They’ll install state-of-the-art information system designed by them NUKOLI’I – Defying the conventional wisdom that high-tech is a man’s world, Erin Tsuda and Nicole Nishimura, along with five other college freshmen girls (all class of 2001 graduates), wrote computer code
They’ll install state-of-the-art information system designed by them
NUKOLI’I – Defying the conventional wisdom that high-tech is a man’s world, Erin Tsuda and Nicole Nishimura, along with five other college freshmen girls (all class of 2001 graduates), wrote computer code for a military information system so new not even the U.S. Department of Defense has had much of a whiff of it.
Tsuda and Nishimura are about to install their system on an aircraft carrier bobbing in the Sea of Japan. Tomorrow, Saturday, Aug. 4, they will be flown all-expenses paid to Okinawa, and spend time on the USS Essex at Sasebo, Japan, installing land- and ship-based applications of those computer systems that the commander of the Amphibious Force of the U.S. Seventh Fleet said will revolutionize warfare as we know it today.
Known as a modular command center, the high-tech gizmo integrates information from radar, sonar, land-based, aircraft, satellite and other sources, and presents it as a series of side-by-side, three-dimensional pictures allowing a commander to view the entire field of battle and plot offensive and defensive strategies accordingly.
Besides eventually seeing action in the nation’s missile defense project and eventually becoming standard equipment on many military vehicles, it is also designed to have disaster-relief and other humanitarian applications, according to Rear Adm. Paul S. Schultz, commander of the Amphibious Force of the U.S. Seventh Fleet.
And when Schultz advised Tsuda and Nishimura to pack coveralls in their luggage, it was because they will actually be stringing communications lines in crawl spaces aboard the aircraft carrier USS Essex that during World War II survived a kamikaze strike.
The girls, before journeying off to the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (Tsuda) and Portland State University (Nishimura), will also tour several military and cultural sites in Japan under the admiral’s wing.
Tsuda and Nishimura were working on this high-tech gadget this summer through a collaboration nearly as complex as the web of various governmental and private entities that are joining forces to create the modular command center.
U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye has been securing federal funds for the Maui Economic Development Board’s Women in Technology program, with a caveat that the Valley Isle program share its knowledge with its sister economic development boards on Kaua’i and the Big Island. The idea is to encourage more young women like Tsuda and Nishimura to get their degrees in high-technology fields such as engineering and computer science.
Susan Miura, up until the 2000-01 school year the senior counselor at Kaua’i High (she’s moving into the registrar’s office), provided the Kaua’i Economic Development Board with resumes of the best and brightest Red Raider graduates, suitable for the hastily prepared internship program.
Kaua’i County Council Chair Ron Kouchi, probably unintentionally, began the idea of an internship program when he approached the Kaua’i Economic Development Board seeking funding sources for computers and other technology equipment for middle-school students, said Gary Baldwin of the Kaua’i Economic Development Board.
Solipsys was found to be a suitable employer for the interns, and the program was on.
The effort will eventually lead to job creation on the island, Schultz and Baldwin agree. It will be local jobs with local companies for local people, Schultz said.
Schultz, whose grandparents are of the O’ahu Kawakami family, is sure high-technology has a bright future in Hawai’i and on Kaua’i, as long as end users are developed to buy and utilize the technology developed here.
The role of the young interns is important. From their experiences now, they’ll become “very productive Hawaiian citizens in the near future. The young students are our future,” said Schultz.
The summer internship, and Japan trip, will show the young minds real-world applications for what they’ve helped develop, before they start their higher education studies, he said. This summer, they learned a bit of the academics of technology.
Schultz told an audience of around 75 people at the Radisson Kaua’i Beach Resort here that he realized there were technologies being developed in Hawai’i that he could take advantage of. He and several military and civilian contractors were on the island for a conference on the modular command center.
At the Solipsys warehouse in the Lihu’e Industrial Park phase one, in a hot building nearly big enough for an indoor tennis court, stand two half-circle shaped structures all the other campers at ‘Anini would admire if you could take them there for Labor Day.
The camouflaged frames have been designed to withstand hurricane-force winds. It is under this shelter that the U.S. military’s newest combat technology sits – a table and chairs with a half dozen laptop computers, mini projectors hanging from the high-tech tent’s frame, and a series of screens displaying battle grounds with real-time data.
For Schultz, it is the best time ever to be a naval warfare commander. The collaboration allows for what he calls “rapid prototyping,” or developing the technology fast by bringing together the best military and civilian minds for a common goal.
The tents and modular command center in the Solipsys warehouse can be disassembled to fit onto a trailer to follow a military humvee, making it extremely mobile. The young interns proudly point out that they hold the current world record time for assembling the tent, at 37 minutes even better than the military could accomplish.
Schultz said no other country in the world has this kind of technology, something that he says makes old news the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility’s technology, which can gather information on anything moving between the bottom of the sea into outer space within the range area.
“This is leading-edge technology” not yet available to the U.S. Department of Defense because it hasn’t proven itself under simulated conditions. But that’s only a matter of time, he said.
While the military applications of the modular command center get Schultz so fired up he almost can’t stand still while describing them, he is nearly as excited about the job opportunities for young minds such as the Solipsys interns, that the technology should create.
The Japan trip was offered to all the interns: Tsuda, Nishimura, Melissa Fujimoto, Liane Fujii and Lee Ann Cox, all 2001 Kaua’i High graduates; and Adrian Carmichael and Mary MacDonald, 2001 Kapa’a High graduates.
But because of the trip timing and start of college, only Tsuda and Nishimura were able to make it.
Some had their doubts that high school graduates would have the savvy to work on the highest of the high-tech military equipment, said Dr. Jim Stamm, an electronics engineer with the Naval Air Systems Command who was teacher to the interns.
But they surprised a lot of people. “They’ve put together a neat piece of software,” said Stamm, who designs antennas that allow all of the information of the modular command center to get to it, and who’s fondly known by the interns as “Jim” or “the Stamm-inator.”
The interns also helped fine-tune an existing software to design antennas and optimize their efficiency. In the process, Schultz said, the technological advances have helped reduce the price of certain antennae from $11 million to $1 million.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
