Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class Scott Barnes | 210913-N-EI510-0033 GENOA, Italy (Sep 15, 2021) Information Systems Technician Seaman...... read more read more
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By Glenn Sircy, Center for Information Warfare Training
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Information Warfare Training Command (IWTC) Corry Station’s Cryptologic Antenna Maintenance Course continues to showcase how it effectively prepares cryptologic technician (maintenance) and now information systems technicians (IT) Sailors to meet and exceed the demands of Navy fleet readiness.
The course was designed to provide Sailors, including new accession and seasoned fleet returnees, with the fundamental knowledge and foundation necessary to install, maintain and preserve all cryptologic antennas across the fleet providing assurance to warfighters of peak performance by shipboard cryptologic systems performing early warning, signal analysis, and threat detection.
Since the skills learned in the course transfer to almost any topside antenna system, Navy ITs requested seats for IT Sailors.
“My ship is currently heading into a maintenance period, and we recently did quarterly maintenance on our SRA-62 antennas to check the weatherization on the cables and redo the weatherization, if necessary,” shared Information Systems Technician Seaman Sean Kapus, a recent graduate of the course who is now assigned to USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20). “All of the cables needed to have the protection replaced, and a few of the cables were almost open to the weather. After I completed working on the first antenna, my LPO [leading petty officer] was thoroughly impressed with the quality of work, so much so that he had me assist with training four of the new Sailors on weatherization procedures. I used what I learned in the antenna maintenance application class to show them proper techniques and we were able to get it done effectively and efficiently. I want to express my gratitude to your team at the schoolhouse for giving me the knowledge to, not only impress my LPO, but more importantly be prepared, ready to assist with antenna preservation/overhaul, and being an asset to my division.”
The course more specifically familiarizes trainees with proper safety, radio frequency theory, direction-finding theory, antennas, specialized tools and uses, importance of proper weatherization, and bonding and grounding. With the foundation established in these topics, the trainee will then be able to perform a pre-installation check out, or PICO, install an antenna, and prevent corrosion at the connection points.
“The antenna training has been very beneficial to the Mount Whitney and ITSN Kapus has added a huge tool to our preservation tool belt,” shared Chief Information Systems Technician Donald Pittman, Kapus’ leading chief petty officer. “We are forward deployed and in a remote location, so we do not have any type of ship yards or typical Naval base trainings afforded to us so that my technicians can do preservation work correctly. Typically, what ends up happening is we will have personnel in the division with experience from previous ships pass their wisdom and assist, but that only goes but for so far, seeing that most of them hadn't done antenna preservation work for at the very least four years or so. Currently we are in the shipyard–in a foreign port–conducting a lot of preservation work on our whole fleet of antennas. With the training that ITSN Kapus received, we have been able to install three different antennas and preserve five antenna stanchions in this short time frame; we will be installing a fourth next week. Next year we will be going through our big yard period and that is where we will be getting brand new antennas on a majority of our UHF/VHF LOS antennas which we will be installing ourselves. If this course was offered to IT's, it would be very beneficial. We appreciate your team making such a huge impact on ITSN Kapus and other Sailors, more specifically ‘Its’ that were able to go through the course as well. I'm sure they are making a major impact just like how ITSN Kapus.”
This initiative is just one example of how the Center for Information Warfare Training (CIWT) team, along with its stakeholders, continues to evaluate fleet needs and develops new and creative ways to ensure Navy readiness remains a top priority.
With four schoolhouse commands, a detachment, and training sites throughout the United States and Japan, CIWT trains approximately 26,000 students every year, delivering trained information warfare professionals to the Navy and joint services. CIWT also offers more than 200 courses for cryptologic technicians, intelligence specialists, information systems technicians, electronics technicians, and officers in the information warfare community.
For more news from the Center for Information Warfare Training domain, visit https://www.netc.navy.mil/CIWT, www.facebook.com/NavyCIWT, or www.twitter.com/NavyCIWT.
| Date Taken: | 09.23.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 09.23.2021 06:37 |
| Story ID: | 405847 |
| Location: | PENSACOLA, FLORIDA, US |
| Web Views: | 271 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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