Non-Navy Helo Pilots Train For Ship-Deck Operations.

Army and Air Force aircraft are not built to operate at sea. However, the Defense Department believes that if non-Navy helicopter pilots were trained to land on ships, it would help improve joint warfare. That is the rationale behind a $22.5 million project that seeks to enhance the compatibility of non-Navy helicopters with shipboard systems.

There is much more to operating aircraft at sea than landing on ships, said Navy Capt. James Thompson, in a recent interview. "It's not just the uniqueness of operating off a ship, but you've got salt air, salt water, unpredictable winds, the pitch-and-roll of the ship and certain constraints with regard to what the ship has on board and can accommodate."

Thompson is the program director of the Joint Shipboard Helicopter Integration Process (JSHIP). His goal is to ease the difficulties associated with non-Navy helicopter landings on ships.

The JSHIP program, chartered by the office of the secretary of defense in 1998, is based at the Naval Air Station in Patuxent River, Md. It is currently in the third year of a five-year program.

"Our charter says we are to develop a process to safely integrate Army and Air Force helicopters on board Navy ships," said Thompson. "Primarily, we are a joint program looking at the other services' helicopters and trying to understand compatibility, procedures and training aspects, to determine what we need to combine assets in a 'no-kidding' joint world."

Richard Lockhart, the Defense Department's deputy director of developmental test and evaluation, said that JSHIP is in "a unique position to solve and address the perplexing issues confronting joint warfighters operating from the sea ... as it will set the stage for how the services will operate jointly in the future."

Training and Compatibility

JSHIP is a joint test and evaluation program, so it will be "short-lived," said Thompson. "Whatever products we leave in place, [the Defense Department] will hand them off to the right organization that is most suited for taking on all the things that we've accomplished."

There are three categories of shipboard operations that JSHIP must evaluate: procedures, training and compatibility. "We go to sea, with different classes of ships, with certain models of Air Force, Army and Marine helicopters," said Thompson. "We operate in a fashion that helps us to understand and identify the special 'care and feeding,' aspects of the different helicopters."

Thompson explained that Army and Air Force pilots currently are not trained to land on ships. In a maritime environment, for example, the ship crew wears different-colored shirts, and each color indicates a particular function. That helps pilots figure out, where to land. Army or Air Force pilot would not necessarily know what those colored-shirts signify, Thompson said.

Aircraft specifications, such as the size of the helicopter, and whether and how its propellers fold, are also important pieces of information that the ship crew needs, in order to accommodate landings, storage and overall support aboard.

Web Site

The JSHIP staff developed a web site (www.jship.jcs.mil), which provides point-and-click information for Army and Air Force helicopter pilots who need quick instructions on how to land on Navy ships. Navy crews also can search the site for helicopter specifications. Thompson pointed out that "the Navy and Marine Corps take it for granted that we already have documentation in place that deals with checklists, how to pack up correctly, to make sure we have the right kind of equipment, how many people to bring and what their skills should be," he said. "The Army and Air Force are sorely in need of this kind of information, as they may have never even seen the kind of ship they're landing on."

Thompson noted that the JSHIP program does not ignore the role of U.S. Marines in the aircraft-to-ship integration. "Marines sometimes get concerned that we're allowing other services to play along on Navy ships and take them away from what they're there for, and that's just not the case," said Thompson.

"We're learning what all the susceptibili ties are and we're trying to find ways to work around them," he said.

Army and Air Force helicopters, additionally, are not shielded from electromagnetic emissions expelled by the ship. "Aircraft that are not designed specifically for the sea, may have electronic systems, automatic flight control systems, or weapons systems that do not have the robustness built into them that shields them from the densities of electromagnetic emissions that come off the ship," Thompson said.

JSHIP faces a host of procedural challenges, he explained, because of a "lack of helicopter-to-ship certification testing," on the part of the services, each of which has different requirements. A key concern for JSHIP is Navy rules about managing weapons and ammunition, which must be loaded on its aircraft in a certain manner, for safety reasons. "When an Army unit comes on board, they may have different ways of doing it, so there are issues there that have to be ironed out," said John Padukiewicz, JSHIP's product manager.

Both the Army and the Air Force have ordnance in their inventories that is not shipboard compatible, so they need to be made aware of that, Thompson said. "If they're not going to be able to use what they have, once on board, maybe they can use Navy/Marine-type ordnance, materiel that has already been approved for use on board. We can work around these issues."

Refueling on board also is a concern for many Army and Air Force helicopters. "Typically, with a ship, it is best to pressure refuel, with a nozzle placed directly into the fueling system, and the fuel comes out, very quickly, under pressure. This provides a tight seal, so there is less fuel spillage, which can be a big hazard on a ship," said Thompson. "Most Army aircraft have gravity refueling systems, just like a car, with the same amount of spillage."

According to Padukiewicz, JSHIP is conducting a series of tests, called Dedicated-At-Sea-Tests (DASTs). First, JSHIP must "establish an existing capabilities baseline," and then determine the "necessary and potential improvements compared to the baseline." Appropriate changes must be designed and implemented, and finally, the results must be tested for interoperability, he said.

Lockhart said that the JSHIP tests are going better than expected, and that "scheduling and orchestrating DASTs is no small feat given the complexities of testing the desired combinations of ship classes and helicopter models."

The DASTs have generated large volumes of data, according to the fiscal year 2000 report of the office of the secretary of defense director for operational test and evaluation. The report points out some areas of concern, already identified by the JSHIP program, such as physical compatibility between certain helicopter designs and Navy ship landing decks.

Some problems that relate to certain models of Army and Air Force helicopters' wheel axles have been discovered. These posed potential hazards for shipboard crews and for the landing helicopters. A "general use naval aviation hazard report" has been filed, so that these models of helicopters will be flagged and pilots will be warned to not attempt to land on ships before modifications are made.

"JSHIP is setting the example and establishing a reputation of how the services can jointly team to ... more safely conduct non-Navy/Marine Corps helicopter operations aboard Navy ships," said Lockhart.