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As with previous Hi-tech tourist reports, this document combines a travelogue and report on meetings. This may appear an unusual mix, but the split between personal holiday snaps and dry official reports appears to me uninteresting and artificial. The personal aspects are important to professional life and possibly lacking from the general approach in Australia. Obviously some aspects of this visit cannot be discussed in a public document in as much detail as my trip to Cambridge and further details are available, particularly to authorised Defence personnel.
As it says in the background material, Exercise Tandem Thrust 1997 is a U.S. Pacific Command sponsored exercise, held around the Shoalwater Bay Training Area in central Queensland. The Exercise was to demonstrate the closeness of the military-to-military relationship between the U.S. and Australian Defence Forces and test the capability of Australian and United States command and control procedures.
My particular interest as a Defence IT policy maker was to see how computers and telecommunications were used in a military environment. A few weeks before the exercise was due to commence I had a request from Defence's Directorate of Public Relations to put a link from the Defence Home Page, to the Exercise Home Page, maintained by the U.S. Seventh Fleet. As a courtesy I sent a note off to the 7th Fleet web master. Subsequently I received an e-mail invitation from the USS Blue Ridge, Flagship of the U. S. Seventh Fleet and the command ship for the exercise inviting me to come and see their systems. After having to write some convincing justification to my superiors for the visit, I joined a small party of Defence people looking at the command and control systems for the exercise.
The next day we travelled by RAN "Sea King" helicopter to the Blue Ridge about 40 minutes out to sea. This was my first helicopter trip. There was a pre-flight safety briefing, similar to that on commercial airlines, but much more detailed. Also you put on your life jacket (along with helmets fitted with ear muffs) before getting on-board.
It is not possible to talk normally near, or on board, due to air craft noise. The crew communicate by microphones and headsets. Only some passengers had headsets and most communication from the crew was by hand signals.
The seats are unpadded canvas, but quite comfortable. It was very warm, with the distinct kerosene smell of jet turbines in the air.
The flight and landing on Blue Ridge was much smoother than the commercial airline flight back to Canberra. While the view was good from the helicopter windows, it was remarkably difficult to see a 18,500 ton ship from the low flying helicopter until we were just about to land.
The first sensation on landing was the movement of the deck. There is a sudden transition from the relative firmness of the aircraft floor to the rocking ship's deck. I immediately started to feel queasy, a feeling which did not leave me for the next 24 hours (my doctor tells me it wasn't seasickness or Ross River fever, but a mild virus).
We were welcomed on deck, photographed for a souvenir and escorted below.
The striking point about the computer equipment used is how ordinary it is: these are ordinary commercial, off-white coloured PCs, workstations, laptops and printers. The equipment was held down (because of the movement of the ship) using an assortment of straps and racks. The marines had the most innovative restrain system: their laptops are stuck to desktops using green gaffer tape.
Some areas had false floors for computer cabling and rack mounts for equipment. These areas looked like heavier duty versions of a commercial computer room. However, in normal computer rooms you don't have to bolt the coffee machine to the floor.
There were some specialised applications with their own GUI and text user interfaces. However, the predominant interface was the Web using GUI browses under Windows 3.1
The Web pages were much like the physical layout: built for function and speed not aesthetics. The sparse use of graphics and complex formatting are similar to the Australian Defence Home Page.
The web pages are mainly used for distributing information and other systems for entering data and commands. Normal Internet and proprietary e-mail is used. There is commercial style video-conference and use of presentation packages. The video conference and presentation packages are not integrated with the web/Internet facilities. Australia has examples of integration of such systems and I have suggested this as an area for the Strategy for Information Technology Research in Australia.
Some of the on-board systems are linked to the Internet. Just to check this I logged on and checked my mail. Ironically the mail included photos of the exercise, taken nearby on-shore by the Australian Defence Force's 1st Media Support Detachment, sent to Canberra and then e-mailed back to me to put on the home page. Response time was okay, but it was difficult to operate a keyboard and mouse which kept moving with the ship. Around this time I started to feel less well and I don't remember much about the subsequent lunch.
After a quick trip to the shop to buy a souvenir cap, it was back to the flight deck for the flight back. The return flight was uneventful.
Postscript - ACS Talk on Blue Ridge 1 April
After Exercise Tandem Thrust 97 the Blue Ridge visited Brisbane and
then Sydney (on 31 March). I arranged a talk on board by
Captain Julie Keesling USN, Fleet Information Systems Officer
(who was newly promoted from Commander on 1 April).
James Riley from The Australian newspaper came along and wrote "Web Warriors take Net advantage" for page 51 of the Tuesday 8 April 1997 edition.
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