Photo By Ryan Labadens | Chris Olsen, an instructor at the Information Warfare Training Group – Gulfport...... read more read more
The U.S. Navy is responsible for more than just sailing the seven seas – Sailors operate on land, on and under the ocean, and in the air all the way to the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere. One group of Navy civilians and military instructors who help train the people responsible for making sure the Navy can operate and dominate in all of those domains is the Information Warfare Training Group – Gulfport (IWTG-G) onboard Naval Construction Battalion Center (NCBC) Gulfport, Mississippi.
Chris Olsen, Information Warfare Training Group – Gulfport (IWTG-G) physical scientist and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) training lead for the Meteorology and Oceanography (METOC) community at large, serves as one of the primary instructors for several of the courses taught at IWTG-G.
According to the IWTG-G website, the mission of Information Warfare Training Group – Gulfport is to develop naval warfighters through tailored education and operational training of information warfare that is capable of achieving U.S. military objectives in and from the maritime domain.
“We’re responsible for the bottom of the ocean all the way to the top of the atmosphere,” said Olsen, who said METOC training, usually geared toward Aerographer’s Mates, has taken place onboard the installation in various capacities for more than 20 years now. Aerographer’s Mates (AGs) are the Navy’s METOC forecasters, trained in various aspects of meteorology and physical oceanography, noted Olsen.
Even with COVID-19 restrictions in place, Olsen said the IWTG-G instructors were able to adopt measures to safely teach the four specialized, flagship courses taught here in Gulfport (wearing masks, social distancing, teleconference training, etc.). Those four courses are: 1) BOAT, which is a seven-week Basic Oceanography Accession Training taught to Navy ensigns training to be METOC officers; 2) RAMS, the Reserve Aerographer’s Mate School, which is geared toward Navy reservists training to be METOC forecasters, providing them a lot of prerequisite training to complete before they come to take the two-month, in-class training course for their forecaster equivalency (the active-duty course is normally seven-months long); 3) AFT, Advanced Forecast Techniques, which is a five-week course providing even more in-depth METOC forecasting training to Navy Chief Petty Officers serving in the Aerographer’s Mate rating so they can bring tactical METOC information back to the Fleet; and 4) IHMEP, the International Hydrographic Marine Education Program, a six-month long course designed to provide Category B certification in hydrography (the science of surveying and charting bodies of water, such as seas, lakes and rivers), which is taught to both U.S. Navy officers and officers from coalition and partner nations.
“Every single thing that the Navy does, it does within the environment – the ocean and the atmosphere, space weather and electromagnetic environment,” said Olsen. “Instead of fixing or operating a piece of gear like most other ratings in the Navy, we describe the operating environment that these pieces of gear are operating in and communicate the impacts of the atmosphere and ocean to the warfighter (such as impacts to radar on surface ships or to sonar on submarines).”
IWTG-G, along with its sister ITWGs in Norfolk and San Diego (IWTG-N/SD), is an echelon V command within the Naval Information Forces (NAVIFOR) training system, and Commander, Naval Information Warfare Training Group (NIWTG) serves as the main training agent of NAVIFOR for information warfare (IW) training and assessment.
As such, the group here in Gulfport also plays a pivotal role in providing the Navy Fleet with the highest quality Sailors trained in the fields of cyber, electronic warfare, cryptology, intelligence and meteorology and oceanography to support the Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP) and forward-deployed naval forces.
“As I mentioned previously, the people we train work in the medium of the environment – and not just the weather environment, but the intelligence environment, for your Intelligence Specialist (IS) ratings,” said Olsen, noting how the meteorology and intelligence community gel together to improve the Navy’s operating capabilities around the world.
“As Admiral (ret.) Gallaudet liked to say, ‘We provide the homefield advantage at away games.’” [Rear Admiral (ret.) Timothy Gallaudet, former commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, currently serves as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere within the U.S. Department of Commerce.]
Olsen, as a retired Navy Chief AG himself, summed up what he enjoys most about training the Sailors who go through the courses at IWTG-G.
“Seeing the look in a Sailor’s eyes as the lightbulb comes on in their head when I explain something that finally makes sense to them,” said Olsen. “I was fortunate enough to have a professor in college explain the most crazy calculus equation in a way that was easy enough to understand it, so I like taking that same tactic he had, and use it to boil things down as simply as possible.”
Additional information for this article was compiled from the Naval Information Warfare Training Group Gulfport (IWTG-G) website: https://www.navifor.usff.navy.mil/iwtg-gulfport/
| Date Taken: | 02.18.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 02.18.2021 09:11 |
| Story ID: | 389280 |
| Location: | GULFPORT, MISSISSIPPI, US |
| Web Views: | 587 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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