'What's the difference between a good naval officer and a great one? Answer: about six seconds," Admiral Arleigh A. Burke famously declared. The quintessential destroyerman, known for his aggressive, high-speed battle tactics, Burke believed that hesitation caused by a lack of confidence or preparation gives adversaries a dangerous advantage: they can order the disposition of their forces, fire their weapons, and gain the upper hand. Six seconds can be the critical margin between life and death, and victory or defeat.
Outmaneuvering the enemy and bringing superior firepower to bear are key naval skills. These capabilities require not only dynamic leadership but also a solid foundation of warfighting readiness encompassing every system on a ship. The primary responsibility of the Surface Warfare Officers School (SWOS) is to train today's surface warfare officers (SWOs) to seize the initiative, make rapid decisions, and demonstrate sound tactics.
The fiscally constrained environment of recent years has forced the Navy to find cost-effective ways to train its officers for sea duty. Relying more on simulators, computers, and abbreviated schoolhouse rotations has helped meet training requirements. SWO personnel qualification standards for training fundamental naval skills have reemerged, and their deckplate focus has been reinstituted.
The school has identified, with the help of assessments from the Fleet, the need to re-emphasize the training of our profession's core competencies. An overview follows, by department, of recent and projected changes in the SWOS curriculum.
Fleet Training
The Fleet training curriculum includes advanced shiphandling and tactics (ASAT) and the SWO introduction course. Training covers a broad range of core naval missions and is reinforced in simulated tactical scenarios.
The move to a deckplate mindset in the training regimen is supported by assessment surveys that our students and afloat leaders complete. From this information we learn that junior officer training needs to emphasize shiphandling, zone inspection and spot checks, message writing, enlisted manpower management, administration, and engineering.
Responding to the Fleet's needs, we developed the SWO introduction course for Officer Candidate School accessions, which is provided in six Fleet concentration areas for U.S. Naval Academy and Reserve Officer Training Corps accessions. Other improvements include switching the former SWOS division officer course to the ASAT course, which will improve navigation, seamanship, shiphandling (NSS), tactical knowledge, and performance; engage a partnership between SWOS and the Fleet to improve training; provide incentives for excellence in officer performance; and recognize exceptional ship training programs.
The course focuses on three modules, including maritime warfare, NSS, and engineering. It includes topics supported by scenario-driven events in the full-mission bridge and conning-officer virtual environment (COVE) simulator/trainers.
A student with maritime warfare and fundamental scores of 85 percent or greater and 96 percent or greater on the rules-of-the-road exam becomes an honor graduate and will receive increased consideration for a second division-officer tour. Any ship that averages greater than the honor-graduate criteria for a calendar year earns the Surface Warfare Training Excellence Award, recognizing that ship's excellence in the training of its junior officers.
Maritime Warfare Department
Maritime warfare provides tactical training for officers who are detailed to leadership positions in the Fleet. Instruction includes training in warfighting, leadership, management, shiphandling, and billet specialty. The combat direction center and Coast Guard tactical action officer curriculum prepares naval aviators and Coast Guard officers to serve in those billets.
Key enhancements in this department are in the operations, readiness, training, and engineering curriculum. We have shored up weak areas, especially in combat systems maintenance and engineering. We have revised this curriculum, increasing our focus on the maintenance and material management process, corrosion control, antennae, distance-support practices, the continuous process, and added modules on specific equipment and associated challenges.
The curriculum also has been modified to greatly increase the time spent on material readiness and material assessment, zone inspection, the ship's restricted availability/Fleet maintenance availability process, equipment installs, and the supply/budget process.
In current ship's maintenance project management, students are taught to identify and document discrepancies and to prepare for maintenance availabilities. We have improved instruction in task management and plan of action and milestones development and are reinforcing the need for spot checks under the maintenance and material management system. Under supply management and departmental budgeting, we emphasize job prioritization and aggressive project management, along with quarterly budget review and management of unfunded requirements.
Maritime warfare is also giving tactical action officer students more "stick time" by enhancing our open-architecture reconfigurable training systems. Instruction on these simulators reinforces classroom instruction and presents students with numerous tactical scenarios, some taken from current, pressing issues, such as anti-piracy operations.
Material Readiness
The material readiness department provides instruction to all SWOS students. The department prepares them to manage the operation and maintenance of shipboard propulsion plants and auxiliaries and trains active and reserve Navy and Coast Guard officers in damage control for all classes of surface ships.
We have incorporated significant improvements in this department based on feedback from Fleet SWOs. The first is Maintenance University (MU), which provides maintenance management and integrated process briefings. These lessons address the concerns at each shipboard operational level from division officer through major command. The university integrates the contemporary maintenance concepts of reliability-centered, condition-based, and continuous maintenance in the context of the Navy's ship maintenance initiatives.
We are changing material readiness instruction for prospective officers. We address Fleet-wide and force maintenance management processes and policies through the inclusion of MU, as well as visits by board of inspection and survey, ship class squadrons, and type command representatives. We are also reinstituting the senior officer shipboard material readiness course (SOSMRC) as a five-week course of instruction, which will precede the existing eight-week PCO curriculum, covering in greater detail combat systems maintenance and engineering material readiness. Classroom instruction will be reinforced through hands-on labs, practical exercises, and a weeklong ship ride.
Training Engineering Officers
The prospective engineering officer course features another initiative. We have instituted an aggressive trainer technology refresh program to remain current in ship simulation/emulation technologies. We anticipate adding an integrated LSD-41/47 desktop-engineering simulator and enhanced touch-screen technology for all engineering simulators by the end of fiscal year 2009.
SWOS trains to engineering officer-of-the-watch qualification standards and coordinates with the afloat training group to evaluate and certify each prospective engineering officer/main propulsion assistant on their ability to learn and display the requisite level of knowledge required before graduation.
We have added the organizational maintenance management system-next generation laboratory to our training assets and strengthened the material readiness department's Shipride program to ensure that our instructors can reinforce the material self-assessment basics.
Command at Sea
SWOS command-at-sea department trains prospective executive and commanding officers, and major command officers for key leadership roles in Navy surface ships, ship squadrons, maritime expeditionary squadrons, and coastal squadrons. Its curriculum focuses on improving training, execution, and self-assessment in navigation and seamanship, shiphandling, maritime warfare, Fleet operations, engineering and material readiness, legal, supply, personnel, and various administrative processes. Feedback from waterfront COs, Afloat Training Group (ATG), Class Squadrons (CLASSRONs), and the staff at Commander, Naval Surface Forces influenced the curriculum's revision.
In the last several years shipboard supply department operations on the waterfront exhibited a negative trend requiring increased effort by the type commander (TYCOM) N41 shops, CLASSRONs, ATG, and COs and XOs to assist, and in some cases, replace struggling department heads and disbursing officers. SWOS and the TYCOM N41 collaborated on a plan to increase supply instruction from two to eight hours on the new supply day, covering all aspects of operations to allow the CO/XO team to spot poor trends and mentor their supply personnel.
A day of solid instruction at SWOS could preclude the three days needed for an inventory discrepancy, the three weeks required to conduct an investigation, and the three months required if a detach-for-cause is warranted. It also might preclude 24 months of an underperforming supply department having a negative impact on crew morale. A single day of instruction by supply corps experts is time well invested.
Supply is only one example. The same concept was implemented months ago for personnel, admin, legal, operations security, electronic key management system, electronic navigation, and a host of other common topics. Some classes run for two to three hours, some for two to three days-but all are designed to help CO/XOs avoid recurring errors and invest that time in training their crew to drive, fight, and maintain their ship.
'Shipride'
By scrubbing the curriculum across the eight weeks of classroom time, it was possible to emphasize core skills while simultaneously concentrating on traditional areas such as maritime warfighting, engineering, damage control, and material readiness. New initiatives, such as inviting the Navy's chief of information to rewrite the media training and public affairs office curriculum, were implemented with excellent student feedback. Mentorship sessions based on daily ship's operations are a series of "sideboard topics" discussed formally or informally as time and student interest dictate and remain posted in classrooms for further discussions.
The fifth week of SOSMRC training, Shipride, was strengthened to ensure that while underway time is preserved for familiarity training, available port time is used in a curriculum designed by the respective CLASSRONs to expose students to their organizations-personnel, resources, responsibilities, and interaction with the Fleet.
Better Teaching Tools
Revising curriculum material and topics have been successful, but we've also had to provide the tools for effective instruction. We upgraded the audio-visual system, and framed and hung homeport charts in the classroom from around the globe. Also, expanded maritime warfare curriculum dictated the need for faster Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) access, but the old 128k SIPR pipe did not permit adequate data flow to make these key Web sites usable. To rectify this problem, the broadband-equivalent SIPR pipe has been installed.
Additionally, SWOS collaborated with the surface warfare development group and other warfighting commands to populate the in-house classified LAN with materials such as tactical memorandums and operational tasking that can be searched in seconds locally and are periodically refreshed for currency. Students have access to NIPR and SIPRNet on their desktop computers.
Training and Simulation
We have formed a training and simulation department to maximize student exposure to our present systems. After thoroughly assessing our training requirements for the Fleet, we will be acquiring significant enhancements to our simulator-based curriculum.
- LCS Bridge Trainer Improvements will increase the functionality of the current LCS-1 full mission bridge trainer, provide for the construction of the second LCS trainer (LCS-2) configuration, create two LCS-lite (single-student station) trainers, allow for bridge wing shiphandling control, and provide for a second classroom.
- SWO Intro Course (OCS) Classroom/Simulators will add a classroom and six conning officer virtual environment (COVE) simulators.
- TAO-ITS Phase Two second-generation upgrades will support advanced multi-warfare scenarios. The TAO-ITS teaches individual tactical training to prospective TAOs in air defense, surface warfare, and undersea warfare. Upgrades will be made to voice technology, tactical complexity, and tutoring.
- LCS Operational Area Databases will set up 75 operational area databases to support LCS shore-based trainer LCS tactical training and mission rehearsals.
- COVE Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), a prototype under development, is scheduled to be introduced in fiscal year 2011.
- Intelligent Aggressor provides a teaching platform for responding to multiple small-boat attacks by pirates, or irregular or conventional naval forces. We are requesting funding to support transition of the Office of Naval Research Intelligent Aggressor Initial Operating System simulation software to full operational capability.
- DDG-51 Engineering Trainer will offer a second full-sized engineering console trainer for students. By fiscal year 2012, the Navy will have 66 DDGs, and the current trainer is already being used at its full capacity.
- Full-Mission Bridge-2 will provide a much-needed second full-mission bridge. The original full-mission bridge program is at full capacity. Full-Mission Bridge-2 will add a look-down capability to enhance the realism of pier work and UNREP training.
Core Values plus Technology
The key to building successful surface warriors is a solid foundation of core competencies. This is why SWOS has returned to basics and revamped its syllabus. By continuing to strengthen these basic skills through improving the training offered at each level of SWOS instruction, from division officer to major command, SWO students are better able to successfully serve in their follow-on billets. And though technology has provided vast improvements in that training and in the way we fight, our greatest assets remain the men and women who serve in the Fleet. SWOS is dedicated to giving today's surface warriors the necessary tools to capitalize on those critical "six seconds" that Admiral Arleigh Burke identified as the margin between defeat and victory.