U.S. Navy's Training Systems Division Is Adding New Space.

The U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division--the Navy's main simulation and modeling facility--is expanding, said its commanding officer, Capt. Donald R. Gagnon.

The division has outgrown its 13-year-old wave-shaped building, located in Orlando's 1,000-acre Central Florida Research Park, he said. He spoke to National Defense during a recent industry briefing in that same city.

The Navy unit, known by its initials, NAWCTSD, is ideally located for development of simulation technology, Gagnon said. It is within walking distance to the University of Central Florida, the National Center for Simulation and units from the other military services with an interest in simulation technology.

These include the Army's Simulation Training and Instrumentation Command, the Air Force Agency for Modeling and Simulation and the Marine Corps Liaison Office for Trainers and Simulators.

In addition, Central Florida is home to Disney World, Universal Studios and 160 other simulation-related businesses stretching along a so-called "laser lane" from Cape Kennedy to St. Petersburg. Half of those businesses are located in the same office park as the Navy unit.

The problem, Gagnon said, is that NAWCTSD has grown over the years. It now has more than 1,000 employees.

"We needed space," Gagnon said. "So we worked a deal with the university." The Navy donated land, and the state of Florida provided funding for a new 50,000-square-foot building. In return, the NAWCTSD received 15,000 square feet in the structure. Additional buildings, using the same arrangement, are in the planning stages, Gagnon said.

Although the Navy unit can trace its roots back to World War II, it moved to Orlando from Long Island in the mid-1960s and built its current headquarters in 1988.

The division's mission, Gagnon explained, is to meet the Navy's evolving training and simulation needs. "We deal with all of the warfare areas in the Navy," he said. That includes aviation, surface ships, submarines, training and education.

Human in the Loop

"We believe that the teams that learn the fastest will win," Gagnon noted. "That is what we concentrate on--the human in the loop."

NAWCTSD is concentrating on speeding up its work, Gagnon said. "At one point, we're kind of out of control," he admitted. "But we're getting back in there." Backlogs are being reduced, he said.

"We need to be fleet driven," he reminded the briefing. "The fleet is our customer. We've got to be timely. When we say were going to have something out by a certain date, we have to get it out on time."

The division is having some success at reducing administrative lead time through use of such new tools as the more flexible Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contracts and credit cards, Gagnon said. "We can let small contracts within days," he noted. "If a contract is in the millions, it takes weeks."

For example, he said, his command awarded a $5.4 million contract for a KC130 aircrew-procedures trainer in 107 days. A $37,000 deal to rewire multiple aviation physiology trainers took only six days, because the contract was much simpler.

The division "continues to award a significant amount of work" through traditional contracts, Gagnon told the briefing. "Companies can and should meet with primary awardees under the various ID/IQs to discuss subcontracting opportunities," he advised. "Teams are flexible, and new subcontractors can be added."

All ID/IQ orders are being published on the NAWCTSD Web site www.ntsc.navy.mil), he said.

Money for surface warfare training is tight, John L. Freeman, surface programs director, warned the briefing. "We're in an environment of decreasing budgets," he said. "At the same time, the OPTEMPO (operational tempo) is increasing."

Although there has been "a lot of noise" about development of new platforms, such as the proposed DD-21 destroyer, Freeman said that he doesn't foresee a big shipbuilding program.

"A vision without funding is a hallucination," he said. "In 2020, 93 percent of the fleet will be legacy ships," he predicted.

Those new ships that are built, he said, should be designed with training systems imbedded in them from the beginning. "Design problems become training problems," he said. "They're easier and cheaper to fix in the design process than later."

Potential acquisitions in surface programs, he said, included upgrades to existing trainers for surface ships and LCACs (landing crafts, air-cushioned) and new PC-based ship-handling training technology.

The DD-21 proposal presents "a very special problem," said William T. Harris, director of the division's science and technology programs. "We have a ship (a destroyer) that used to have 350 people on it, and now it has a crew of about 100 people," he said. "The problem that we face, in R&D, is: How do we prepare our people for that? If we screw up, we'll be eating it for 30 years."