Leadership Insights: Captain Tim James, NAWCTSD Commanding Officer

2 December 2024

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The Joint Simulation Environment is a hyper-realistic digital range that consists of F-35 Lightning, F-22 Raptor, and adversary cockpits, 4K projectors that stretch nearly 360 degrees around pilots, as well as aircraft software that enable pilots to fly wartime scenarios in a near-exact virtual battlespace (above). Source/credit: US Navy/Terri Thomas

In the run-up to 2024 I/ITSEC, Captain Tim James, NAWCTSD Commanding Officer, completed a brief, wide-ranging interview with MS&T. The content from the interview follows.

MS&T: We’ve watched NAWCTSD’s portfolio expand to include competencies across training, human performance, technology and other fields. List your three top programs by budget expenditure and other criteria.

Capt. Tim James (TJ): The CNO has made it clear that our top priority per her “Project 33” NAVPLAN rollout is to “train like you fight.” Specifically called out is LVC. I’m fascinated by all things LVC right now. We have some systems that have traditionally played in that realm – Naval aviation, for example – F/A-18 E/F, E-2D, F-35s. We are also working as a community to get live injects and other solutions into airplanes, such as TCTS II air combat training system. So, my number one priority, but one that is not a “program,” is LVC. There a lot of projects and programs that fall under that umbrella.

One that is getting the most positive, immediate feedback from the fleet is Joint Simulation Environment (JSE) [the Navy and Air Force virtual test bed and simulator for the F-35]. It’s a single location system-of-systems due to the incredible bandwidth demands, but we are always looking to expand at the speed of technology. It will be highlighted in half-dozen (plus) panels at next week’s I/ITSEC.

Another major effort, Simulators at Sea (Sims@Sea), has been an amazing investment for the dollar figure and space requirements. With that we have simulators of an air wing (F-35C Lightning II, F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers, and E-2D Hawkeyes) in a space operating at fully informed levels. You can take a brand-new pilot straight of a replacement squadron, land him or her on a carrier and run drills to get this person up to speed. I can ‘knock the rust’ off a person who has been in a squadron for years and who hasn’t practiced certain things, such as someone who got smart at NAS Fallon and now four months into a cruise and they forgot how to do a joint strike, for example. Or I need mission rehearsal – we can load up the relevant geography and threats and practice before we fly. The ability to go from training to proficiency to mission rehearsal is getting rave reviews from everyone who touches it. It’s only a matter of time to make that LVC as well.

We also have a third one that many people don’t know about – the Multipurpose Reconfigurable Training System (MRTS) Afloat. We’ve talked about MRTS for years. There’s always been the large, static classroom that is reconfigurable so they can do individual or team training. It has great flexibility. We’ve demonstrated we can put that digital, highly adaptable classroom on an aircraft carrier. You now have several carriers out there with this massive training ability. The spec is impressive enough so you can run some of our other requirements – navigation training, and conning officer training so the carrier and airwing can practice going in and out of port. Or even getting that young sailor who

completed months of mess deck duty back up to speed on what he or she should know for that job that they trained to a lifetime ago. MRTS is impacting the entire carrier and airwing. We’re putting these solutions where the sailor is, not having the sailor track down training. These solutions under the LVC umbrella are huge, and we are very proud of them.

MS&T: Share with us how XR, AI, big data and other emerging enablers for learning (training and education) are being integrated into programs and research activities under your command’s oversight.

Capt. TJ: Let’s take AI, for example. Last year and again this year we put out a prize challenge for AI to improve our business-of-the-business – how do I become more efficient as a government organization by embracing AI. Last year we awarded a prize challenge for a company to develop an RFP [request for proposal] package. That gave us an 80% solution and cut down on our work by orders of magnitude. This year at I/ITSEC in the Navy Quad Booth [#1239], we’re going to award an AI prize challenge for helping with proposal evaluation. We will now have a lot of assistance on the front and back ends of the proposal process. Those are our two biggest time sinks on the government acquisition process. We’re putting our money where our mouth is and we’re going to go faster, just like we are demanding of industry!

We have our own team of scientists here that are experts in the data science and AI software capabilities as well. They are trying to help us embed AI into, for instance, our T-45 mixed-reality trainer so we can auto grade students, look for trends and complete other tasks. We can truly benefit from having these low cost, high-density assets we’re delivering to the training commands. If I have 20 training devices and don’t have 20 instructors, I still want to get the value of having these devices at the T-45 sites. I still need the students to get the objective feedback on their own performance. We’re definitely going invest in AI as we’re able.

We’d also like AI to control red or blue forces so we can get novel responses out of novel stimuli – what is the enemy going to do for real and not what did I think he would do ahead of time and program that in. That is not real life.

MS&T: Beyond I/ITSEC, how can S&T stakeholders from industry and academic engage with your staff through the year?

Capt. TJ: We have, and I can objectively say, the best outreach programs in NAVAIR. We have a very solid drum beat. We participate in TSIS every June. We update that every other month at PALT [procurement administrative lead time] and we’re anchored at the end of the year at I/ITSEC.

And we have an impressive number of events here at Tech Grove focused on outreach too, such as the Small Business Roundtable and industry days for technology demonstrations. And then there are a number of spin-off events that Tech Grove sponsors, for example the Juice Bars. We have the number one small business advisor in the world, Leslie Faircloth. And there’s the new Tech Grove Director Erin Baker. If you know those two people you know everybody and you can get your ideas to the right person.

MS&T: Your help wanted list: provide the top three technology gaps in US Navy training and education you need the help of industry and academic S&T teams to help the command close.

The Simulators at Sea Program is evolving from the baseline desktop trainers displayed in a NAWCAD lab (above). Source: US Navy

Capt. TJ: In terms of a technology thrust, one that seems to bite us every single year regardless of what command I work for is the cross-domain solutions. Between the program and collateral levels or say Navy-to-Air Force – it doesn’t matter which organizations you support, we always make that hard. And usually it’s not a technical problem, it’s a policy or budget problem. If you can find a way for the cross-domain providers of the world to get on the same page and work with say, NSA, we could solve the problem.

There’s an unquenchable thirst for more bandwidth. If we get programs like JSE online, how am I going to push that to distribute giga- or terabytes of information and do it quickly enough that these systems don’t crash into each other. As technologies like 5G or whatever the next laser, or fiber optics comes along, we need to find a way to adopt them. We’re working with an incredibly old infrastructure in the Navy. It’s not always that difficult to get a new system in the field, but it is always difficult to update your infrastructure because no single program wants to own that bill.

And there’s always the need to get the tech we have better – the resolution improved, or the SWAP-tradeoff better, etc. For example, when we talked about the T-45 simulator, we have a different calculus that we can honestly make now. Before it was an academic argument. But now we can honestly get those tradeoffs on how many low-fidelity versus high-fidelity trainers you need compared to my budget, etc. Going forward the days of ever-increasing DoD budgets are gone. Looking at the forecast for training over the FYDP it appears we are not even going to beat inflation. We’re not even doing more with the same. We’re following the old cliché – we’re doing more with less. We’re going to have to figure out how to get the most out of these budgets – perhaps doing more differently or we even do more with less bureaucracy?

MS&T: Captain James thank you for your time and we look forward to seeing you at I/ITSEC.

Capt. TJ: You are quite welcome and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with MS&T.

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