The Navy has made strides in modernization, but to prevent surprises from competitors working to exceed its capabilities, the service branch must always “be looking for more innovation and driving it out to the plate,” according to Hon. Nickolas Guertin, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition.
To continue its momentum, the Navy has prioritized “building systems purposefully architected to change over time,” he said during his keynote address at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Navy Summit on Thursday.
The end goal, said Guertin, is designing systems that can “integrate things as they appear, to take out things that are no longer useful or can be performed to a better offer and put them in without skipping a step.”
Several program executive offices have already incorporated these principles into their work. Guertin listed PEO Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence, PEO Integrated Warfare Systems and PEO Undersea Weapons Systems as some units leading this approach within the Navy.
“All three of those organizations are working on new software architectures and deployment models, and getting them to work together in places where they can work together is going to be an important part of my time here in this job to make sure we’re getting the best possible use of the resources at hand” he said.
The Navy also established a new program office focused on the DDG Mod 2.0 modernization initiative, which aims to drive the delivery of new radars, electronic warfare tools and other advanced capabilities for destroyers.
Guertin noted changes to the DDG 1000, “an amazing warship with a gun system that just didn’t quite work out,” as an example of the Navy’s philosophy of continuous improvement.
Now, the service branch is “in the middle of ripping out those gun systems” and replacing them with the Conventional Prompt Strike missile system.
Contracts are a major part of the Navy’s work to successfully develop and implement new capabilities, and Guertin said the service branch wants to “be creative in the way we do contracting.” Moving forward, he hopes to “find better ways of getting not just win-win contracts—which they always are to a certain extent—to attract investing and give [industry] an opportunity to say, ‘I think you can do better at this.’”
“We also need to think about how we are smarter about our investments—both in government and in industry—that are going to help us do this business better,” he added. “Order books are full, but we need to make sure we do this.”
The Navy, he continued, does not want to save money, but to “use every penny as best as possible.”
“If we can get some more ships on the move, that’s great, but what we really want is these ships on time, and if possible, on cost. Right now, we’re off the mark on that, and we need to get back to the point where we’re delivering on time and on cost,” he said.
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