Surface Warfare training for Royal Australian Navy (RAN) personnel is undertaken at HMAS WATSON in Sydney. Individual operator, command team and task group level tactical training is conducted on a variety of systems, including functional simulators, Milspec equipment and CBT suites. Most of the smaller training systems have been developed at WATSON by personnel from the RAN and Serco Australia Pty Ltd, the major on-site engineering support contractor. Even though these training systems have been developed and built in-house at very low cost, they have proven to be extremely effective for shore based operator training.

This paper discusses two of the many in-house development projects completed at WATSON. Firstly, the recent development of a low cost, high fidelity emulator for the AN/SQS-56 sonar display console as fitted on the RAN's FFG-7 Class guided missile frigates and an associated scenario generator is described. The second project discussed is the development of a medium fidelity PC based Generic Radar Display Simulator that has been designed to provide shore based radar operator instruction for training functions that previously could only be carried out at sea.

Some of the lessons learned and the benefits and shortcomings experienced in using PC hardware and software development tools for these types of projects are discussed. A brief summary of the future directions for the in-house development work is also given.