Publication:Sea Talk Summer 2007/A new twist for maritime coalition training
By CMDR Mike MacNeill
The USN has requested ongoing participation by the RAN in the USN Carrier Strike Group (CSG) warfighting readiness program.
This began with the USS Stennis CSG in August and the NIMITZ in November 2006. The scale of these CSG exercises can be gauged by the breadth and variety of participants.
The next planned exercise (USS Abraham Lincoln) will be in mid December this year, with another exercise planned for the USS Ronald Reagan CSG in March 2008.
Warfare training at the Maritime Warfare Training Centre (MWTC) at HMAS Watson has picked up significantly over the last year. From early last year a new coalition training capability has been developed and set to work.
In 2001 following a RAN/USN Memorandum of Understanding work began on demonstrating a capability to link the Watson maritime simulators with USN systems. There followed a number of demonstrations called Coalition Readiness Management System (CReaMs) which culminated in 2003 in a classified level link-up of the MWTC simulators with a number of USN ship and submarine simulators and a connection to the On-Board-Training-System (OBTS) of a US destroyer (USS Howard).
The decision was made in 2004 to more fully engage in national and coalition synthetic training and mission rehearsal activities. Additionally, and as a consequence of the framework published in Plans Blue and Green, FCAUST directed that simulation in training via MWTC, be further developed and implemented into the Fleet.
To that end in early 2006, FCAUST provided funding to establish a distributed synthetic training architecture able to be connected to the US to establish and maintain a persistent capability. Since then there has been a permanent simulation link between HMAS Watson and the US Third Fleet training centre in San Diego.
That new capability was demonstrated in May 2006 with the very successful conduct of a RIMPAC 2006 training exercise and mission rehearsal, involving three of the Watson simulators (FFG, ANZAC and the Command Team Ops Room), a constructive amphibious strike group and USN ships in San Diego and Yokosuka, Japan. The collective capability is now known as Fleet Synthetic Training (FST). Typically FST exercises run over three successive eight hour days, scaling up the level of interaction and complexity as the exercise progresses. Up to 300 dynamic exercise entities can be involved (ships, ground units, aircraft, missiles, friendly, hostile and terrorist forces)
In a further expansion of distributed training capability another exercise was conducted in April 2007 to link up with the USN and the US Marine Corps in a large scale amphibious assault exercise, based in the Shoalwater Bay training area. This was a first for the USN and USMC, as well as the RAN.
HMAS Watson has now been set up as the RAN hub for the exercise and operational networks for distributed maritime synthetic training. It is soon hoped to expand the Australian network to cover naval simulators in HMAS Stirling and Albatross.
The FST series of exercises have demonstrated at service, joint, and coalition levels, the potential enhancement of coalition amphibious and maritime force warfighting readiness, concentrating in the littoral/amphibious domain.
Due to the success of the events so far it is intended to regularly exercise naval, amphibious, sub, and air warfare players in the synthetic gaming environment. For example, the opportunity to include a virtual and constructive amphibious presence within a “Virtual RIMPAC 08” exercise has now been proposed.
Watson (and fleet unit crews) expect to be involved in three events per year initially, although this may increase as the FST umbrella covers more and more synthetic player sites.
Australian maritime coverage is also expected to expand, with the possible inclusion of the Collins Class submarine and some indigenous aircraft simulators.
The capability should be expanded with the added dimension of hooking pier-side FFG upgrade ships using their on board training systems (OBTS) into the game.
The ANZAC class is also expected to gain this capability over the next few years and the air warfare destroyer will also have this capability.
