By Geoff Fein
The Navy’s effort to modernize its destroyers will begin in earnest this year, as the Navy and Lockheed Martin [LMT] begin overhauling the hull, mechanical and electrical (HM&E) systems of USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) and the USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53).
“Those shipyard availabilities will take place this summer. All five of the modernization upgrades will be installed on those two ships, including our machinery control system and our new LM 2500 engine controllers,” Pat Allen, maritime business development for Lockheed Martin, told Defense Daily recently.
These products are on schedule and being tested both from a hardware and software perspective at the land-based engineering site that is part of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, he added.
“So far, so good, for the availabilities. We are confident we will deliver on time and the systems ready to go,” Allen said.
Under the Aegis modernization plan, the Navy is upgrading combat systems first on its cruisers and then on the destroyers. That is about where the similarity in the efforts begins and ends, Allen noted.
“On the destroyer approach, the Navy will have two separate shipyard availabilities. First for the HM&E portion, with machinery control systems. Second is the combat system upgrade,” he said. “In the case of the Arleigh Burke and John Paul Jones, they will then go back into combat system availabilities in 2013.”
In the HM&E package of upgrade systems, there are five main upgrades, Allen said. Those includes replacing the integrated bridge and navigation system, replacing the damage control management system with a new console for repair lockers, moving from a fiber optic data management system to a gigabyte Ethernet data management system, new engine controls for the LM 2500 main propulsion gas turbine engines, and upgrading the machinery control system.
The change from fiber optics to a gigabyte Ethernet data management system will create extra throughput to install a distributed video surveillance system–a series of video cameras throughout the ship to centrally monitor compartments and equipment, Allen added.
The new machinery control system uses universal control consoles, which are basically all the same and allow personnel to control all the various systems from any one of the consoles, he said.
“Right now, you have different consoles for different functions. You have an electric plant console, propulsion console, specific consoles in each engine room tailored to all the systems in those engine rooms,” Allen noted.
The new system is a three-screen variant with a central touch screen display that allows personnel to select any of the available screen presentations or any of the systems, for example, the propulsion system, Allen said. “And, once that system is displayed, then you use a point and click methodology on that display to open and close, start and stop, monitor pressures, temps, all those things that would have been previously done looking at gauges, or meters, or throwing switches.”
The fact is, Allen said, a ship’s engineer will be able to do it all from one station. And that is the carry-over to the manning situation the Navy is pursuing, he added.
“You don’t need to have people at these separate consoles performing these different functions. They can all be done by one person, which was one of the objectives of the modernization program captured under the phrase ‘single CCS (central-control station) watch standers during condition three steaming,'” Allen said.
“Right now there are four [watch standers], so it allows you to redo your watch bill and when you are not engaged in any kind of tactical or restrictive maneuvering situation you can cut back on your watch standers and give them technical capability to expand their sphere of control,” he added.
The focus of the HM&E upgrade for the Arleigh Burke-class was to bring more reliability; easier maintenance; and to make the systems logistically more supportable, Allen said.
For example, there are only 10 different variants of circuit card assemblies in the machinery control system. That is a decrease from the nearly 100 care assemblies a ship currently carries, he added.