THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410140238
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 18 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CAROLE O'KEEFFE, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
THE MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR building put together to accommodate the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in the northern part of the city won't go unused, even though federal budget cuts mean the original program and personnel will be leaving over the next several months.
Coming in is the United States Atlantic Command's Joint Training, Analysis and Simulation Center, a military/civilian, high-technology operation. The personnel and equipment will move in as the others move out to Newport, R.I.
As a result of military down-sizing, the joint training center was formed to integrate and train members of all military forces in joint operations using computerized simulation techniques.
Joint operations are not new.
``They were used in World War II,'' Navy Capt. James C. Sherlock said. ``Each service in peacetime specifically learned their service doctrine and tactics, but not how to operate jointly. They have to train to operate together.''
SHERLOCK WILL DIRECT the center, off College Drive near the Monitor-Merrimac bridge-tunnel.
``We will have a much stronger force operating together than any one service operating singly,'' Sherlock said. ``The most capable force is a joint force.''
Three quarters of the armed forces are integrated and trained by the U.S. Atlantic Command, which heads the joint training center. USACOM is commanded by Adm. Paul David Miller, who commands Army Forces Command, Air Force Air Combat Command, the Navy's Atlantic Fleet and Marine Forces, Atlantic, Sherlock said.
At the moment, Miller is the senior military commander of operations in Haiti. President Clinton recently visited Miller at his Norfolk command center to discuss developments in that struggling country.
About 400 people will move into the Suffolk facility over the next year. About 70 of them are military, 30 or so are Department of Defense civilians, about 200 are civilians under commercial contract and about 100 are contracted by the Advanced Research Projects Agency.
ARPA develops some of the nation's highest technologies - for the military initially, later used by industry at large.
THE JOINT TRAINING CENTER was looking for a building when it learned the warfare center facility, opened about a year ago, would be phased out.
Hampton Roads was already the prime location for the new facility because so many other military organizations are already based here, like the Armed Forces Staff College and the headquarters of the commanders of the Atlantic Fleet, Air Combat Command and Marine Forces Atlantic.
This building in Suffolk, Sherlock said, ``met our specs to a `T.' ''
His organization began leasing the largest part of the building the first of this month. It has 220,000 square feet of space, an uninterrupted and filtered power source, six satellite antenna mounts, video-teleconferencing and closed-circuit training television systems, a multimedia library and recording studio, a large intelligence facility and an 8,600-square-foot computer area.
With the new technologies, and later with some not yet developed, servicemen and women worldwide will be able to participate, via computer and satellite, in training and planning exercises, in crises threatened and real.
At the Suffolk facility, experts in computer simulation will develop staff training using on-screen artificial environments and personnel. Also coming into play will be screenings using real people with simulated environments - such as a pilot in a simulated fighter plane.
In other cases, real people in real environments, like soldiers on a training range with real equipment, will be part of the joint forces training.
Planned for the facility in 1997 will be cutting-edge, multimillion-dollar Synthetic Theater of War program designed to improve simulation training as new technology is developed. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER
ABOVE: Thomas M. Utsunomiya of MITRE, left, and Lt. Col. Richard
Gillenwaters check some material at the Joint Training Analysis
Simulation Center, which is the former Undersea Warfare Center in
northern Suffolk.
Staff photo by RICHARD L. DUNSTON
AT LEFT: Navy Capt. James C. Sherlock will direct the center, off
College Drive.
by CNB