Total Ship Training for Future Aircraft Carriers

The use of technology to assist in the missions of the Navy has changed. The twenty-first century will see a Navy with fewer but more technical ships, smaller yet more innovative shipboard crews, and the need for rapid responses to changing world battle and peacetime scenarios. A recent study (Defense Science Board 1997) has noted the Navy is compelled to build ships that will operate with smaller crews at the same time operational environments require increased capabilities. The Defense Science Board study (1997) further states that, “Training is a force multiplier that allows manning reductions through better use of personnel onboard.” The purpose of this paper is to describe a total ship training philosophy for the CVNX class of future aircraft carriers. The Navy has developed an affordable plan to evolve the baseline design of CVNX over multiple hulls for the new construction of aircraft carriers (NAVSEA 1999). Each of these platforms will employ successively more advanced training methods and systems, culminating in a final design that incorporates the most capable shipboard total ship training program ever fielded aboard an aircraft carrier.