Simulation: Simulating a real success on the LHDs | ADM June 2012

There will only be two LHD ships. With that in mind, the necessary training for all the crews, both permanent and occasional, will need to use land-based methods of training to maximise their knowledge before going on the ships themselves. Simulation, modelling and experimentation have a huge role to play for both Army and Navy.

“Simulation is very high on the Chief of Navy’s agenda for a whole range of uses,” Captain Richard McMillan, Director of the Navy Simulation Office told ADM. “There is a lot of other activity going on elsewhere but simulation based training, or if you like, what the British would call blended training, is very much on the increase.

“In a service such as the Navy which has exceptionally expensive assets, large and complex and relatively speaking very small numbers of people going into them, the training paradigm is different and the way we do it has to shift and so that’s the way we’re going.

“With relatively few people for relatively large and very complex assets means you don’t just learn by doing anymore, we can’t do it that way. We couldn’t get the LHDs commissioned and operating inside three years if it was all learn by doing physically every time.”

With this in mind, the LHDs have the opportunity to become the RAN ’s flagship for simulation ashore and ship based training. Already, there are plans for at least 14 simulators to help support the training of various roles amongst the services. Then factors in joint and collective training and the role of the platforms in exercises, actually graduate at the end of Phase 4 as qualified officers of the watch. They will have got their full qualification ashore and all they will be now requiring is a platform endorsement from the commanding officer of the ship.

“If they then leave the course and go to an Armidale patrol boat the same as now, they would need an endorsement for that boat; the captain is then satisfied that they are safe by day and by night and know all the ship systems. Same as if they go to an ANZAC or indeed, ultimately an LHD.”

This is the frame of mind that Navy now has organisation wide. The business case for simulation has been made and the throughput demands that it faces, perhaps more than its sister services, mean that it is embracing simulation more than ever before.

“Training isn’t something we can turn on like a tap; it requires a whole bunch of planning,” CAPT McMillan said. “Each particular category has got to be looked at: the qualifications required, the way we train for them, where we introduce different training measures. So simulation isn’t the whole solution but it’s a large part of modernising and improving our training system; amongst other things, it is helping us overcome the well-publicised backlog of people under training who aren’t yet qualified.”

The savings in time are particularly substantial. Captain Craig Bourke, Program Director for the LHD Program in DMO outlined that in some cases the time can almost be cut in half. Navy is working closely with BAE Systems and its subcontractors to develop a range of training solutions for maintainers, engineers and familiarisation for the ADF.

“Simulation is a word that often gets confused,” CAPT Bourke explained to ADM. “So I would say within the LHD we are deploying simulation, we’re deploying emulation and we’re deploying stimulation. We’re using all three of those aspects to provide training and learning outcomes for everything from individual trade or specialist training and awareness and competency up to a small group of collective competency, up to qualification.

“You have to have the people and you have to have the equipment, but the equipment also has to be in the right condition and the people have to be in the right condition, otherwise what you get doesn’t equal what you expect. So you could be the best shot in the world and if I give you my rifle that’s got a bent barrel, you won’t be able to hit the target. You could be the worst shot in the world and I could give him the best rifle in the world and he still won’t be able to hit the target. So really you need to make sure you’ve got that balanced equation correct to get the outcome.”

The level of training was decided upon once BAE Systems had completed a Training Needs Analysis (TNA) for Navy who then decided what needed to be covered by themselves and by BAE Systems.

“The training we are currently working on is to develop a training to train the permanent crews of the new Amphibious ships to operate and maintain the ships,” explained Robert Stirling, BAE Systems LHD Project Training Manager, to ADM.

“We’re developing training for marine engineers, for weapons electrical engineers, for seamanship; we’re developing training for supply and support,” Stirling said. “So we’re working on anything that has to be operated or maintained aboard a ship we’re developing the training for.”

BAE Systems is working with Saab for the simulator for the 9LV Combat System and also with a pre-existing simulator for capabilities such as the Typhoon system and others as trying to reinvent the wheel is not the aim of the program.

“There are a number of Army personnel on board who are part of the permanent crew,” Stirling said. “Those personnel who are cooks and communicators, we’re training them on all specific equipment. We’re also training the cargo handlers on the cargo systems on board the ship, but that’s about it. As far as training the embarked forces, it’s not within our contract.

“The ship is very automated. It’s got a state of the art integrated platform management system as well as a combat system. There is a lot of automation within this ship and there needs to be. If you consider the crew size of the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne, which was a 20,000 tonne ship, the crew size used to average 1,355 personnel when the squadrons were embarked. Now the permanent ship’s company for the LHD will be around probably 300 to 400 personnel.”

Given the automated nature of some of the systems installed on the platform, those ship systems have the ability to switch to simulation mode. This means that rather than breaking a system deliberately at sea for training purposes and bobbing around in the ocean for few hours until it’s fixed, this can still be done at sea but without affecting the rest of the operations shipboard.

“What the simulation gives us the ability to do is actually allow to what would have previously been mutually exclusive activities to occur at the same time,” CAPT Bourke said. “For example, within the LHD the platform management system, which is the control system that operates the ship platform, can be put into a simulation mode which means the plant can be managed, the ship platform can be managed and be doing its job and you can take a component of the crew - such as the engineering crew – and have them going through what would have, for all intents and purposes for them, what they see, is the ship falling apart like it’s just gone through World War III. They’re then dealing with every crisis, but it’s not affecting anyone else on the ship now.”

The three Captains were also very supportive of the bridge simulator at HMAS Watson where people are known to get seasick and use the occasional four letter word. The scenarios presented in this simulator test a range of roles and can be tailored for specific outcomes and missions.

HMAS Choules will also be a good learning experience for Navy given the same azipod steering system, a new experience for the RAN. The RAN had already sent sailors overseas on merchant vessels to get used to the azipods and has plans to expand this cadre.

The Navy has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Spanish Armada in place for such training among other things. The lessons learned from the first of class, the Juan Carlos, are already being applied to the development of training, techniques and procedures for various aspects of the ships.

“We’re still at the design and development stage,” Stirling said. “We’re looking to start delivery of our training from around May next year. That training will encompass all the operator and maintainer courses for the ship’s permanent crew.”

Both Navy and BAE Systems realise that the next generation of sailors and soldiers coming through the training regime have different learning paths. With this in mind, there is a blend of synthetic, face to face class room, online and simulator based training before going shipboard.

“We have a number of different strategies,” Stirling said. “We’re taking a blended learning approach consisting of CBT based training, face to face training and simulation. The Marine Engineers are going to spend hundreds of hours in the purpose built LHD Engineering Systems Trainer (LEST) simulator that we’re getting built by Kongsberg Marine.

“The communications operators and maintainers it will be trained on a cut down system of the real communications equipment that has been put onto the ship. It’s fairly expensive operator and maintainer training as we are recreating real equipment or the maintenance systems on board the ship.”

The best known simulation of the LHD thus far is ViSTIS, which BAE Systems had on show earlier this year at Pacific 2012. An international consortium comprising Hamburg-based ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, Canberra-based Catalyst Interactive (a KBR company), and Frankfurt-based Crytek developed the Virtual Ship Training & Information System (ViSTIS) as the perfect familiarisation tool.

The system allows users to take a ‘walk through’ of the ship, find their quarters, where the mess is and even conduct drills that require them move about the ship. Given the size of the ship, the tool will be incredibly valuable as the services get their respective heads around the craft, literally and figuratively.

“In our previous amphibs like the LPAs you’d find the Army guys would come on board, they’d go down to their troops’ messes where they were staying and they’d know how to get from there up to the upper deck for egress in case of emergency, but the rest of the time they’d be lost,” Captain Charles McHardie, Director of the Joint Amphibious Capability Implementation team (JACIT) said. “This is going to be good to actually prepare them before they embark.”

The other well known simulator coming together for the LHD is the engineering training system.

“The marine engineering systems trainer, or the LHD engineering systems trainer, which is the LEST, is being built for us in Norway by Kongsberg Marine,” Stirling outlined to ADM. “Basically it’s a number of rooms set out as per the major engineering control rooms, switchboards and marine engineering spaces on an LHD and that’s where the marine engineers will practice operating the ship with touch panels and displays representing the displays and controls that are actually found on the ship. That facility will be based in Sydney. It was a part of the contract that all the training will be conducted where possible at the ship’s home port, so we’re setting up a temporary training facility in Sydney for those ships.”

With the two ships coming ever closer in terms of delivery, the Navy is confident that they will all the other fundamental inputs to capability, but namely their people, ready for HMA Ships Canberra and Adelaide.

“There’s a graduated program in place which is bringing in the amphibious capability to reality and it’s stepped,” CAPT McHardie said. “If you look at Canberra, she works up to initial operating capability in 2014 and that consists of being able to do non-combatant evacuation and also HADR.

“She then works up to the higher end amphib, which is being able to take one full ship’s load of amphibious equipment away and do some high end amphib in 2015. Then Adelaide, she’s astern of that, but the final end point is third-quarter of 2017, Talisman Sabre, final operating capability for both platforms; at sea, high end amphibious activity.”

The three-year timeframe from IOC to FOC is both a long time and short time given the tasks that the ships will be asked to perform. However, both BAE Systems and the Navy are confident that the capability will come together in that timeframe.

“Will we have something to put the ships? Yes,” CAPT Bourke said. “Will we have facilities for training our people? Yes. Do we have a planned graduated program that brings together all those other assets that we need to bring together in order to graduate up and demonstrate the increasing levels of operational capabilities? Yes.

“Do we have the end state best possible outcome? And the answer is no. But do we have workarounds? The answer is yes.”