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No salt spray on the bridge of this destroyer

Naval Station San Diego — With their guided-missile destroyer tied up by post-deployment maintenance, the Halsey’s bridge watch teams can’t exactly take the ship into open waters to sharpen their skills.

But they recently got a shot at perhaps the next-best thing: a new, upgraded simulated trainer that brings the high seas and foreign ports to them. They get to stay “feet dry,” as they say, in the latest Navigation, Seamanship and Shiphandling Trainer.

Inside the simulator — a room in a building near the 32nd Street waterfront — the watch team stood at several consoles and stared at the image of the ship’s bow moving through San Diego Bay projected across several large “window” monitors.

Ensign Andrew Recame was impressed with the quality of the training system, graphics and scenarios. “It’s actually pretty realistic, the way they have the screen shots and the controls,” said Recame, Halsey’s electrical officer.

“It’s a great way to train future surface warfare officers without taking the risk of casualties,” he said. “You can sit in the classroom all you want and create good tactics, but you can’t really put them into practice until you do it for yourself.”

“It definitely provides a real-life experience,” he added. “It builds your confidence level, so when you actually stand watch in front of your enlisted sailors, you know what you’re doing.”

Qualified watch-standers advised him and other crew members through this particular mission transiting through San Diego Bay. The officer-of-the-deck and watch team soon learned they would have to turn the ship around and head to open seas. “There is pressure, especially with the presence of senior officers,” Recame noted, nodding over to his executive officer. “You don’t want to mess up or anything.”

Standing near the helm, Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Monroe watched and listened as crew members quietly handled their individual responsibilities. Low voices and the hum of electronics hung in the darkened room. Small speakers tucked around the room provide for additional normal sounds, such as passing helicopters, to shake the room.

Among Halsey’s crew are watch-standers recently assigned to the ship, including seven new ensigns, none of whom had taken Halsey to sea for real. This day’s training — part of an allotted 40 hours’ worth of simulator time scheduled over five eight-hour days — was designed to familiarize them with the high-tech systems and equipment standard on most bridges.

The training “is all about the OOD ... to coordinate the movements of all of his subordinate watch-standers,” said Monroe, the Halsey’s executive officer. “It allows us to see how our watch-standers work in a realistic environment.”

Modern technology enables ships like the Halsey to get tailored training, so the watch team, for example, could take their ship into Norfolk, Va., with the flip of a switch. “We can introduce a complex surface picture with other ships and force them to communicate with the ships and get people to answer, get them comfortable to use the radio,” Monroe said, “as well as giving commands and orders and getting responses.”

“We have the ability to transplant this team in an unfamiliar port like Pearl Harbor ... so they can sort of ‘pre-flight’ the scenery,” he added.

Simulator training saves time and money versus getting the ship underway for real, Monroe said.

“Sitting in front of a computer with a joystick is sort of one level,” he said, but a simulator that enables a watch team to grow together at all levels “is a significant capability. That reduces a lot of the stress of the complexity of multiple things happening at once and having to respond to that stress.”

“It’s much different than just running a video game,” he noted. “It’s more than that. It’s real people in front of real equipment doing real reports, without the risks.”

Saving time, money

The San Diego trainer, designed and built by Kongsberg Maritime, a Norwegian company, replaced an older, contractor-owned bridge simulator well-used by crews from West Coast-based ships. That older simulator “was in use every week,” said Lt. Josh Lipsker, simulation officer for Naval Surface Forces, adding that night classes often helped fill the demand.

The new trainer is the largest system so far among smaller bridge simulators built and operational in several bases: Everett, Wash.; Mayport, Fla.; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; and in Yokosuka and Sasebo in Japan. Naval Station Norfolk will get its simulators up and running some time next year, replacing another well-used trainer.

The training system consists of:

**Full mission bridge trainer. The large simulated pilot house includes a helm and several digital consoles for navigation, radios and satellite communication, radar and electronic charts. Seven large projectors, aligned in a 240-degree screen, provide the moving “window” views from the bridge.

**Full mission bridge wing trainer. A life-sized simulated bridge wing offers consoles and graphic images on five projections that provide a wide, 220-degree view along the port or starboard side of a ship where watch-standers can practice underway replenishment, mooring and other missions.

**A smaller PC-based trainer, known as NSST V1. The Navy is installing these aboard warships so crews can sharpen their skills. As of mid-July, 28 ships, mostly cruisers and destroyers, have the system installed, Lipsker said. The V1 trainer provides a compact version of the bridge training. A software package, called “e-Coach,” provides self-study and feedback. The trainer includes a smaller-scale helm console and plasma monitors.

Operators can simulate 27 different mission evolutions, including underway replenishment, plane guard, helicopter operations, steaming in formation, harbor transits and tactical maneuvers — so far. “There is so much more we can do with this system than with the older system,” said Bill Kirkland, an instructor and retired commander who had four command tours.

“This system is pretty much in its infancy,” Kirkland said. “As the years go on, we’ll start adding on more systems” as well as missions and detailed ports.

Training experts say that good simulators can provide 80 percent of the training without leaving port. “The last 20 percent is always expensive,” Kirkland said, but he conceded that “just being out there with the wind and the spray in your face” is good, too.

Advanced high-resolution graphics provide countless maritime environments designed to reflect likely missions and the real environments where ships operate. “The better the simulation, the more you can suspend the belief that you are in a simulator,” he said.

With the small constellation of bridge trainers, ships’ crews now won’t have to travel far to get simulator training, Lipsker said. Each ship gets 40 hours of special evolution training in the simulators each year.

The combination of life-sized simulators and portable systems being installed on most warships will give watch-standers more opportunities to practice their skills when they can’t actually put their ship to sea, Lipsker said. “The money that saves us and the simulator time really is huge,” he said, noting it “also offers us more opportunity to conduct additional training.”

Sailing the virtual seas

In an adjoining space, operators seated at control stations run the full mission bridge and bridge wing simulations. Sometimes they chime in, as the harbormaster or pleasure craft, perhaps, and sometimes speaking in accents portraying the master of a commercial vessel or foreign ship.

They can tailor scenarios and environments, adding strong currents or making it more challenging, perhaps, with pitching decks in rough seas and high winds.

“We can totally sock them in. We can take fog and just reduce the visibility down to zero so they can practice slowing down” in a channel transit, for example, said Bob Liggett, a retired Navy captain.

Operators can create thunderous rainstorms and lightning — streaks of rain and flashes of light appear clearly on the projected images — and can shift the views easily from night to day. They adapt the environment to the scenarios to challenge the watch team, although they strive not to overwhelm; at some point, the training value ends.

The details of some of the graphics enable watch teams to take note of prominent shoreline features and clearly see mooring lines and flags. The wide “window” views of the bridge simulator and the even wider “outside” view of the bridge wing simulator can amplify the effects of a scenario, such as a pitching deck in rough seas, although the actual floor remains stationary. The simulator is not a full-motion simulator. Still, noted Liggett: “Folks have gotten seasick in the simulator. It’s pretty realistic.”

That’s what some midshipmen learned during their recent visit to the trainer as they spent time with the San Diego fleet. Scuttlebutt was that the trainer was so realistic it would send them over the edge, so to speak. The queasy tales of rough seas came courtesy of another group of mids who trained on the simulator the previous day.

But once they got eyes on the simulator, rotating into different stations, they were impressed. “It’s more than I expected,” said Garrett Myers, 20, a sophomore at the University of Rochester in upstate New York. “It’s a good learning experience.”

The students took easily to the system. “I think my generation is a lot more used to having good graphics,” said Bryan Kauffman, 18, a sophomore at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. “It’s a lot more believable.”

Bryan Peterson, 19, a sophomore and business major at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., stood at the helm console. “It’s awesome,” Peterson said. “It’s more complex than I thought it would be.”

Peterson spent the previous day aboard the guided-missile frigate Rentz and noticed the radar console looked just like the one on that bridge. “Doing it now, you kind of see what they are doing ... and you understand,” he said.