By Geoff Fein

As the Navy pursues development of new aircraft launch and recovery systems for its next generation of carriers, the service is also developing a new information management system to keep track of aircraft on the flight deck, according to a service official.

The Aviation Data Management and Control Systems (ADMACS) is a “tactical, real-time data management system that provides connectivity throughout the air department and other ship divisions and embarked staffs that manage Aircraft Launch & Recovery operations on [aircraft carriers],” according to the Navy.

“Eventually when we deploy ADMACS Block 3 in 2014, we will have automated tracking of aircraft on the flight deck,” Capt. Randy Mahr, program manager for aircraft launch and recovery equipment, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.

‘Right now it’s a government developed system and we are having a competitive procurement for the components,” Mahr said. “I am in the process of getting that acquisition strategy documentation sent up for approval.”

Mahr said the request for proposals has not been issued, but he does expect the acquisition strategy to be approved over the summer.

ADMACS will take information from an aircraft, once it is identified on the flight deck by flight number, and relay it to the ship’s tactical, navigational, and meteorological command, control, communication, computer, sensors, and intelligence (C4SI) networks, according to the Navy.

It will eliminate the need for someone to move aircraft around a plexiglass mock-up of the flight deck, Mahr noted.

This is the first time in 50 years that the Navy is changing the way the flight deck works, from a technology perspective, and the service is doing it incrementally, Mahr added.

“But we are doing it because the technology is affordable enough, it’s reliable enough that we can put it there. We are now proving that the computers, the technology, the networks, are reliable enough that we can take that real ‘no kidding’ hardware away and replace it with information,” he said.

The Navy is developing ADMACS in a block concept, he added. Block 0 and 1 are both in the fleet today. Block 2 will enter into the fleet starting in FY ’10. Block 3 will enter in FY ’14, Mahr said.

“In Block 2, we get rid of what we call the Ouija board,” he said. “We replace it with several large flat screen displays in flight deck control. [We are] now moving things around electronically, not manually,” Mahr said. “I can take those displays and put them anywhere I want on the ship.”

The captain can opt to have a display on the bridge…or down in air traffic control, so that everyone is looking at the same information, he added.

The key, Mahr noted, was the building block approach. “Block 0 started building the network backbone. That’s forward deployed on every Nimitz class carrier.”

Block 1 started automating input of data. Before ADMACS, personnel used sound-powered phones, Mahr said. “Now we have one petty officer who sits down and types [in information] and it goes out to everybody so information flows around to everybody who needs it and you only have one person entering it instead of four to five people standing around with sound powered phones talking to each other.”

Block 1 is also installed on all Nimitz-class ships.

It also allows different pieces of equipment throughout the ship to “talk to one another,” Mahr added.

For example, the Improved Fresnel Lens Optical Landing System (IFLOLS), he said.

If the IFLOLS is set to land an EA-18G, for example, personnel can double check to make sure the lens matches the arresting gear settings. It would also allow those two systems to talk to the AN/SPN-46 radar. AN/SPN-46 is already compensated for pitch and roll of the ship, so personnel can get those angles and apply and compensate for movement of the carrier with the IFLOLS, Mahr said.

“Where we eventually go with this is you tie in both EMALS and AAG and the flight plan and everything else so the folks on the deck don’t need to manually check everything…so when an EA-18G is coming up behind the catapult, it will set the catapult for the planned weight of that aircraft rather than having to do it manually,” Mahr said.

“You will always have somebody double checking it,” he added. “There is always a human element for quality and safety. But it’s going to automate a lot of the processes we are doing right now.”

The ability to have systems “talk” to each other occurs in Block 3 of the build.

While the ability for systems to communicate with each other is a few years off, the Navy is reaping the rewards of the early blocks of ADMACS, Mahr said.

“If you look at the Enterprise, she still has people in multiple spaces writing backwards on grease boards. The ships equipped with ADMACS Block 1 are down to a single operator entering things at a keyboard,” he added. “We have reduced watch stations from…I believe the number is five watch stations [down] to one watch station.”

Mahr points out that it doesn’t mean four sailors were removed from the boat, but it does free up the number of watch standers to do other things.

ADMACS automates the flight deck. In the end, he said, it is all about reducing the workload for the sailors. “The maintenance goes down, it’s easier to track things, they are getting more real time data, [it allows] the pieces to communicate with each other.”

Integration of all the systems into ADMACS will occur at Naval Air Engineering Station, Lakehurst, N.J. Mahr noted the Navy hasn’t started building Block 3 yet.

“We have the requirements definition done. We are finishing up Block 2 now, which will be deployed next year and then we’ll get into Block 3 development

Integration testing will occur at both Lakehurst and at the Naval Space and Warfare Center, Charleston, S.C.

Carrier installation of ADMACS takes place during the ship’s Docked Planned Incremental Availability (DPIA), Mahr said. “It takes us a total of four months of work…we are one of many things the Navy does [during DPIA].”