C4ISRnet – A test announced in late March could herald an enormous change in the way the Navy modernizes its ships, while making a once prohibitive cost of maintaining older ships attainable.
The Navy destroyer Thomas S. Hudner participated in a live-fire missile exercise using an Aegis “virtual twin” system, which the service is developing to significantly reduce the hardware footprint inside a ship needed to run the Aegis combat system.
When the Navy built its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, installing the Aegis combat system into the hull required a large suite of hardware — computers, servers, consoles and displays — designed specifically to run Aegis software. Any significant upgrades to the suite of systems already installed, or to the Aegis system in general, required cutting a hole in the ship and swapping out computers and consoles — a massively expensive undertaking.
The virtual twin upends that model. According to a Naval Sea Systems Command news release, the virtual twin system is carried on the ship in rugged cases that, when stacked up,” are small enough to fit under a dining room table.”
