 The Latoral Combat Ship Junior Officer of the Deck course at Center for Surface Combat Systems, the Latoral Training Facility in San Diego, challenges students with a comprehensive course of instruction to develop the necessary skills to provide critical assistance during all ship handling and bridge evolutions. Junior officers and senior enlisted with limited ship handling experience undergo eight weeks of intensive classroom and simulation training to prepare them for the rigorous demands of the two-person watch team construct on Latoral Combat Ships. The extensive curriculum begins in the classroom where students are introduced to the concepts of ship handling, rules of the road, and bridge resource management that they will use later in the partial task trainer, blending both knowledge and hands-on experience. Following the classroom portion of the course, students immediately transition to hands-on simulator work, allowing them to apply the lessons they have learned and increase their ship handling experience. Try to cover just about any kind of situation that you would encounter as a JOD. We do unwreps, we do inbound, high speed, we do slow speed, lots of traffic, mellow traffic, tug work, lots of peer work. By the time they're done with the AVIX here, they're set up for success. The JOD course pretty much fulfills every single requirement you have with the exception of the captain being able to assess how you are proficient as a watch standard. So already having that eight weeks of training with a lot of attention from really seasoned instructors just allows JODs to kind of show up and be ready to walk into the shoes and fulfill that role. I was able to apply the knowledge I learned in JOD and it does help, it helps facts track you towards the O.D. because they're basically teaching you to be O.D. The course is JOD by name, but it's O.D. in training. Well the JOD course is critical in the development of our Officer of the Decks and our Surface Warfare officers. When we were deployed we had three ensigns, now Lieutenant JG's, who had recently come through the JOD school and they did remarkably well because we didn't have to teach them the fundamentals. JOD course really teaches them the radar operation, the navigation, just the fundamentals that we need to get them their JOD quality. For LCS most of the time you'll be operating with a two person bridge, which is really puts a lot of stress on the junior officer of the deck that without this training they're not really able to fill. So we can put that emphasis on how important navigation is, conflict management and basically that they kind of need to be the number two for that O.D. because there's no one else coming. You have to be the person on watch, totally ready to respond to any situation. The Latoral Combat Ship Junior Officer of the Decks course is a vital component of the LCS program to rapidly qualify its junior officers and senior enlisted to perform their critical responsibilities on the bridge during shipboard operations. Surface Warfare officer school will continue to spearhead this essential and highly advanced training to ensure all LCS junior officers of the Decks have the confidence and experience to support any underway evolution.