Handling a Cyclone
Command School (SWOS) offers superb simulators and instruction to prepare prospective commanding officers. The instructors at SWOS, who come predominantly from a Merchant Marine background, offer great insight into how to handle coastal patrol-like vessels such as large tugs and yachts. However, simulators are just that—and only the commanding officers have the opportunity to take advantage of these assets before reporting. This article attempts to fill that gap.The ship is 179 feet long. It has a 25-foot beam, an 8.5-foot maximum draft at 380 U.S. tons (short), 22 feet height-of-eye, and a 50-foot air draft. Each of its four shafts has a six-blade propeller. There are four Paxman-model Valenta main-propulsion diesel engines (MPDEs) rated at 3,350 brake horsepower each (13,400 total), giving it the highest ratio of horsepower to displacement in the Fleet. For an ahead bell, the 50-inch-diameter fixed pitch propellers outboard turn outboard, and the inboard turn inboard. They turn in reverse during astern propulsion.
Environmental Considerations
Because of the particular narrowness of the PC, wind tends to have a significant effect when shown to a vessel’s beam and quarter. This can present a difficulty when landing the ship on the pier during a strong offsetting or onsetting wind. In either case it is advisable to approach the pier steeply and closely on the bow, thereby showing less of the hull and superstructure. Once lines one and two (the bow line and after-bow spring line, respectively) are over, they’ll transfer the pivot point of the ship to those chocks on the ship through which the lines pass and can assist in either slowing the rate of the stern’s approach by twisting against (onsetting) or toward (offsetting) if you need to muscle the ship in against a stiff wind.
As expected for a ship with an 8.5-foot draft, the seas have a significant impact on the comfort of a PC’s ride. In swells greater than five feet, it is recommended that you move forward at roughly 30 degrees off your bow, if the ship’s required course and operations allow. In significantly rougher seas, while on patrol in the Persian Gulf, my experience has been that the Cyclone class rides best with the waves directly off the stern. This allows the PC to ride like a surfboard, thrust from behind, and it minimizes pounding and stretching on the hull.
Controllable Forces
The most nail-biting characteristic for a shiphandler coming from a solely gas-turbine background is the engine-clutching delay between a given engine order on the throttles and achieving a response from the machines. Not only are no two PCs exactly the same, but various engines on a particular hull could have subtle differences. For example, on the USS Monsoon (PC-4), the delay on numbers 1, 2, and 3 MPDE is roughly 5.5 seconds, whereas number-4 MPDE is 7 seconds. This requires the crew to test these delays themselves and remember them for restricted maneuvering (e.g., pierwork and underway replenishment). The throttles (one for each engine) range from 10 to 100 percent ahead and astern. At just 10 percent, with only one engine clutched, a PC’s speed is roughly 8 knots. To achieve slower speeds, the conning officer must bump the throttles on and off.
With no controllable reversible pitch, there is much “art” and feel in pierwork. For instance, if you need to move up ten feet to line up the bow, whereas on a destroyer you can put on around 20 percent pitch and inch up in a very controlled manner, on a PC you must bump an engine at 10 percent (8 knots if maintained).
An option for the shiphandler is to use “slow mode” during restricted maneuvering. As opposed to normal mode, this cuts the engine strength by half of the ordered command by slipping the transmission. A danger is that when throttles are placed at or past the 40 percent notch, normal mode automatically activates. This could surge the ship unexpectedly, which is why I prefer to stay in normal mode during all operations.
In agreeable environmental conditions, it is up to the shiphandler whether to use rudder during pierwork. It adds a variable that is usually unnecessary, so I generally recommend against it. There are no rudder-angle indicators on the PC’s bridgewings where conns conduct pierwork. The PC’s high torque and twisting capability allow the conn to twist and turn the ship easily using only engines. There is considerable stern walk from the props that you can either nullify with competing engines both going ahead or astern or use to your advantage.
For example, when starboard-side-to backing out of a slip where there is a ship behind you that you must clear, after your angle off of the pier is comfortably past the ship astern with a twist, if you use MPDE no. 1 (the starboard-most engine) to back out, the stern walk will help you get your stern out even more.
Conversely, with winds not a factor coming into a slip, the side force may be sufficient in helping you come alongside the pier smartly. For instance, if landing a PC port-side-to, and entering the slip at a comfortable 2 to 3 knots with the bow pointed at the forward-pier bollard or cleat to which you will be moored (angled off the pier at about 20 degrees), if the forward momentum is stopped with a backing bell on MPDE number 1, the side force will bring the stern to port toward the pier as well as check headway, achieving two desired effects with one order.
Use rudder orders to swing the ship around in a hurry, for example, for man-overboard recovery. The maximum rudder on a PC is 30 degrees (no 35-degree hard rudder), so the extra lift provided by the high-torque engines is very useful. The following are the PC’s stopping distance and tactical diameter information:
• Stop time and distance at 5, 15, and 30 knots: 10 seconds at 15 yards; 20 seconds at 100 yards; 35 seconds at 300 yards
• Tactical diameter, 35 knots, standard rudder: 700 yards
• Tactical diameter, 15 knots, standard rudder: 500 yards
• Tactical diameter (inboard engine brought to neutral), 12 knots, standard rudder: 350 yards
Pierwork, Ground Tackle, and Anchoring
PCs typically do not use tugs to get under way or land the ship. They can do this by working the spring lines and “bumping” off the pier. Bow in, this simply entails taking in all lines except the after-bow spring line to check headway. With a twist of the ship toward the pier, the stern kicks out. The forward fenders act as bumpers: a controlled (and intentional) contact with the pier tempered by the fenders bounces the bow out. Line two can then be slackened or taken in as desired, to allow the ship to get away from the pier. Oppositely, when coming alongside, lines two and three are very useful in pulling in either the stern or the bow by twisting against the springline.
Working lines and bumpers aggressively is the hallmark of PC pierwork. On a big ship the CO may want the most dependable junior deck sailor as master helmsman, but I also want this reliable person on line two and the forward bumper. That sailor works under compressed conditions and must perform quickly and precisely every time. Otherwise, the hull could strike the pier in the case of a misplaced fender or an improperly held line two.
The “hold” command, which means to keep tension on the line even to the point of parting, is infrequent during pierwork on board a big Navy ship, but it is routine on PCs. Without the tension of a hold command, you will not get the leverage required for it to work. PCs have a 500-pound wedge-block anchor. The ship stops very quickly when headway is taken off. Approaching an anchorage, slow to 8 knots at 1,000 yards and maintain that speed until 75 yards from the anchorage, at which point come to all stop and back down once over the anchorage. Drop the hook when sternway is achieved. Whereas the outboard engines are outstanding for twisting the ship, the inboard machines are much better at keeping the ship moving in a straight line, as is desired when approaching an anchorage or trying to maintain a very specific track.
Managing the Bridge and the Boats
Unlike in most other U.S. Navy ships, the conning officer has direct manual control of the lee helm during restricted maneuvering. The conn can transfer throttle control to the port or starboard bridgewing, something typically done in a turning basin before making a pier approach. With this hands-on approach, it is particularly important that the conn verbalize what he is doing or thinking of doing with the engines. When a lee helm is manned up in addition to a conn, the “OOD-CO-conn mind meld” is forced because the standard commands from the conn must be voiced aloud to the lee helm to get action. With the PC’s small crew size, the conn and lee-helm jobs are typically consolidated.
The Cyclone is equipped with a 7-meter rigid-hull inflatable boat (RHIB) and associated combatant-craft-retrieval system that lowers the boat into the water through doors directly off the stern. The stern-gate doors, even closed, are not watertight. When the RHIB is housed in the ramp, a maximum speed of 5 knots astern should not be exceeded. This will avoid damage to the RHIB from water rushing up the ramp. There’s a large angle of opportunity in acquiring a lee for lowering the RHIB; just make sure you don’t have following seas. Inboard engines should also be disengaged so that the water is not churned up where the RHIB makes contact.
Finally, unlike in larger combatants, there is ample opportunity (and necessity) for midgrade petty officers to qualify in key bridge watchstander positions, such as officer of the deck and conn. Many of the best enlisted OODs in the PC community do not come from the rates normally associated with deck watches, such as quartermaster and bosun’s mate.
Overall, the PC is exhilarating to drive. Surface warriors, whether officer or enlisted, choose it if they really “want a fast ship.”
Offshore Sail Training: A Midshipman Skipper’s Perspective
It’s been months since I moored the Commitment (NA-32), a 44-foot sail training craft in the U.S. Naval Academy’s Santee Basin for the last time after my final cruise as a midshipman in the Offshore Sail Training Squadron (OSTS) program. I can no longer remember each distinct day of my voyages, what items needed to be fixed below decks, or even each of my crew members’ names. Come to think of it, I can’t even remember the exact names of all the equipment topside. The good news, however, is that the real value of the OSTS program isn’t found in an academic understanding of sailing, the number of miles sailed, or the speed of the boat. Instead, my three summers spent in the program as a crew member, executive officer (XO), and finally as skipper of an all-midshipman crew taught me invaluable lessons about a far more important topic—leadership—in a way no other training program had been able to replicate up to that point in my career.
This is because the OSTS program is a culmination of three fundamental leadership challenges: the charge to teach a complex art to inexperienced subordinates in a short amount of time; a demanding mission with the potential for real consequences; and the need to accomplish a mission without overbearing directives or formal job descriptions. Simply put, I’ve found no other program at the Academy that is more rewarding, and it deserves greater recognition and appreciation for the fundamental leadership challenges it creates.
Basic Training
When I entered the Academy, I had no sailing experience whatsoever. Then, like every midshipman during plebe summer, I was placed on a 26-foot sailboat for an hour of basic sailing several times over the course of two months. This initial exposure created more questions than answers about this complex art. However, I would not answer these questions until a full year later, when out of a desire to try something different for summer training, I asked for OSTS as my third-class Professional Development Summer Cruise. That was when my sailing career truly began.
Over the course of four weeks as a crew member on the first large sailboat I’d ever been on board, I did my very best to learn what to do, the vocabulary to describe what I was doing, and finally why I was doing what I was doing. I remember reaching only this tier of understanding about basic tasks during the first summer as crew.
What still amazes me is exactly how much I have come to know about sailing and how much more I have yet to fully grasp, despite XO and skipper tours during subsequent summers. It seems every time I reach a desired level of understanding, I find more to learn, and I am sure this will always define my relationship with sailing.
Herein lies the challenge: It took me eight weeks of dedicated training over two summers as crew and then XO, along with additional work during the academic year, to reach some level of proficiency in sailing. How was I to teach an inexperienced crew the art of sailing in less than two weeks to a level where we could safely sail offshore from Annapolis, Maryland, to Newport, Rhode Island, and back?
Heading Offshore
The answer is that it took organization, dedication, and a grounded understanding of what I was teaching, all of which are coincidentally the backbone of good leadership. Specifically, I needed to create a training plan, diligently execute the plan, and then demonstrate my technical proficiency to develop a positive and professional mentor/student relationship on board. Simply put, these same leadership skill sets could not be learned nearly as well in an environment that wasn’t as complex or nuanced as sailing. However, beyond the complexity of the art of sailing, another element in this leadership equation further emphasizes its value as leadership training: the potential for very real consequences.
Other training programs at the Academy often culminate in graded evolutions that incorporate lessons intended during the course of instruction. While this is an accurate way to gauge how effectively information was taught, most final graded evolutions have no direct negative consequences except the possibly of a failing grade. OSTS training, on the other hand, culminates in passage over open ocean. This experience comes with no guarantees—especially when it comes to rudder cables.
All good sea stories start at three in the morning. As skipper, my crew and I were sailing 50 miles off the New Jersey coast during the third day after departing Annapolis, headed for Newport. About 0300 (no moon, full darkness), a sudden squall line moved through our area. Then—because of incorrect execution of a common evolution (maneuvering from starboard tack to port tack) followed by cascading/complicating events—the rudder cable was snapped; the boat now had no steering in difficult winds and seas. Thus, a challenging leadership scenario was created almost instantly and at the worst possible time. After quick assessment, we implemented casualty procedures thatsuccessfully prevented the situation from becoming much worse. Alternate steering was rigged, control of the boat regained, and the Commitment diverted to Freeport, Long Island, for repairs.
There was nothing contrived about snapping a rudder cable. No one could call a “training timeout,” nor were we guaranteed to sail away from the incident without damage to the vessel or serious injury. Thankfully, everyone is able to look back on the casualty and appreciate its excitement and drama because of the exemplary performance of those involved.
This was a scenario that demanded immediate action and had tangible consequences for all on board. As a result, I will likely never forget the lessons I learned about leadership that night, or in the ensuing months of review and reflection. And no, such a meaningful scenario cannot be mimicked without the genuine challenge and risks associated with the realities of skippering a sailboat on the open ocean.
Leadership Autonomy
Finally, and most important, I can proudly say that I was never told how to do my job as XO or skipper. This does not mean I was not given pointers, suggestions, and excellent role models on which to base my leadership style. However, I could skipper my crew as I saw fit, as long as the mission was accomplished safely and completely. Compare this with common leadership training, and the importance of this autonomy becomes obvious.
For example, during the academic year at the Naval Academy, there are many leadership billets, each with their own challenges. However, large amounts of instruction are usually given on how best to accomplish the mission, and, because of this, it is sometimes hard to gain the broader leadership experience from these training evolutions. If one is not granted the leeway to fail, one cannot possibly learn the lessons that are best learned by falling short. Thus, the fundamental difference between OSTS and other leadership training environments is defined. Failure is possible and not unexpected in the OSTS program, and such failure is always accompanied by genuine consequences that are inherent to sailing on the open ocean. These failures are always used as a teaching tool, and so the full experience of leadership can be realized.
All training is what one makes of it. However, the OSTS program’s willingness to expose midshipmen to the naturally complicated art of sailing, genuine consequences, all with the freedom to fail and learn from one’s mistakes, are what make the OSTS program so rewarding. I will always maintain that no other leadership development environment at the Naval Academy is inherently more enriching than the OSTS program; it is leadership training at its finest.
Improving Command and Control by Assessing the Common Operational Picture
Walk into any military command center and you will likely see large wall-mounted screens and rows of laptops showing colorful symbols moving across digital maps. As in a bygone era, when real maps were spread over large tables and markers (reminiscent of Monopoly tokens) denoted unit positions, today’s high-resolution displays are meant to provide commanders with a schematic depiction of the operating area or battlefield, locations of friendly units and, when intelligence is available, the sites of enemy units.
The difference between then and now is dramatic. The “Monopoly tokens” of old were moved around the map based on (hopefully) periodic reports from the battlefield. But as the time between reports increased, so did positional errors. Today, in an era of continuous communications from the front and when the positions of individual soldiers are reported via global positioning system every few minutes, commanders enjoy “omniscient,” near real-time situational awareness of the battlefield.
But do they? And how would they determine whether or not they did?
How do commanders know if the displayed picture is accurate and that all of their forces (at least) are displayed in their actual locations? How do they know if the picture is complete, and that the forces—friendly, neutral, or hostile—for which they have data are being displayed? And how do they know if the picture is common, that they are seeing the same one that other commanders are seeing, and that everyone is working off of the same information?
To ensure the information is accurate, the U.S. military needs to move quickly and aggressively to regularly assess the quality of the pictures that form the foundation of situational awareness, which is a crucial factor in successful decision-making and command and control.
Achieving Accurate COPs
Situational awareness is based on common operational pictures (COPs) that, to be effective, must be as clear and complete as possible. A COP is any display containing information that supports decision-making at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. COPs can inform maritime, ground, and air operations as well as military logistics and cyber issues. Depending on the mission and the domain, COP data can be displayed geographically—as tracks for aircraft, ships, or ground units, for example—or as text that provides status updates on an event. To be effective and operationally relevant, COPs must be accurate, complete, and common to all users.
A metrics-based approach that regularly assesses the quality of COPs is the key to achieving accuracy, completeness, and commonality. The Center for Naval Analyses’ work using this approach for air pictures has demonstrated the impact that such a metrics-based process can have on improving command and control, and combat system interoperability.
This has been seen through the single integrated air picture (SIAP), the air component of the common tactical picture. The air-defense community has refined SIAP during two decades of work on air combat systems integration and interoperability problems. They apply a metrics-based approach to measure the quality of the air picture and use those findings to identify interoperability issues and necessary system improvements. The process has prompted many changes to the airborne warning aircraft systems and to Aegis combat systems on cruisers and destroyers.
To create SIAPs, air-defense analysts first identified key attributes that could be used to assess the quality of the air picture. These attributes measure not only whether information is received, but its completeness, accuracy, and commonality. The resulting metrics link system- or platform-level engineering performance metrics to quantifiable mission capabilities.
Taking the Right Measures
The SIAP attributes that the air community uses to implement its metrics-based approach measure the accuracy and fidelity of the information that is gathered. This information forms a shared understanding of the operational environment and supports engagement- and battle- management decisions. These attributes include:
• Completeness, when all objects are detected, tracked, and reported.
• Clarity, when the air picture includes no ambiguous or spurious tracks.
• Continuity, when the track number assigned to an object does not change.
• Accuracy, when the position and velocity of each assigned track agrees with the position and velocity of the associated object.
• Identification completeness, when all tracked objects are labeled in a state other than “unknown.”
• Identification accuracy or correctness, when all tracked objects are labeled correctly.
• Commonality, when the assigned tracks held by each participant have the same track number, position, and ID.
Many of these metrics can be assessed using the digital data collected during exercises and operations. Having ground-truth data is often helpful in assessing SIAP attributes, but it is not required.
Although dubbed “SIAP attributes,” the principle of measuring commonality, accuracy, and completeness of shared data among COP participants is applicable to all operational pictures. With minor modifications SIAP attributes, or similar metrics, can be applied to other COPs, such as cyber and logistics. Such attributes can also be used to assess information sharing in general. In short, metrics-based COP assessment processes can and should be used to improve the quality of COPs throughout the military.