 In today's world, it is crucial for the U.S. Navy to ensure the freedom of the seas. And this mission starts with the effective training of our sailors. Today's Navy ships are more complex and capable than in any other time in history. But it is the sailors who are responsible for operating, maintaining and employing these sophisticated systems. And with the push for modernization to ensure our Navy prevails in conflict. The training of our sailors is more important than ever before. Everything before was kind of this abstract, teaching environment. You would tell the students about something, maybe you would be able to show them a static model. But you couldn't actually run them through the situations that they're going to see out in the fleet. We've been more geared towards computer-based training, students trying to kind of teach themselves. Click through as fast as you can and get over to your labs, knock out your labs and graduate really as quickly as you could. The problem with that though is when you go out to the fleet, you're putting your shipmates at a disadvantage. So here we have to believe, keep up with the times and evolve in our actual training methods. In 2015, the Navy introduced a new approach to developing operator and maintainer knowledge and skill. Surface Training Advanced Virtual Environment or STAVE is a state-of-the-art blended training solution. STAVE combines instructor-led classrooms and reconfigurable training systems with hands-on labs and part-task trainers. This architecture accelerates learning and retention of the operations and maintenance training curriculum for our sailors. Initial application in engineering and navigation training is now being leveraged by the Center for Surface Combat Systems to tackle the Navy's most difficult training challenge, preparing sailors to maintain, operate and employ the world's most advanced combat systems. STAVE CS maximizes the training by giving them all that they're going to need on the maintenance and operator side. With the instructors here, we can also give them our experience so they'll know what to expect to make them the best technician they could possibly be. They get much more stack time with STAVE CS than they did with the legacy systems. More scenarios, more time running through all the different math problems and things that will be expected from them in the fleet. Everybody learns differently, so students before were getting one option, now they have multiple options. However you learn is covered through all bases. You know, it's covered through computers, through instructors, hands-on, everything. Go under the days where it's just death by PowerPoint and you go from there, you know, you actually get to touch things, manipulate things and see what they're supposed to do. While I'm in the classroom, instead of doing some worksheets, I could actually be on the simulator and kind of be working hands-on with it without being hands-on. After going through all the mods, going through the practice on the labs a bunch of times, day after day, you feel a lot more confident in your ability to actually troubleshoot and operate these systems. By the time they're done with the training, they're full of confidence that they can go out and deploy and do the mission. STAVE CS maintenance training leverages experienced instructors, three-dimensional immersive simulations, hosted on reconfigurable hardware with part-task trainers targeting unique training objectives. The foundational aspects of STAVE CS set up the course for any type of troubleshooting. You start theory bare-bones basics, you give them a little bit of schematics troubleshooting, a little bit of flowchart reading and then the kudig raw of the lab itself where they get to get hands-on and troubleshoot. They're going to spend more time focused on learning and actually maintaining and operating their gear. Specifically here, we are teaching them the CWIS weapon system. That's the last line of defense for air targets on ships. So we're using this to prepare them and get a better understanding of what they're going to be expected to do out in the fleet. The program, you can move, utilize and zoom in, zoom out and pretty much get into every crevice so you can see where everything's located. If you're doing STAVE CS in the classrooms, the computerized portions and the hands-on, I feel incredibly confident to go out to my ship and get my job done, make sure that everything is working smoothly and correctly. STAVE CS operations training features virtualized tactical code running on commercial hardware to present challenging scenarios, stressing sensor management, command and control and weapons employment against realistic and reactive threats. This trainer trains the whole watch team that we have between the electronics tech, the communications person, down to the warfighters. They all learn what their specific job is going to be. And with this new system, everything's virtual so I can have 12 students at one time so we can kind of save time and get more reps in. You're able to do more here because you don't have the outside obligations that you would have on the ship. There's no competing events, no main-space fire drills or anything like that that are going to get in the way of us fulfilling what we're here to do which is to train. You run through the same scenarios and compound on those to make them from easy to difficult. So you throw in some easy scenarios, they build on that and they apply those lessons learned and then we keep making it harder and more difficult and more difficult. And before you know it, they're combating multiple threats from different angles. Our adversaries constantly change their tactics, they constantly change what they do and we need to remain flexible. We're able to pull together all the communications, pull together all the console actions and then they present it back to us in a full-screen debrief so we can actually relive every decision that we made. Good or bad and actually see what was ground truth. So it's a very awesome group learning experience and as soon as somebody has an aha moment then it's like the next person can build off that aha moment. You are really deeply immersed in the environment. You see missiles going off, you see effects of weather, you see clutter everywhere. Sometimes you feel like you're getting so immersed in it and then you realize that, oh yeah, we're in a training environment. What we're seeing is our instructors are getting to a much higher level of proficiency and capability that will in turn pay big dividends to the fleet. I love teaching State of CS. I'm still in awe by all that it actually can do. We're going to put out a lot of good technicians in the next few years thanks to State of CS. I'm seeing major progress from my watch team from scenario to scenario and our success as a ship is going to depend on how well and how realistic that training was. We were given very difficult, very challenging, very realistic training that I know will carry forward when we go back. State of CS offers a more reflective and efficient approach for maintenance and operations training and it is only the beginning. Future capability will include distributed stave classrooms in fleet concentration areas and access to high fidelity training content at sea. Through Stave CS, the Center for Surface Combat Systems is positioned to produce a more technically capable and tactically ready surface force now and in the future. Just from the feedback we've got from the fleet, they tell us over and over again that our students are better prepared. They're more willing to learn and they're coming out there with this desire because they actually got this hands-on experience from the beginning.