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Paperless Navigation, or ICE, ICE, Baby, Part 1

© Andrew Willis

In the summer or fall of 2000, while I was teaching at the Naval Academy Prep School, I was double-timing at the Surface Warfare Officer School, and the Oceanographer of the Navy, who had been newly appointed to do a bit of double-timing himself as the Navigator of the Navy, was coming for a visit to SWOS. My course supervisor, LT Snyder, invited me along to a briefing that the admiral was going to give about a plan the Navy was devising to go to paperless navigation. How the head weatherman is qualified to judge anything navigational is beyond me.

"Ah," I thought. "This will go right up there with the paperless Navy, and about as fast."

The admiral gave his speech, took some questions from the assembled guests, and went his way, as admirals do. I had a question, but I didn't ask it. I should have, but recent experience had shown me that my opinions were neither needed nor desired. I was just a first class petty officer after all. I'm not paid to think, just to do, or so I'm told. At any rate, my question was this: "Are any enlisted people going to be working on this project?" I found out later that the original answer was no, but that some were added further along in the project.

Now it's three years later, I'm back at sea, where all good quartermasters belong, and the Navy is making progress on its paperless navigation initiative.

The first attempt, NAVSSI, was a resounding thud. Oh, it told us where we were well enough when the computers worked. As it happens though, most of them don't. The NAVSSI computer on my current ship takes up valuable space better occupied by something I could actually use, like a desk, and the monitor on the bridge is better known for being an overhead hazard than a navigational tool.

The National Imagery and Mapping Agency, or NIMA (which does indeed sound like the next GI Joe organizational villain), has now come out with ICE. No, it doesn't go in your drink, although I think that would be welcome on some bridges. It isn't even a piece of equipment, it's a computer program, called the Integrated Charting Engine. Without getting too technical, ICE takes our position from the Global Positioning System (yes, the one that's standard in all new cars, ensuring that men will never ask for directions again), and places it on the screen against a digital representation of a navigational chart.