Page 24: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 2006)

24 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News

NSWC Panama City said the Navy is employing new methods to test and cer- tify the mission packages.

Much of the LCS combat capability comes from systems that were originally developed for use with some other plat- form or for some other purpose. Some of these systems are quite mature and have been thoroughly tested. Others have not been fully tested. "We decide how much risk there is in bringing new, unproven systems into the mission pack- age, and determine if that level of risk is acceptable. We are using a lab-based test environment as well as at-sea test- ing. So we will end up deploying with some systems that have not been through the full OPEVAL process," says

Brady. "That's the new paradigm for the 50-knot Navy." "We used to wait until a system was completely ready for an operational evaluation, and then we created an elab- orate test regime that took six to nine months, maybe longer. After that, we would wait for the analysis and the report of the results. Now we are con- stantly testing. We test a little, learn a little, and test some more. It's ongoing, and we are incorporating what we learn," Brady says. The systems being employed on LCS address the full regime of mines at all depths. Some of the systems are in production, some are in low-rate production, and some are engineering development modules (EDMs). Greg Roberts heads up the

Mission Package Development Lab at

Panama City where they have replicated the actual operation centers to be found on each of the LCS seaframes. The ruggedized COTS workstations will have the same software packages. The lab enables the flexible development, integration and certification of the initial spiral software packages.

The software packages can be readily adapted as the technology and process- ing capability matures. "It's rapidly reconfigurable," Roberts says. "We can be certifying 1.0 while we are develop- ing 1.1.” “We're looking at tighter integration if the command and control software for the vehicles, with less legacy software employed where possible," says Sandy

Martin, a system engineer at NSWC

Panama City. The RMV, for example, is autonomous, and follows pre-planned waypoints. The operator on the LCS can monitor the visual presentation transmit- ted from the camera on the mast. The vehicle operator works next to the sen- sor operator. In the future, the two sta- tions might be combined, or one opera- tor might be able to control multiple vehicles. "We want to aim for less and less vehicle control, and only intervene with an autonomous vehicle as needed,"

Martin says. "LCS has shattered all of the old approaches to shipbuilding," says Martin. "This is the first time we have pulled this many items together that were never designed to work togeth- er."

About the Author

Edward Lundquist is a senior science advisor and naval analyst with Alion

Science and Technology, Washington,

D.C. A retired U.S. Navy captain, he currently supports the Navy's Surface

Warfare Directorate.

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