LCAC Center of Gravity Mission Planning Tool

Mission planning for Air Cushion Vehicles (ACV) currently takes over four hours and requires the use of multiple volumes of manuals and static data and years of training to do properly. Listed below are only some of the factors that contribute to the complexity that drives the extended planning timeline. While some are due to the ACV’s nature as a logistical transport platform, much of the complexity can be driven down by re-architecting the process and leveraging new data techniques to optimize the planning process.

There are unique sets of performance data for different air cushion vehicles, such as the LCAC (Legacy), LCAC (SLEP), and LCAC (Navigation Upgrade), and the LCAC 100 Ship-to-Shore Connector).

Given the 1) amount of fuel, 2) air cushion vehicle type, and 3) cargo, the overall load of the combined unit must be calculated.

The performance of the air cushion vehicles are affected by the sea height, wind speed, wind direction, and other weather variables. These variables may change during the mission.

While too detailed for this proposal, the additional problems can be found in the supporting documents.

Due to the nature of the manual work described above, the current mission planning method does not allow for quick on-the-fly calculations due to real-time changes in objectives requested by the USMC.

The Solution, & Why It Works

Strike Labs LLC is hereby proposing to develop an Air Cushion Vehicle Mission Planning Solution platform which will allow mission planners, craft masters, navigators and fleet meteorologists to automate the current manual work associated with calculating the variables described above and drive faster planning, and in turn, mission execution to help the war fighter. The Air Cushion Vehicle Mission Planning Solution platform consists of Mission Assessment Tools empowering the debrief after the missions for additional analysis, testing, and data warehousing.

We have begun building the Mission Planning Solution, and it is currently at a Technology Readiness Level 3. The application is accessible from smartphones, computer tablets, laptops, and desktop computers.

This mission planning solution:

This solution contains all the referenced data (Safe Engineering and Operations (SEAOPS) Volumes, vehicle weight database, and other databases made available) and automates the mission planning calculations based on a number of inputs

is designed for use prior, during, and after the mission
allows for the easy selection of air cushion vehicle crew based on the operational criteria applied to the available operators
offers an electronic version of SEAOPS OCP Mission Planning Checklist
contains the Mission Assessment Tools, empowering the debrief after the missions for additional analysis

This solution solves the problem. The mission planning solution will:

allow for the removal of the bulk of the performance data from the Safe Engineering and Operations (SEAOPS) Volumes and eliminate the complex iterative hand calculations within the planning process
give the air cushion vehicle crews the ability to quickly adapt to requests by the USMC and accommodate rapidly changing mission parameters
be available on a handheld device to allow for greater flexibility by being able to be carried with the crew for on-the-fly mission changes
provide a means to conduct off-craft mission planning and to perform post mission analysis of craft recorded data
help ensure that policies and procedures are properly followed via the SEAOPS OCP Mission Planning Checklist
help the Craft master schedule the crew, and see the potential knock-on effects to future missions by changing the crew via the Crew Day Calculator, and
provide a data repository from additional data mining, regression analysis, efficiency measurement, quality control. Eventually AI/ML mission planning can be conducted.

The mission planning tool solution is offered to NAVSEA as a Software as a Service product.