Navy's synthetic training allows it to stay ready

As you read this, more than a dozen Navy ships and thousands of uniformed service members, military civilians and contractors are embarked on a major training exercise in the Persian Gulf.

But thanks to synthetic training, no one has to leave their homeport.

The two-week operation, named "Bold Spectrum," began July 13 and involves about 10,000 people and 21 ships stationed around the country, including a German ship.

The recent surge in demand for Navy services has forced the Navy to trim costs wherever possible. Earlier this year, U.S. Fleet Forces announced a scaling back of funding for planes and ships not currently on deployment.

Computer simulations have proved able to fill the gap. The technology began as an experiment about a decade ago and the Navy soon realized it could be used for training. Large-scale exercises began about five years ago, and they've grown more complex as computers and connectivity have improved.

In a synthetic exercise, controllers send real-time data to the ships' displays, communications systems and combat systems, creating scenarios that put them in a certain geographical position and then introduce all manner of threats, be they enemy planes, ships or submarines.

The Navy currently uses synthetics along with live exercises for strike groups and individual ships preparing to deploy.

The aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, for example, used similar training to qualify for major combat operations earlier this year. Normally, the ship would have taken part in an underway joint task force exercise, or JTFEX, costing about $25 million. The synthetic price tag was about one-tenth of that.

The current exercise goes all the way up to the fleet level, giving fleet and strike group staffs the chance to participate.

All assets are participating in some form in the main exercise, which involves three different strike groups in a mock Persian Gulf scenario. In addition, some of the ships are doing unit-level work, including force protection and damage-control drills.

"We're stimulating all their sensors," said Bill Garland, operational force director, from a control room in Distributed Training Center Atlantic at Oceana Naval Air Station's Dam Neck Annex. "It's as real as you can get without being out there under way."

The Navy plans this to be the first in a yearly series of exercises, said Michael Ogden, assistant chief of staff of synthetic training and technologies with Strike Force Training Atlantic. The next has been scheduled for February 2010.

Ogden said the hope is to eventually have a ship pull into port, hook up to a network, and be able to choose from a menu of real-time training options.

On Monday, about 25 miles from Dam Neck, the destroyer Nitze sat at the pier at Norfolk Naval Station.

In the ship's combat information center, Cmdr. Rich Brawley, the commanding officer, stood watching his sailors as the ship escorted a strike group through a chokepoint.

The ship returned from deployment in April. In the past, he said, his crew would have been low on the totem pole in terms of getting any major training.

With the synthetic training, Brawley said, his ship can train with more units at once, as well as train with its potential boss beyond the unit level.

As for his sailors, he said, "they stay trained up and they're not losing their skill sets." With a 30 percent crew turnover in the past several months, he said exercises like this get everyone up to speed and ready to stand watch more quickly.

One drawback, he said, is that "sailors inherently like to go to sea."

This was echoed by Ensign Brannon Pennick, the ship's anti-submarine warfare officer, who said the training was very realistic but he missed the other parts of being under way: the watchstanding, the noise, staying alert for merchant traffic and feeling the ship move.

However, Petty Officer 1st Class Stacy Ford, who manages the ship's operations specialists, said it's nice to go home every night.

"My family loves that," she said.

Matthew Jones, (757) 446-2949, matthew.jones@pilotonline.com