The Command Support At-Sea Experiment

Abstract

The Command Support At-Sea Experiment (CS@SE) provides experimental advanced graphics display systems consisting of large screen color displays and operator console color displays in the combat information center (CIC) of an Aegis cruiser and in the tactical flag command center (TFCC) of an aircraft carrier. CS@SE systems are designed to prototype potential command support capabilities in an at-sea environment to validate and refine requirements for planned production system upgrades. These systems use sophisticated color graphics techniques to provide real-time tactical displays that improve the availability of information to an operator by reducing clutter through the use of color, area fill, transparen overlays and intensity coding of track symbols. Interfaces wen developed with the Aegis Display System (ADS), Shipboarc Gridlock System with Auto-correlation (SGS/AC), Flag Dats Display System (FDDS) and Tomahawk Engagement Planning and Exercise Evaluation System (TEPEE) that provided the data for the presentation of a tactical display. Display elements included both real-time and over-the-horizon (OTH) surface track data, velocity leaders, tags, uncertainty ellipses, and history trails. The display also included filled land masses, country boundaries, commercial airways, cities, graphics overlays (i.e., operational areas), weapon system missile performance contours, and engagement plans. This paper describes the experiment, its installation and integration into the shipboard environments of an Aegis cruiser (USS Leyte Gulf) and an aircraft carrier (USS America, its usage by the ships companies and embarked staffs, and the experiment result! and findings. Key conclusions of the experiment are: 1 Advanced graphics color displays can significantly enhance the ability of the warfighter to assimilate a complex tactical display. 2 Both ships reported a requirement for a correlated OTH and real-time track display with the ability to clearly differentiate the two types of tracks on the display. 3 On-line data bases such as detailed maps, airways, political boundaries, and cities provide important information that enhances the tactical track picture and the decision making process. 4 Classical rapid prototyping permits the validation of proposed command support concepts in an operational environment and permits some engineering evaluation of possible future capabilities.