Synthetic Environment Tactical Integration Virtual Torpedo Project

Fiscal realities and a reprioritization of United States (US) military spending have demanded that all systems and capabilities be fully exploited through an effective and efficient development, testing, training and operations continuum. To the US submarine community, this has meant that the traditional isolationist culture had to change, new and novel data communications technologies were required and all available resources and technologies had to be fully exploited for development, testing, training, and operation. Until recently, however, submarine communications systems and architectures were ill equipped to handle data and communications links required to support most resource sharing. With the recent advances in submarine communications systems, the time is at hand to implement this critical element of the new US military paradigm. The Naval Undersea Warfare Center's Synthetic Environment Tactical Integration (SETI) Virtual Torpedo Project (VTP) utilizes new and innovative communications capabilities to provide a resource sharing capability to the submarine offering a high fiscal and capability payoff. VTP provides operational submarines with real-time access to high fidelity torpedo simulations of the US Navy's undersea Weapons Analysis Facility (WAF). The WAF is Hardware-In-The-Loop (HITL) facility offering extremely high fidelity torpedo engagement capability with full interactivity with the firing platform. Novel submarine communications capabilities are incorporated into VTP to allow for bi-directional data flow with up to two submarines at depth and speed. Additionally, hardware independent software (Java language) and a related downloadable client architecture are being developed to provide interoperability and reuse across the US Department of Defense (DoD) test and training infrastructure. Recent tests and demonstrations such as Synthetic Theater of War-Europe (STOW-E) have implemented the capability to intermingle real and virtual worlds. However, the utility of these synthetic environments and the ability to provide such a capability economically for day-to-day use, in an undersea domain, has yet to be demonstrated. Through the use of state of the art underwater communications systems, innovative information compression methods and a Java based Infrastructure, VTP addresses all of these issues and will provide a day-to-day virtual torpedo capability at a twenty-to-one (20:1) cost reduction over recoverable exercise torpedoes.