This paper investigates means to integrate USN surface warship bridge, deck and combat watch teams in a Live, Virtual, Constructive (LVC) training environment. Issue: Currently the US Navy’s LVC distributed training environment (called Fleet Synthetic Training - FST) only incorporates ship’s combat watch teams and squadron staffs, participating from their ships in serious games (i.e., scenarios), but do not include integral decisions and actions made by bridge and deck watch teams. Yet bridge and deck watch teams are an integral part of the combat effectiveness of a ship, especially in the visual environment in which many actions take place. Some examples of required total watch team integration are defense against fast, small boat threats, critical infrastructure/critical asset protection, and vessel Visit, Board, Search and Seizure (VBSS) operations. But in FST the bridge and deck watch teams are role-played by the white cell, muting the team-building required to create a cohesive, effective combat crew, and missing the chain-of-command interactions from gun crews to other ships to the squadron commodore. Means: This paper looks at two possibilities for incorporating bridge and deck teams into scenarios. The first is to use a dedicated bridge training facility integrated into FST. The second is to use virtual reality or augmented reality headsets, worn by watchstanders aboard ship, and integrated into FST. Applications of both approaches are closely examined, including the Office of Naval Research current effort to connect key personnel from the bridge, deck crews and Combat Information Center aboard ship with helicopter crews in a common simulated scenario. Optimal use of both virtual and augmented reality is examined.
Integrating Warship Bridge, Combat, and Deck Teams in LVC Environment
1 Views