At-Sea Tests Aim to Improve Joint Operations.

USS Tarawa hosts exercise to demonstrate Army-Navy interoperability

Remembering to crouch and run to the safety of the wind-free hangar when deplaning is just one lesson that the Army took to heart when its pilots practiced landing helicopters aboard a large-deck ship.

The USS Tarawa (LHA-1), an amphibious assault ship, circling 80 miles off the coast of San Diego, recently hosted a Joint-service rest designed to demonstrate interoperability between Army helicopters and Navy vessels. Above the entrance to the hangar of the Tarawa, a large painted sign is displayed, saying "Beware of Jet Blast and Rotors." In the whip of the salt air, the ship's crew warns, one indeed must beware when the rotors are in motion.

Operating Army materials in a shipboard environment is vastly different than on land, service officials said during the test. The objective of the test was to improve the interoperability of Army and Navy elements aboard amphibious assault ships.

Joint operations and joint warfare have become priorities at the Defense Department. "We seldom bring joint forces together until we start operating within the confines of a particular operation, but there is a move now to train jointly, to set up a joint command structure," said Navy Cmdr. Bret Gary; deputy director of the Joint Shipboard Helicopter Integration Process (JSHIP). A $22.5 million project based at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, JSHIP is in its last year and a half of a five-year program operated for the defense secretary's Joint Test and Evaluation office.

"JSHIP came out of operations we've done in the past," said Capt. James Thompson, JSHIP's director. Army helicopters have landed aboard ships numerous times: "Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, the Gulf War -- but people were so busy doing their mission" that the interoperability problems were never recorded.

"Grenada was possibly the first significant mission that brought joint aircraft and ship together," Thompson said. In anticipation of future military operations like Grenada, "We want to give the warfighter one set of joint procedures he can use during contingency operations," he said. This test, the sixth of 12 planned tests, "goes beyond the level of the previous tests, because now we're evaluating staff coordination."

The USS Tarawa, the second Navy ship to have that name, is an amphibious assault ship based at North Island, San Diego. Built by Ingalls Shipbuilding, now a division of Northrop Grumman's Litton, the Tarawa was christened on May 29, 1976, and has a long history of joint exercises. It is the "lead ship of the LHA-class of general-purpose amphibious assault ships," according to a spokesman, and was chosen for the JSHIP exercise, because it "combines the functional capabilities of surface operations with an amphibious assault."

The JSHIP test required the participation of approximately 1,500 Navy and 500 Army personnel. The Navy participants included the Amphibious Squadron Five, Helicopter Support Squadron 11, providing search and rescue support, and the USS Duluth (LPD-6), which performed parallel operations in the same waters as the USS Tarawa. The Army group was made up of the Texas Army National Guard's 49th Armored Division, the headquarters of the 4th Brigade and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Aviation Regiments (flying Apaches, Blackhawks and Chinooks, respectively). Other Army units involved were the 449th Aviation Support Battalion and the 3rd Battalion of the 144th Infantry regiment of the 3rd Infantry Brigade. "Everyone our here has differing levels of experience," said Thompson. We have to integrate the staff to do contingency and operational planning. We (the services) talk different languages."

An example that Thompson provided on the disparate languages of the services, is the word 'L-Hour.' "In the Navy, as far back as Omaha Beach, back in Normandy, L-Hour is when you land. For the Army, L-Hour is when you take off -- it's your 'launch' hour. After several weeks of planning, we got together yesterday; and we realized we were talking about times that were 30 minutes apart. Our goal is to get these lessons learned, with procedures and doctrine that we'll be able to pull off the shelf if we get a warning and task order to execute a joint operation with the Army and the Air Force," Thompson said.

The Test

The test was a "high enough priority that an entire ship can be dedicated to it," said Gary. The reason, Gary explained, is that during the military operations in Grenada, Haiti, Somalia and the Gulf, helicopter pilots from all the services had no choice but to land on moving ships. The pilots from the Air Force and the Army were ill equipped, in these instances, with little or no information about the limitations or even physical layout of the ships, while Navy personnel aboard those ships had little or no information about the specifications of the helicopters.

The five-day exercise of landing and departing to and from the ship culminated in a joint sortie on San Clemente Island, Calif. Texas Army National Guardsmen, acting as infantry units, loaded weapons and supplies onto their helicopters and flew approximately 30 miles to the island, a 20-mile long piece of Navy-owned land off the coast of California, said to be inhabited only by goats. There, the guardsmen deplaned and performed a "security mission," taking over an airfield, with a Navy Seal unit acting as the "hostile" enemy. JSHIP personnel observed every step of the process, paying particular attention to the sailors loading the Arm's live-fire weapons. They documented their needs and observations.

The helicopters used in the test were UH-60 Black Hawk combat assault helicopters, AH-64A Apache attack helicopters, AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters and CH-47D Chinook cargo helicopters. The weight, wing-span, digital-communications ability, computer operations, weapons management and other factors were all tested for performance in the shipboard and operational environment.

"We are viewing and operating these aircraft aboard a ship, something which we've never done before," said Thompson. "Of course, this is not the first time the Navy has worked with another service. It's not the point that the mission itself isn't hard to accomplish, it's that there are so many factors, so many young people. There's all kinds of stuff they have to be familiar with for shipboard life," that can complicate interoperability, he said.

For the most part, the test was completed successfully, officials said. "We've had a few problems, but nothing where we've had to close the door and cut the baby in half," said Navy Capt. Alan Haefner, commander of Amphibious Squadron Five.

"The reality of going on a ship, on a deployment at sea, is that you're in your own little world, and whatever experience level is on the ship at that time, that's all your little world knows," Gary said. However, JSHIP seeks to alter that reality. "I get calls or e-mails from a ship sometimes, maybe in the middle of the Indian Ocean. They say 'Hey Bret, I heard you've got this JSHIP thing and I've got this Army helicopter that's going to arrive at my flight deck in two days, and I thought maybe you could give me some pointers, I don't know anything.' So I send him our latest checklists and materials" gleaned from previous tests.

Officials are developing checklists, videos and handbooks that "they (both pilots and shipboard personnel) can use before they leave their home base, that will tell them what they need to know to land aboard the particular ship," said Gary. One of the most urgently needed checklists deals with "ordnance loading, because the way we operate on a ship, due to all the antennas and electromagnetic forces, is a great hazard when you're working with ordnance. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft are designed to operate in that environment, but Army and Air Force helicopters are not," Gary said.

According to Lt. Col. Bud Savageau, Air Force deputy test director, it is important during the test to observe "how the staffs interacted, how the ground forces interacted with the ship's company. The objective is having the processes work," and working out solutions to any problems that may arise, he said. "How can we figure out how best to operate with these aircraft in a shipboard environment? Part of our charter is to develop a way to pass on the information we gather from the tests and the research," said Savageau. To that end, "we've determined that we have to create and improve Navy legacy products in an Army language. Things that are second nature to Marines and the Navy need to be taught to the Army and the Air Force.

Savageau is in charge of creating a computer-based ordnance reference program, which will provide information to all the services on the shipboard ordnance planning factors. "We are developing procedures for interoperability certifications, but we need to get out the basic information too, such as explanations on the care and feeding of troops and force protection," Savageau said.

It is part of Savageau's duties to propose new products that should be created as a result of shipboard tests. For example, he is developing an aircraft manual movement checklist, which "will provide both embarked units and ships' company with the information to move embarked aircraft by hand."

Also, a document will be created to teach blade fold procedures. "This document will provide a standardized method to manually fold/spread the Chinook's rotor blades in the shipboard environment," one of his proposals stated. Several videos to acclimate individuals to ships are currently in the planning stages.

"We're taking the data and putting it into a form that the pilot can understand," Gary said. "Now, the next step is to let people know it exists.

"When we're gone in '03, we'll have products that our operators, our warfighters can use, today and forever after," Gary said.

JSHIP is developing simulation and modeling devices to train pilots. Retired Army pilot Denver Sheriff, a computer scientist employed by JSHIP, has headed up an effort to develop simulations that could replace certain live tests. Sheriff, who retired as a chief warrant officer, had been a standardization instructor pilot and rotary wing instrument flight examiner. One simulation that Sheriff demonstrated to National Defense aboard the ship calculated the wind speed around the ship, effectively simulating the "wind-over-deck environment" which could then indicate to pilots how they would execute their landing. "A side-benefit of the new testing and evaluation exercise is that it's also a good training tool," Sheriff said. JSHIP is currently "working with NASA Ames at Moffett Field, Calif. to develop a model built to our specifications," he said.

"We know we can't test all aircraft combinations on all ships. We try to look at the most reasonable, most likely combinations and we know we can't test everything," said Gary. "But we can create tools to do simulations, without the aircraft being there," Sheriff said.

All aspects of helicopter landings on ships are being scrutinized carefully, said Cmdr. Thomas Brady, of Naval Sea Systems Command. He was one of several individuals who noted that most JSHIP employees are either current or retired helicopter pilots. "Seventy plus percent of us here at JSHIP are either active-duty test pilots, reserve duty pilots or retired pilots with over 20 years experience," said Mike Vandeveer, the JSHIP procedures and training manager and retired Army CW4. Vandeveer, a rotary-wing pilot who served two tours of combat duty in Vietnam and logged over 7,000 hours of flying time, said that the JSHIP employees "have had experiences aboard helicopters that have caused them to be passionate about the subject. They've determined that what they're doing at JSHJP is valuable."