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Port Hueneme Division Provides Technical Support to USS Nimitz

NAVSEA News Wire

Release Date: 12 May 2003

By NSWC Port Hueneme Division Public Affairs

PORT HUENEME, Calif. -- In response to an urgent request from USS Nimitz (CVN 68), engineers at Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Port Hueneme Division (PHD) recently provided rapid technical support to assist in bringing her Ship Self Defense System (SSDS) back online.

PHD organized a coordinated response, involving the SSDS Design Agent at Raytheon and SSDS engineers and technicians at Combat Direction Support Activity Dam Neck and NSWC Dahlgren, to assist Nimitz, which is currently deployed in the Middle East in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In mounting this effort, PHD led the initial fact-finding mission and communicated with the ship's force via telephone and email. The collective team then theorized based on facts presented and mutually agreed that Nimitz experienced a hardware problem. Several hours and emails after receiving the request, the SSDS specialists devised a potential solution.

By the end of the workday, the problem had been confirmed and corrected by the team, and the Nimitz SSDS was up and running smoothly.

"The technical response was overwhelming and an outstanding example of a solid foundation in deployment preparation by the SSDS community," said Lt. Cmdr. Gary Perkins, Nimitz' Combat Systems Officer.

"Port Hueneme's experience with Nimitz' SSDS configuration during her initial configuration and later workups contributed to the quick response time," said Cmdr. Kevin Carey, PHD's Ship Defense and Expeditionary Warfare Department Officer. "Nimitz' MK 2 SSDS is wholly unique and our prior work with the system gave us the knowledge and contacts we needed to solve the problem."

In providing such crucial support to deployed ships, events such as this play an important role in fulfilling PHD's objective to aggressively improve Fleet warfare systems readiness. This problem-solving setting allows PHD to gather detailed feedback from the Fleet perspective, which is documented and used to determine if further training or enhanced technical documentation would be useful in preventing similar recurrences.