Subs ease way into electronic navigation - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Subs ease way into electronic navigation

NORFOLK, Va. — Chief Electronics Technician (SS) William Hoyt reaches under the chart table aboard the fast-attack submarine Scranton and pulls out a black nylon compact disc case the size of a phone book.

“That’s the whole world,” says the ship’s assistant navigator, holding it up. Rather than containing the latest in heavy metal or rap, it holds 29 discs of the globe’s nautical charts as part of the ship’s electronic Voyage Management System, or VMS.

Moving quietly through the dark depths, submariners have long relied on maintaining an accurate location and course provided by a navigation team stooped over large paper charts.

And until recently, Scranton might have had 5,000 such charts stashed in lockers around the ship. Instead, the crew will rely on the discs and VMS on its upcoming deployment, as the Navy’s undersea fleet sheds its paper charts.

“We have started to electronically navigate and get rid of our paper,” said Cmdr. Steven Benke, submarine force navigator. “It’s a paradigm shift for us.”

And while submariners may groan at the thought of giving up their reliable, tangible paper charts, the undersea fleet is on a steady course to switch completely to electronic navigation.

Scranton’s navigation team was certified in August and on its upcoming deployment will only use paper charts for large-scale planning purposes.

Benke, who took his current job in July, said there were about 10 crews certified at the time. Today, all eight blue and gold crews for guided missile subs are certified, as are 25 crews in the attack submarine fleet. Oklahoma City was the first to certify, in October 2006.

“By this time next year, it will be ones and twos,” Benke said. “You eventually have to make that transition, and it’s going to happen.”

Likewise, the Navy’s 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines will begin certifying in 2009, with the process taking about four years to complete.

And as current crews make the shift and get certified, the Navy’s newest submarines will be going to sea essentially paperless.

Benke said the New Hampshire, a Virginia-class submarine commissioned Oct. 25, went through its builder’s trials equipped solely with digital navigation.

“That’s a big transition,” he said.

Some recent mishaps have highlighted the need for extremely precise navigation. Inaccurate charts were blamed after the attack submarine San Francisco plowed into an underground mountain 350 miles south of Guam on Jan. 8, 2005, partially crushing the bow and killing one sailor and injuring 31 others.

Likewise, an investigation into the grounding of the attack submarine Hartford on Oct. 25, 2003, on a reef off La Maddalena, Italy, during a surface cruise found faulty navigation as a cause.

For Scranton’s navigation team, working electronically means being able to navigate the sub to where it’s going instead of plotting where they think they’ve been.

“With VMS, you know where you are at that moment. It’s an instant information source,” said ETC (SS) Robert Mueller, assistant navigator for Submarine Squadron 6. “From that standpoint, it’s wonderful.”

The VMS contains multiple layers of charts — rather than a single paper chart — that can be updated continuously. When the sub is submerged, its course is constantly tracked on VMS from the Ring Laser Gyro Navigation system.

“It makes the process of trying to figure out where you need to be much faster,” Hoyt said. “Instead of looking behind you, this is all real-time data.”

To track surface contacts, information identifying commercial ships can be fed into VMS through the fire control system, further clarifying potential hazards. Likewise, fresh charts can be downloaded when the ship is in port or when new discs arrive.

Hoyt said the system is also an incredible time saver because a recently returned crew can hand over the discs from its deployment to an outgoing crew.

While the Scranton navigation team said it looks forward to electronically navigating in its upcoming deployment, they’re also looking toward the next development, such as the current touch-screen version improved with a tabbed format.

“There’s always room to improve technology,” Hoyt said.