Simulation and Training: ADAS – Amphibious Deployment and Sustainment takes shape | ADM May 2009
Despite a proud history of Australian involvement in amphibious operations, and the presence of substantial amphibious hardware within the ADF inventory, the focus on amphibious warfare has been cursory at best.
Katherine Ziesing, Canberra
There are many reasons for the lack of attention to developing specialist amphibious skill sets.
The major impediment appears to be that no single agency within the ADF has ownership of the amphibious capability.
In response to recognition by the Service Chiefs of the need for amphibious skills to be developed to operate the new capability, the Joint Amphibious Council (JAC) was formed, comprising of Deputy Chiefs of Navy, Army and Joint Operations.
A further sub-group, the Joint Amphibious Capability Implementation Team (JACIT) was formed in 2006 to provide a focal point for the identification, coordination and resolution of the many Joint and Single Service Fundamental Inputs to Capability (FIC) that need to be addressed with the introduction of the new capability.
Of course, the introduction of the Amphibious Assault Ship, Multi-purpose (LHD hull designation) ships and the residual ADAS platforms and systems will bring significant challenges to the ADF.
Without a dedicated marine force, such as the UK Royal Marines or US Marine Corps, the Australian Army will provide the Amphibious Battle Group, the landing force transported by the LHDs.
The Army has a core of amphibious experience as seen in 1RAR and 2RAR in Townsville; however, the LHDs represent a quantum leap in capability, and one that the ADF must understand fully to maximise their potential and mitigate risk.
The Sea Power Centre - Australia has commented on how the LHDs will be a game changer in more ways than one for the ADF.
"Amphibious ships capitalise on all of the attributes of maritime forces, as articulated in Australian Maritime Doctrine.
"Without the need to negotiate basing and/or overflight rights with other countries, warships are often the only choice available to government to respond to a developing situation and the LHDs will provide unique response options.
"They will carry a substantial quantity of equipment, stores and personnel and will be fully operational as they enter an area of operations.
"They do not need any external support or approval to deploy and can physically operate wherever there is enough water to float.
"The LHDs will be flexible and able to undertake a large range of tasks while exploiting the attributes of Reach, Access, Flexibility, Poise and Persistence."
The Chief of Navy is the capability manager for the LHD, but the JACIT is responsive to a wide range of stakeholders involved in delivering ADF amphibious capability.
Training
The JAC has directed Training Authority Maritime Warfare (TA-MW) to commence a Training Needs Analysis (TNA) under the Amphibious Warfare Competencies Project (AWCP) to identify the Skills, Knowledge and Attributes (SKA) required to operate the future capability and develop training to provide the required competencies.
This analysis document is due at the end of the financial year and will shape how training will come together for the LHD.
In terms of what shipbuilder BAE Systems Australia (formerly Tenix) will be covering for training, they are still working on their own internal Training Needs Analysis Report (TNAR).
This will define the training required by the permanent crew to operate and maintain the LHD in a standard steaming/underway scenario.
"BAE Systems is assessing the crew requirements for current RAN platforms and the LHD in order to develop a Training Gap Analysis assessment which will facilitate a smooth transition between platforms while simultaneously reducing overall training costs.
"The TNAR is currently under development and a draft will be delivered for CoA (Commonwealth of Australia) review in October 2009 with the final to be delivered in March 2010.
"To assist with the acceptance and subsequent approval of the final TNAR, both BAE Systems and the DMO Project Office have consulted extensively with the relevant training stakeholders to seek acceptance of the formulated approaches.
"BAE Systems has initiated a progressive review program with the DMO and stakeholders in order to provide feedback on the developing Defence Training Manual (DTM) Phases outputs, so that early ownership of the developing products is achieved."
Based on the outcomes from the TNAR, BAE can present their own solutions in terms of training but they would come under a contract change proposal rather than the original contract.
"This approach provides the CoA with more flexibility than a fixed price contract as they can pick and choose the training to suit RAN requirements and available technology at that point in time."
This also reinforces BAE Systems' position not to work under fixed price contracts.
In a nutshell, BAE Systems will provide training for how to operate the ship mechanically but how the Navy, Army and Air Force bring together all the disparate elements of the amphibious capability on board the LHD remains a work in progress and an area being actively pursued by the JACIT.
Training solutions
Currently, the USMC is spending approximately $US63 million on the concept of a total Amphibious University.
This covers all levels of professional military training from Sergeants all the way up the chain of command to Generals.
A similar concept could work very well for the ADF, covering a wide range of new and virtual training for amphibious warfare exponents.
The basics of such a structure for the ADF could still be a face to face instructor teaching the core subjects, but the whole range of educational and training delivery methods such as e-learning and simulation based packages might be employed.
These skill sets would be classified as any skill set used in the Joint Operations Room (JOR).
[Note: The JOR scope here is far too limiting to meet ADF needs. For example, 10 FSB in Townsville needs to be taken from a 3rd Line Logistics Over the Shore (LOTS) capability in a benign or administrative environment to practioners of tactical amphibious landings. The two skill sets are very different and they are not applied in the JOR.]
The JOR goal would be to create a military specialist in amphibious operations and some core courses may include:
• Amphibious Australian Doctrine
• Amphibious Warfare Indoctrination
• Amphibious Airspace Operations Coordination
• Expeditionary Warfare Staff Planning
• Tactical Air Control Party
• Peacekeeping and Stability Operations
The introduction of this enhanced amphibious capability to the ADF presents many new challenges.
For many years the ADF has paid inadequate attention to the amphibious capability of her defence force.
This has resulted in a loss of expertise in several critical areas on board the ship in the areas of:
-Flight deck operations;
-Joint Operations Room;
- Health care for our injured or refugees; and
-Joint training with other allies.
In one particular area, well dock operations, Australia has never had expertise.
These positions will be coming into play for the LHDs in just a few short years and the training of the people to fulfil these tasks has yet to begin, as the best way to complete the training is still being identified.
The Supporting Arms Coordination Centre (SACC) is constantly evolving but the ADF has a long way to go in developing and practising SACC tactics, techniques and procedures.
Health care is practised on the amphibious platforms as appropriate, but it is cobbled together from all three services active and reserve forces.
Joint training is practised with allies - the major exercise being the TANDEM THRUST exercise involving the US and Australia every other year.
Significant challenges will arise on board the LHD with the introduction of ‘multi-spot flight deck operations' (6 x spots); the 2 x 11,000kw PODs, well dock operations and management of the significant electrical power generated by the generators.
Each element on their own does not provide significant challenge but simultaneous operations will cause their own complications.
However, the first LHD is not scheduled to be introduced into service until 2014 and there are plans under development within Defence and industry to ensure that appropriate training is developed and delivered to safely operate these systems.
Synthetic elements
A large part of the training for many of the LHD operators, both crew and embarked forces is likely to be synthetic in nature, due to the costs of sea days aboard the LHD and the availability of both the platform and people.
Many separate training and simulation products can be combined to produce the training solution needed for the myriad of tasks and operations that the LHD will perform.
The need for standards to be in place to make sure these elements can be integrated is essential.
There are several different methods for achieving Advanced Distributed Simulation (ADS) capabilities, which include SIMNET, Aggregated Level Simulation Protocol (ALSP), DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation), HLA (High Level Architecture) and a number of proprietary simulation languages.
The two most commonly used methods of achieving ADS are DIS and follow-on HLA derivatives.
DIS and HLA are mature architectures and have achieved IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) accreditation.
Both DIS and HLA represent open, non-proprietary standards, which are freely available to industry and for which COTS interfaces have already been developed.
Consequently, the risks associated with achieving interoperability through the use of DIS or HLA are significantly reduced.
DIS, the current universal Navy protocol, and ADS are considered to be the only potential contenders for providing the technical architecture for AWCP.
Within the ADAS and AWCP, there logically, is a requirement to conduct simulation activities when ashore, alongside, at sea and in joint exercises with allied forces.
To achieve this requirement, and maintain an acceptable level of service, the AWCP requires simulation protocols that supports aggregation of entities, interactions within a non peer-to-peer architecture, attribute ownership, and guaranteed delivery within a non real-time environment.
Consequently, DIS is currently the only viable simulation protocol, as development of ADS based on HLA defined IEEE standards are bandwidth hungry (especially in voice protocols) and are unable to be supported in proposed ‘at sea' training environments.
As the need for (and demands on) military simulation continue to escalate, there is an increasing pressure to maximise re-use of simulation components.
There is considerable economic and training benefit to be achieved by consolidating the ADF's ADAS simulation information.
A breakdown of the approximated expenditure for a generic simulation is outlined below, courtesy of the US DMSO (Defense Modelling and Simulation Organisation).
Breakdown of generic simulation implementation costs
Item Percentage of overall purchase
Hardware 2-4%
Software 4-6%
Training 10-16 %
Data capture Up to and in excess of 80%
The hardware and software procurements are only a small proportion of the budget for the provision of a system.
The approximate annual cost of maintaining a database is 10 per cent of the value of the database (the cost of obtaining the data).
Naturally, this estimate is subject to the number of changes made to the data and does not account for any reformatting required in distributing data to different simulations.
The estimate of 10 per cent does, however, cover the cost of maintaining currency, maintenance, administration and quality assurance.
Considerable savings may be generated by the design and implementation of common central data repositories, which store data in a single standard, which can then be exported to several simulation systems that use different standards.
In addition to the saving delivered from a rationalisation of data repositories, rationalisations can also be achieved within the support structures that sustain these existing infrastructures.
Naturally, if the number of data repositories is reduced, at the same time that their supportability is enhanced, the personnel and other resources required to sustain the capability can also be reduced.
This rationalisation of the ADF ADAS, Navy and Army's simulation data repositories will realise the personnel saving for redistribution to support the proposed AWCP.
Rationalisation of data, as well as being economically sound, is also a technical pre-requisite for the establishment of a meaningful ADAS and AWCP.
For the AWCP to facilitate meaningful interactions among the respective simulations, the AWCP must ensure that each simulation represents its virtual world in the same manner.
An inability to provide standardisation across the AWCP simulators will lead to unreliable, unrealistic and incorrect interactions, which will result in an absence of user confidence.
This standardisation needs to come at the beginning the planning process to make sure that simulators from different vendors can work seamlessly together.
In terms of simulation scheduled thus far, BAE Systems is contracted to provide a Ships Walkthrough Model, which will be used for Ship Familiarisation.
This solution is likely to be a three dimension model, allowing navigation in the first person throughout the LHD.
BAE Systems envisages that this tool could be expanded in the future to incorporate scenario driven simulation for a variety of standard and specialised operational procedures.
Conclusion
The US allocates 16 per cent of the cost of ship on training while the UK dedicates 19 per cent for the same task, according to their project offices.
Both these nations also have specialised amphibious units with years of experience in training and operations.
Yet both have had their issues in standing up new amphibious capabilities despite their extensive experience and the culture of such operations already in place.
At this time, Australia has no comparable culture.
The development of culture takes more than dollars; it takes time and an effort of will to change.
Australia has an adaptive amphibious capability rather than a standing one and plans for such a change are nowhere near anyone's drawing board.
And don't forget that the ski jump on the LHDs is on board and orders for the variants of the Australian JSF have not been set in stone.
2nd pass approval for the JSF is due mid-year but numbers and the choice of Australian variants are yet to be announced formally, as the second half of the New Air Combat Capability (NACC) review was not publicly released in the lead up to the White Paper.
The LHD has the potential to be home to all three services in the future should planners turn their minds to the possibilities.
Australia will be introducing their own variations of amphibiosity in the coming decade with none of the experience of the US or UK and in a much shorter time frame with fewer dollars and people.
This quantum leap forward in ADF capability will only be as good as the training and planning behind it.
Stressful Simulation
Katherine Ziesing, Canberra
Meggitt Training Systems Inc has received the results of a study it commissioned to University of South Florida and the Western Illinois University's School of Criminal Justice into how stress affects training simulation outcomes.
The research project was conducted in Hillsborough County, Florida using 150 officers from five different agencies, including both City and County law enforcement officers.
Police officers were wired with Thought Technology's "Infiniti Telemetry System" providing surface EKG (electrocardiograph), skin conductance, core temperature and two channels of respiration; then issued a non-descript uniform shirt to cover the wires.
Once wired with the bio equipment, the officer was fitted with "Mobile Eye" glasses to record both what the officer observed as well as the audio responses.
A key feature of the Mobile Eye is the cursor overlay for eye tracking, showing crosshairs, thus proving or disproving the ability of the officer to use the sights of the weapon during high stress situations.
Officers that were exposed to the workplace violence scenario (4 minutes 59 seconds) displayed a much higher heart rate.
The Mobile Eye clearly indicated that the officer cannot focus on the rear sights of the weapon under stress (elevated heart rate/high hormone levels).
Officers that have activated the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) tend to interact with the scenario as opposed to those officers that are not at a high level of SNS.
Officers exposed to the workplace scenario with the Survival Humanistic Factors© Stress Inoculator (an overhead device constructed in the lab to provide added stimulus during the scenario such as vortex cannons to simulate touch or impact, red lights activated as a distraction, and flashes of bright lights to simulate sudden daylight) had higher levels of stress hormones.
The project acknowledged that the sample was not representative of all law enforcement officers in the US.
The training of officers by one agency may differ from agency to agency.
Thus reactions by officers will vary based on individual agency training and policies.
This research emphasises the need for the simulation industry to review and understand how to produce stress in a virtual environment and develop training courseware that gives the participants a valued training experience.