Ship Training & Certifications

Initial Ship Training

A newly commissioned ship brings together a crew made up of Star Fleet personnel from varying backgrounds and experiences, but also levels of training in the skills necessary to operate that ship. Before the ship may deploy on its maiden mission, it must be certified by Star Fleet to operate.

Shipboard departments are detailed elsewhere, but as Star Fleet and its missions of exploration, diplomacy, and defense evolve, so do those departments. How that evolution manifests is determined by Star Fleet regulations and the command itself. The regulations require that a series of teams—comprised of experts in the areas of combat systems, damage control, engineering, medical, navigation, security, ship-handling, and auxiliary operations—oversee the training of the ship's crew, to ensure the ship acquires and maintains the skill sets necessary to not only operate the ship, but operate it with the concepts of professionalism, safety, and the mission foremost in mind.

These teams are overseen by the Command Cadre, which is made up of the Executive Officer, the department heads, the senior department enlisted, and the enlisted members recognized as having the most general expertise in each of those departments. The Command Cadre collectively determines who makes up each of the specialized training cadres for those above proficiency areas; in essence, the Command Cadre trains the other cadres on how to themselves train and evaluate the overall crew. These other cadres—with a minimum of 3 members each, but upwards in numbers to adequately perform their shipboard training roles—promulgate the hierarchy of training requirements to the remainder of the crew, perform that training at various locations (shipboard or ground-side at established training facilities), and then evaluate the crew on those skills, refining the training as necessary. As the skill sets are acquired, the ship undergoes various levels, or "schedules", of testing in order to achieve the Final Deployment Certification (FDC).

Depending on the ship's crew size and missions, there will be pre- and post-commissioning lengths of time scheduled for these training evolutions. These levels are referred to as the Program of Training, with each of the progressing qualifications referenced as Schedules I through VI, or POTS I-VI:

POTS I

This is the initial training of the Command Cadre (CC) by Star Fleet Manpower's special ship training teams, known as Manpower Training Group (MTG), from the Department of Certifications. The MTG hosts the CC at an established training facility, often co-located with the shipyard in which the ship is being constructed, or maybe at a nearby starbase or ground base. Upon the Master Training Certification (MTC) of each member of the CC, the pre-commissioned ship can be said to have passed POTS I.

POTS II

The master-certified Command Cadre arrives back on the ship to form and begin training the individual proficiency cadres:

Combat Systems Cadre (CSC): responsible for training and evaluating the operation of the ship's weapons and defensive systems

Damage Control Cadre (DCC): responsible for training and evaluating the crew's ability to fight fires, seal hull breaches, and effect repairs to vital systems during combat and other high-alert scenarios

Engineering Cadre (EC): responsible for training and evaluating the crew's engineering operation and maintenance skills, in various established situations

Medical Cadre (MC): responsible for training and evaluating the crew's ability to respond to a mass casualty event, with a particular focus on the medical divisions

Navigation Cadre (NC): responsible for training and evaluating the crew's ability to conduct proper stellar navigational tasks

Security Cadre (SC): responsible for training and evaluating the crew's ability to respond to various security events, such as boarding attempts, prisoner control, and area policing.

Ship-Handling Cadre (SHC): responsible for training and evaluating the crew's ability to properly maneuver the ship in both general and combat situations, as well as many less-than-common scenarios

Auxiliary Operations Cadre (AOC): responsible for training and evaluating the crew's ability to operate and service auxiliary craft, both in and out of the shuttlebays, as well as general operations of emergency vehicles, such as lifepods

The CC utilizes the training they've received in POTS I to instruct the other cadres on how to conduct their own specialized training upon the ship's crew, as well as how to evaluate the crew's handling of that instruction. Once the individual cadre members have received their own command certification (as applied by the Commanding Officer), the ship has passed POTS II.

POTS III

Following the ship's commissioning and with the POTS II certification, the eight ship cadres begin a period of rapid training of the ship's crew in those proficiencies. This is not wholesale instruction of skills, as a vast majority of the crew will have prior shipboard experience. Instead, the ship cadres will provide instruction on the systems directly relevant to the specific ship class, with variants to match the individual ship. The crew will then perform proctored tests of those proficiencies during pier-side evaluations overseen by the cadres. The entire process will be overseen by the Command Cadre. Once command-specific minimums are established achieved, the Commanding Officer will declare the ship to have passed POTS III.

POTS IV

The ship's crew—temporarily certified for ship's operations based upon the POTS III certification—performs a short familiarization cruise in the general vicinity of the construction facility, hosting an extensive MTG team that oversees every aspect of the ship's routine during the underway period. However, more importantly, the MTG is there to evaluate the ship cadres as they themselves evaluate the crew's proficiency (‘’i.e.’’, evaluated on their ability to evaluate). Scenarios run will not be overly extensive or stressful, but more general in nature with a seemingly-random event introduced periodically. The familiarization cruise will be also used to identify technical issues to be resolved at the shipyard. If the cadres earn the MTG's approval, the ship is deemed to have passed POTS IV.

POTS V

Upon the resolution of any technical issues identified during the familiarization cruise, the ship will once again get underway in the same local operating area, conducting training hosted by the ship cadres and equipment tests upon various systems that had not been rigorously tested previously. With an open-ended schedule—and barring any technical problems—the ship will remain underway until the Command Cadre can recommend, and the CO signs off on, the passing of POTS V, a command statement that the ship is ready to be tested for the FDC.

POTS VI

The final phase of the Program of Training involves the MTG returning to the ship to once again evaluate the ship through all manners of scheduled and unscheduled scenarios during an local underway period. A successful completion of this phase results in the OIC of the MTG granting the ship its FDC. The ship is now qualified to join the active fleet.

Active Ship Training

Following the awarding of the FDC, and over the ship's operational service life, smaller teams of the MTG will make periodic and scheduled visits to the ship to evaluate the Command and other ship cadres in evaluations similar to that of POTS VI, known as the MTG Evaluation Visit (or MEV). These are important and stressful periods for the ship, as a failure of the evaluation will be a direct reflection of the Command Cadre, resulting in the loss of its MTC. If the ship's Command Cadre loses its MTC, the ship's Commanding Officer and Executive Officer are relieved of their duties and the ship is sidelined until a formal investigation is conducted and a new command team is assigned. Because of the severity of this consequence, oftentimes a MTG will cut their visit short "unexpectedly", with an informal list of discrepancies that should be addressed before their return. However, if the MTG feels the command is seriously negligent, they have the responsibility of failing the ship on its MEV.

Tactical Fleet Training

Ships assigned to the Tactical Fleet are constantly tested on their ability to meet their offensive mission. These ships practice an operational cycle—adopted from the wet navies of Great Britain, India, and the United States of America of the late 20th and early 21st centuries—that continuously loops around, from stand-down, through training period, then to exercises, finalizing with a scheduled deployment, either individually or within a task force. The intent of this cycle is to support a rapid offense force that is always ready to respond to emergent threats, with a series of relief forces in the pipeline.

A given ship will start an operational cycle following a post-deployment stand-down. The ship's material readiness would have been evaluated by the engineers of the Starship Construction office at which the ship had stood down, with repairs, maintenance, minor upgrades, and resupply taking place concurrently. If a Mission Upgrade Period or Total Modernization Overhaul are scheduled or deemed required, they will be integrated with the forthcoming pre-deployment workup events. Pre-deployment workups represent every phase of the operational cycle between the post-deployment stand-down and the next scheduled deployment.

Upon the return of the entire crew (following stand-down), the ship enters the first training period in preparation for the Intermediate Mission Problem (IMP). The pre-IMP period will see the ship cadres preparing the crew via instruction and onboard evaluation on scenarios that will both prepare for the next scheduled MEV, but also for the general mission areas that the ship is designed to conduct during combat operations. For example, during the pre-IMP period,a destroyer with TacFleet will get underway and train to conduct self-defense missions, as well as the traditional destroyer roles of capital ship engagement, installation assaults, and fleet escort. Upon the scheduled IMP period, the MTG will come aboard and direct the ship to complete a number of scenarios to demonstrate the crew's proficiency in those mission roles. While most of the time the ship will be tested individually, in certain scenarios other ships will take part, either as aggressors, targets, or high-value assets. Sometimes, multiple ships under MTG evaluation will sail together, exchanging offensive and defensive roles until all evaluations are completed.

Once a ship passes the IMP, it enters the pre-CEP training period. The Composite Exercise Problem (CEP) is where an offensive task force environment is created with ships at the same point in the training cycle, often because they will be deploying together. In this training period, the individual ship will again prepare for the upcoming exercise by training and practicing the skill sets necessary to perform its role in a task force, as evaluated by the ship cadres. Following the successful conclusion of those self-evaluations, a MTG will get underway with the ship, and will test the ship during a final series of individual scenarios, while en route to the task force rendezvous. As the CEP (as a named exercise) begins, all the ships (each with their own MTG aboard) will operate as a task force in their respective roles, engaging in non-disclosed but planned scenarios that will test the likely situations the task force might encounter on deployment. Some non-task force ships will play the roles as aggressors, targets, or other related roles, as a means of testing the ships conducting the CEP. While exercise failure is always a possibility, if the combined MTG oversight team deems there credible issues to exist that would threaten a deployment, in most cases the exercise concludes with a list of discrepancies to be resolved. The task force commander will then establish a post-CEP training period to resolve those discrepancies , with a less-intrusive MTG presence signing them off when completed.

Final material readiness is completed for each deploying ship, with a final abbreviated pre-deployment stand-down for the crews. Upon the deployment, the TacFleet task force (or individual ships) will transit to their assigned area of operation, continuing training exercises and public affairs missions, until either called to conduct combat operations or conclude the deployment.