crews are challenged with real-world scenarios.
In addition to sonar and combat control, SMMTT includes high-fidelity visual modeling aimed at proficiency in surveillance and reconnaissance. It is an invaluable resource in support of efforts against terrorism through its inclusion of land masses; up to 80 simultaneous surface and air contacts; accurate periscope head window performance; weather; and the effects of sun, moon, and starlight.
All secondary systems that display information in the submarine control room or sonar are represented in SMMTT. For the crew, it is as if they were operating at sea—they use all the tools in their tool box.
And this training can be taken to yet another level.
Unlike the submarine of the past that might operate alone, today the boat is a part of the total naval force. The submarine frequently operates as part of a carrier or expeditionary strike group. In the past, all the units of these forces worked up separately to gain unit-level proficiency. Then the force would get under way to conduct a long series of exercises and certifications, prior to being ready for deployment.
Potentially, this underway workup time can now be partially supplanted with in-port mission rehearsal—providing the Navy with large cost avoidance and cost-wise readiness.
Integrating Skills and Rehearsing Missions
Because of the Navy Continuous Training Environment (NCTE) and Fleet Synthetic Training (FST) initiative, multiple units within the battle force will conduct coordinated exercises in port. The Multi-Battle Group in Port Exercise has already successfully connected surface ships and submarines in a virtual environment to conduct strike exercises. These sessions run continuously for several days, ensuring that the crews build proficiency in normal as well as casualty situations.
This type of training can be extended to other warfare areas for composite training, meaning all mission areas that the strike group must be ready to execute during deployment. In the future, NCTE will extend to maintaining ASW proficiency. As the realities of operational demands, fiscal pressures, and force sizing affect resources and time available to train, the ability to perform integrated ASW training in simulators will become increasingly important.
Through NCTE architecture, submarines, surface ships, and aircraft can conduct integrated ASW in a common tactical environment, at the same time, separated by thousands of miles. Aside from common scenario generation, the NCTE backbone provides control evaluation and feedback to all participants. Submarines and air units participate in land-based simulators, while surface units operate on their ship using onboard trainers.
The strike group trains in its homeport while gaining experience with units from different areas. When the crew takes its submarine to sea, the quality of training is fed back to the training community, which upgrades the trainers. Continuous feedback results in the highest fidelity training.
But the critical coordination necessary to generate mission success must start before ships and squadrons leave homeport.
The Navy can participate with the joint force through NCTE, which is compatible with the Joint National Training Capability. This is the architecture that all the services use to train cooperatively. Through NCTE, strike missions can be coordinated with Air Force, Army, and Navy units. This orchestral synergy permits the joint force commander to exercise all land, sea, and air units together, smoothing communication between commanders and assigned units. The joint commander can rehearse missions before they are executed in support of contingency operations.
Looking Ahead
SMMTT capability is available for training at about the same time as (or just after) the tactical combat system has been upgraded on the submarine. In support of the installation, the crew leaves the boat to receive installation training. This off-hull training challenges the crew's ability to support all its required tasks leading up to sea trials. Here we can use new technologies to bring the trainer to the Sailor.
Naval Sea Systems Command (SEA 07) is exploring an option to deliver the SMMTT training experience directly to the ship from the team training data/simulation engineering development model at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division—this would occur before the tactical equipment was installed on the ship. The data/simulation would be piped to the ship via secure communications capabilities. Combat control watchstanders would man their equipment, but it would be powered off. The trainer's data/simulation would be presented to the crew members in portable, virtual reality, head-mounted displays or equivalent devices.
Crew members would interface back to the data/simulation via portable trackballs, keyboards, and voice communication circuits to input and receive scenario updates. The exercise and the data/simulation feed from the SMMTT engineering development model would be controlled by the commanding officer on the ship, using an instructor operating station.
Delivering the new capability before the ship received the installation would give the crew the training required to assist in the installation, test and checkout phases, and sea trials, thereby eliminating the need for them to receive training elsewhere. This capability would significantly reduce the learning curve for tactical update deliveries.
The process of developing abilities during all phases of the submariner's individual skills training program is fundamental to operational excellence. It is essential to use the same tools that are provided for team, unit, and networked training. Commercial hardware and tactical software provide training with scalability, affordability, and currency. As we look to the future in the development of Sailors and crews, synthetic training capability will play an increasingly critical role.
Rear Admiral Lotring is the Commander, Naval Service Training Command. He served on numerous submarines including command of the USS Minneapolis-St. Paul (SSN-708), completing two North Atlantic deployments and earning the Commander, Submarine Squadron Six Battle Efficiency "E." His shore assignments include the Submarine Prospective Commanding Officer Instructor, Commanding Officer, Naval Submarine School, and Commanding Officer, Submarine Learning Center.
Captain Johnson is Head, Manpower and Training Branch, Submarine Warfare Division (OPNAV N87). During his 27-year Navy career, he served on the submarines USS Alexander Hamilton (SSBN-617) and USS Springfield (SSN-761) and commanded Navy Recruiting District, Columbus, Ohio. His shore assignments included Instructor, Naval Submarine School; Deputy Commander for Training, Submarine Squadron Six; and Head, Undersea Warfare Manpower and Training Branch, Undersea Warfare Division (OPNAV N77).
The critical coordination necessary to generate mission success must start before ships and squadrons leave homeport.