SAN DIEGO – Marking a significant milestone event for the waterfront community, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Training Facility (LTF) Pacific (PAC) was established during an official ceremony onboard Naval Base San Diego, Nov. 1. Capt. Justin Long, commanding officer for Surface Combat Systems Training Command (SCSTC) San Diego, turned over duties to Capt. Dustin Lonero as the first commanding officer for LTF PAC. 
 
Lonero is well-known in the LCS community. He previously served as commanding officer for USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10) Blue Crew during the ship’s maiden deployment to western pacific, commanding officer for USS Coronado (LCS 4) and most recently, USS Montgomery (LCS 8).
 
“It is an honor to stand here today as your first commanding officer,” said Lonero.  “I know this command is in great shape because of Capt. Long’s outstanding leadership and I look forward to leading an incredible team of subject matter experts in training future LCS warfighters.”

The establishment of LTF PAC is part of SCSTC’s large internal realignment effort that begun in 2021 with the changing of its name, formerly the Center for Surface Combat Systems.  The name change and realignment define the command’s critical mission of training surface warfighters. SCSTC, with their surface community partners and force development counterparts, provides system and platform specific combat systems training to a growing surface Navy.
 
Capt. George A. Kessler, Jr., commodore of SCSTC, presided over the ceremony and delivered remarks as the keynote speaker.
 
“LTF PAC is part of the domain’s overall realignment effort but the significance of LTF PAC is about the mission,” explained Kessler.  “A mission that is growing in importance each day. Strategic competition at sea is not an amorphous concept but an everyday reality and it demands that our Sailors have the tactical competence and proficiency needed to execute the mission across the spectrum of operations in today’s challenging environment.  Our warfighters must be ready to execute the mission – whenever, and wherever called.   LTF PAC provides the high-end tactical training needed to ensure warfighting readiness, which leads to security for our country and our allies and maintains the freedom of the seas we so richly enjoy.”
 
The LTF PAC is located onboard Naval Base San Diego.  It commenced LCS training operations in May 2007 and was the first surface warfare shore-based training facility to provide high-fidelity integrated bridge, combat systems, and engineering tactical scenario training for Sailors serving aboard LCS combatants.  Today, it facilitates the training concepts of Train-to-Qualify (T2Q) and Train-to-Certify (T2C) for LCS-2 USS Independence ship variants and provides an integrated command and control environment to support training in both navigation and combat systems mission areas. 
 
Its training systems, Surface Training Advanced Virtual Environment (STAVE) – LCS, is a networked virtual training environment coupled with Part Task Trainers (PTT) and Virtual Operations Trainers (VOTs) that provides the ability to visualize, communicate, and simulate system operations for individual watchstander and watchteam training events. STAVE LCS also contains a multi-purpose multi-media display component, consisting of Virtual Reality Labs (VRLs) which are designed to support the Immersive Virtual Ship Environment (IVSE). IVSE introduces the depiction of actual LCS shipboard spaces presented within a state-of-the-art gaming engine. The tasks completed within STAVE-LCS fulfill many qualification requirements for system fundamentals, operations, and maintenance.
 
For information about Surface Combat Systems Training Command, visit https://www.netc.navy.mil/SCSTC    
 
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