Battling from the pier: Navy's virtual training exercises expanding in realism and scope.

• Author: Jean, Grace
• Position: TRAINING

NAVAL STATION NORFOLK, Va. -- Inside the darkened combat information center aboard the USS Anzio, sailors wearing headsets scrutinize console screens, tracking aircraft flying in the area. Earlier, the watch team fired off Tomahawk missiles, one of many missions during an operation to stabilize a post-war region.

While on-board instruments indicate the guided missile cruiser is steaming off the coast of a landmass resembling the southeastern United States, in reality, the ship is tied to the pier in its homeport here and participating in "Operation Brimstone," one of the largest simulations ever attempted.

The Navy's use of modeling and simulation-based training has increased during the past several years, in part because of the improvement in computer technologies that can simulate complex scenarios, and in part because of better network capabilities that can connect numerous communications and battle systems.

"The technical architecture has allowed us to provide high-fidelity, challenging training across the full spectrum of strike group operations," says Capt. William Kovach, interim executive officer for the Navy's Tactical Training Group Atlantic, a command that prepares carrier and expeditionary strike groups for deployment on the East Coast. A similar command exists on the West Coast.

Major fleet training exercises, such as Operation Brimstone, now encompass multiple strike groups in varying stages of readiness and coalition forces, whose crews participate from aboard their vessels or ashore in mock control centers. Other services increasingly provide joint play--with airmen, Marines and soldiers carrying out missions from simulators on their respective bases.

Combining strike groups at different points in their training cycles has been done in the past, when the Navy conducted most of its training at sea in live exercises. But Kovach says such training can be conducted more effectively through virtual simulations.

"We can place strike groups that are earlier in their work-up cycles in less stressful or dynamic environments while placing those strike groups that are next to go in very intense scenarios, all in the same game, but perhaps in different areas of responsibilities," he says.

Operation Brimstone is training three groups at key points in their work-up cycles: the Eisenhower carrier strike group, which will deploy to the Arabian Gulf next month; the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group, which just returned from deployment, and the Bataan expeditionary strike group, which is commencing its training cycle.

"We can put them all together for one exercise. We have the flexibility to do that and still get them what they need," says Kovach.

The "Operation Brimstone" synthetic exercise encompasses thousands of participants in 10 time zones, spanning from the west coast of the United States and across the Atlantic Ocean to the United Kingdom and Germany. The largest concentration of players is here in Norfolk, where the Anzio, which is part of the Eisenhower carrier strike group, is one of 14 "live" ships playing pier-side. But through a network called "Navy continuous training environment," naval entities as dispersed as the crew of the USS Annapolis, playing from a submarine simulator in Groton, Conn., and a crew operating an EP-3 aircraft simulation trainer in Whidbey Island, Wash., are also linked into the war game.

British and German ship crews participate from simulators overseas. USS Bataan officers are inside the Atlantic training command's headquarters, in nearby Dam Neck, Va.

Sitting inside a mock control room filled with modules and large monitors, the Bataan flag staff plans how it will position its ships to pick up Marines ashore while they track some submarine contacts.

"They're talking to each of their ships on the radios," points out Kovach. Two of the strike group's ships are participating from pier-side, while another is being simulated and played by a person at a computer.

Down the hallway, in a large auditorium, the game director and his staff orchestrate the entire exercise on what is called the "tactical floor." Its atmosphere resembles that of a NASA space shuttle control room.

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