At-Sea Tests Aim to Improve Joint Operations.

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.
• Position: Between Army and Navy forces

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...