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Navy ditches paper overboard

Warships from navies around the world are ditching paper navigation charts and technical manuals and replacing with paperless systems. DCLnews reports.

After hundreds of years of using nautical charts made from parchment to plastic, the U.S. Navy will soon throw them all overboard. In May, the Norfolk, Virginia-based guided-missile cruiser Cape St. George became the first surface warship and crew certified to use only electronic navigation charts to sail the seas of the world.

British Navy warship's technical manuals use S1000D specification

BAE Systems has begun work on developing the first fully electronic technical documentation suite for a major UK warship. Earlier this month, the company won a contract worth $15.5 million (£8.5 million) to produce all the technical handbooks for the first Type 45 destroyer, HMS Daring, which is currently under construction at BAE Systems’ shipbuilding site in Scotstoun, Glasgow, UK.

The technical documentation, used both to operate and maintain HMS Daring, will be delivered in spring 2008 to allow crews to become adept with it well in advance of the destroyer’s sea trials and subsequent handover to the Royal Navy.

The contract involves compiling an estimated 60,000 pieces of raw text and design drawings into a common database which meets AECMA S1000D – the international specification for technical publications.

The data will be viewed using trilogi, a software browser also developed by BAE Systems. The company has sold 30,000 trilogi licenses to the UK Ministry of Defense (MoD), and it is used to provide technical information for a wide range of programs, including Eurofighter Typhoon, the Astute class submarines, the Terrier engineer vehicle and Storm Shadow and Brimstone missiles. More at: www.trilogi.co.uk and www.baesystems.com.

The 12,000 paper charts that filled dozens of drawers, file cabinets and lockers aboard the cruiser have been reduced to 29 computer discs. Leaving a lot more room for all the other things you need on a ship. The Navy expects to eventually trim this down to one DVD.

“It really is historic,” Capt. Zdenka Willis, deputy navigator of the Navy, told The Virginian-Pilot. “I tell people [going paperless] is like the Navy going from sail to steam. It’s that big of a difference.”

She added that the digital certification was a culmination of work that began in 1990 when the Navy started looking at electronic charts as part of its Smart Ship Integrated Bridge System. The bridge system seeks to reduce crew sizes through better use of technology.

Collision alert

By 2009, all of the Navy’s approximately 290 ships will be fitted with an electronic navigation application called Voyage Management System (VMS). Commercial shipping, however, has been using similar systems for nearly ten years. Sperry Marine, a unit of Northrop Grumman, for example, has installed various types of digital navigation systems on 325 merchant ships. The navies of more than a dozen other countries, plus the U.S. Coast Guard, are also moving to paperless chart navigation.

The Cape St. George uses the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (formerly National Imagery and Mapping Agency’s) Digital Nautical Chart as its main navigation system.

The system is linked to the Global Positioning System (GPS) to make certain the ship is exactly where it is supposed to be. It then joins the GPS to the ship’s radar, which overlays the electronic chart, showing real time movement of other vessels, plus the ship’s speed and bearing. It also sounds an alarm if the vessel is approaching shoal waters or a potential collision.

"[The technology] allows the ship to stay on track within roughly five to ten yards," Cape St. George's navigator Ensign Tim Shanley said. Another feature sets a course for best fuel consumption, or best heading.

Trusted 100 percent

Chief Petty Officer Philip Dorsainvil, the ship's quartermaster and a veteran of plotting ships' courses on paper charts for more than 18 years, added: "I trust [the system] 100 percent. We'll take it anywhere the captain wants to go. We'll go out to sea and drive it within 500 yards of an anchorage."

According to Capt. James R. Yohe, the Cape St. George’s commanding officer, the VMS might have helped prevent some groundings in the past. Outdated charts have led to more than one disaster. But with the VMS, new data, such as the U.S. Notice to Mariners showing chart corrections or hazards to navigation, can be downloaded very fast. "This is a huge technological step for the Navy," said Yohe.

Victory over paper

While it takes 5,000 paper charts to map the unnavigable waters of the world, ships such as the Cape St. George keep about 12,000 aboard because the crew needs duplicates for use in different parts of the ship.

Even when the new digital system is fully in place, some charts will have to remain aboard, particularly those showing harbors where maneuverability is restricted. But Capt. Zdenka Willis pointed out that the Navy continued to keep a set of sails aboard steam-powered ships for 32 years, just in case steam propulsion proved useless. “If I can get rid of the paper in something less than that, I’ll consider it a victory,” she said.

DCLnews Editorial
June 21st, 2005

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