By Geoff Fein
Operating the USS Mesa Verde (LPD-19), a 23,000-ton ship with a crew of only 315 sailors is a challenge under any circumstance, but the work is made easier with many of the advanced technologies on the amphib, a Navy official said.
For example, new build LPDs are equipped with Raytheon‘s [RTN] Shipboard Wide Area Network (SWAN).
“It works great. It really is one of those advance technologies that makes a difference here,” Cmdr. Larry LeGree, commanding officer of the Mesa Verde, told reporters during a conference call yesterday.
“Our SWAN is the backbone for all of our instrumentation, all of our sensors, all of our internal communications,” he said. “It definitely requires the right level and right training for our sailors.”
Although early on there were some reliability issues with SWAN, LeGree noted, he hasn’t encountered any aboard the Mesa Verde.
“I put the SWAN in the category of the several advanced technology solutions onboard here that allow me to have a ship that is 23,000 tons, fully functional multi-mission, and man it with only 315 sailors,” he said. “This ship is so large and to man it with so few folks like that, things like SWAN really do enable a lot of manpower savings.”
LeGree anticipates the Mesa Verde will get an update to SWAN when she returns from her current deployment.
Along with SWAN, LPD-19 is equipped with an instrumented power plant, LeGree added.
Operators use touch screens to not only run the plant but to handle the roughly 7,000 inputs from the engines, he said.
“It might be something like a gauge or a temperature reading that on other ships with twice the manning you had to have people walk around with a clipboard, in the heat, and look at it every hour,” LeGree said. “Having the ability to have remote sensoring of the propulsion plant not only gives you a macro view so one operator can look at the overall health of the plant, but allows you to look at different parameters between plants so you can see something that is wrong quicker than if you had guys walking around engines rooms just writing things down in paper logs.”
Another advanced technology that is interesting here is the damage control and fire fighting systems, LeGree said.
“We have the most advanced damage control and fire fighting systems in the Navy. They automate a lot of what we call manpower intensive jobs and tasks,” he said.
Mesa Verde, like its sister LPDs, is equipped with an automatic fire fighting sprinkling system in the main spaces as well as a lot of internal advanced damage control systems, LeGree said.
“Our ballast control systems, how we change the displacement of the ship to accommodate different types of craft in our well deck, is incredible,” he added.
Unlike older vessels that use hydraulics to control ballast, the newer LPDs use touch screens to control depth, LeGree said. “It’s a phenomenally convenient program.”