Simulator boosts sub safety |
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From The Naval Submarine League |
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By Robert A. Hamilton - New London Day Groton -- When a visiting Navy captain came to the Naval
Submarine School recently to try out the new bridge simulator, he tried
to make what he acknowledged
was an overly aggressive run down the river, steaming full
speed away from the cyber-version of the Naval Submarine Base and
toward open water. A
young officer running the simulation chugged a fishing boat into his
path, forcing the captain
to order full reverse power. And just as a real 6,900-ton submarine
would respond in that situation, the hull veered off course and slowed
to about 5 knots before it slammed into the piers at Fort Trumbull. "That's
exactly how a ship 'walks' when you're backing," said the school's
commander, Capt. Arnold O. Lotring, as the sheepish officer took
off the virtual reality
helmet and watched a replay of his mistake. "It's kind of
unpredictable, so they put that randomness into the
program." Lotring
said they don't want any submariner to make a mistake that might
damage one of the billion-dollar warships or put civilians in
danger, "but if it's going to happen, we want it to happen
here." But
VESUB - Virtual Environment Submarine Shiphandling Trainer - is more
than a way for sailors to learn from their mistakes. Its rich detail and
the virtual reality helmet allows new bridge officers to see everything
they would see if they were
out on the water. "It's
far better than anything we've ever had," said Cmdr. Jerry K. Burroughs, skipper of the USS Albuquerque, who stopped in for
a demonstration recently.
"The realism, the ability to give verbal orders, it's a major
advance for us. I'm looking forward to getting my junior officers up
here." Veteran
submariners know just how the abutments in the Thames River should line
up if you're on track to bring a boat through the railroad bridge – an
important consideration when driving a 360-foot-long submarine through a
138-foot opening - or how the flagpole at the Historic Ship Nautilus
will appear as you make a
turn. But those are not the kinds of observations you can describe
easily. "Those
are the kind of "seaman eye" things we work on with the
younger guys," Lotring
said. "The
database is pretty accurate," Lotring said. "And we can
control sea state,
visibility, the number of contacts (other ships) on the river. We can
change the time of day to make it a nighttime approach." And
you can inject a variety of mishaps into any transit down the river, such as
a man overboard. Then,
when the student is done, the instructor can replay the entire
movement of the ship through the channel, speeding it up or
slowing it down or freeze-framing it at a point of interest, said Lt. Bryan
Pariseault. Submarines
are unique in that the person who is watching the river is on the bridge, while the person at the controls is a couple of decks below
him in the command center,
getting orders via sound-powered phone. Similarly, VESUB requires that
the student issue verbal commands, which are acknowledged by the
computer. Lt.
Rob Mangiafico, one of the instructors, said the simulator provides
excellent training in the importance of remaining under control. If an officer in training gets nervous about the way the ship
is headed toward the bridge
and screams out an order, the computer will ask him to
repeat it until it can be understood. Must
be ready for anything The
instructors can also throw problems into the simulation at random – a jammed rudder, a man overboard, a loss of communications or
propulsion – to see how the student reacts. "You
don't want a guy on the bridge who's panicked, you want someone who's
giving orders in a calm, clear voice, so there are no mistakes,"
Mangiafico said. "If it's a very high-pressure situation on the
bridge someday, he's already been through that experience, and he'll be
able to handle it." The
equipment can be used to simulate either the Thames River or the harbor
at Norfolk, Va. Coming later this year are databases to allow it to
simulate Kings Bay, Ga., and Pearl Harbor, both major submarine ports. For
now, the simulator is limited to the school because of the size of
computer equipment that is required to run it. But
given recent advances in computing, Pariseault said he expects the
equipment could soon be put aboard submarines. "The
day will come when a laptop will drive it," Pariseault said.
"It's getting small
real quick." Then
it's just a matter of time before databases will be compiled for any
port where a submarine might have to pull in, Lotring said. That way, a
skipper pulling into Bahrain, for instance, could run all his
inexperienced officers through the procedures, so they can be familiar with
the port and pay more attention to what else is going on around them. "The
power is its adaptability," Lotring said. "Eventually we might
drop a threat into the
database to do a port security exercise. "We're just beginning to look at all the ways we can use this." |