The U.S. Navy is working to accelerate modernization and instill efficient manufacturing habits as the service branch continues to produce mission systems for the future.
During a panel discussion at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Navy Summit, naval officers shared insight into recent technological developments and how technologies like artificial intelligence are enabling the enhanced growth of these capabilities.
Van Hendrey, the Navy’s executive director and program executive officer for Integrated Warfare Systems, began the discussion by speaking on the importance of collaborating with organizations like the Office of Naval Research as the Navy develops adaptable programs in a “fiscally constrained environment.”
“We have got to really look at how we take the technologies that through the partnership with ONR, we’ve matured and put into testing on ships, and how do we really scale that baseline that we have,” Hendrey said.
Hendrey introduced the USS Jack H. Lucas, the Navy’s first Flight III Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, as one of these capabilities warranting scale. To provide support to vessels like the Jack. H Lucas, the Navy has integrated a family of AN/Spy-6 radars and an AEGIS Baseline 10 combat system designed to defend ships against external threats.
Scott St. Pierre, the deputy director of the Navy’s Assured Enterprise Networks and Cybersecurity Division for Information Warfare, highlighted the Navy’s initiative to limit “duplication of efforts” while developing these various technologies and systems, especially given the recent surge in AI implementation.
“How do we start working with industry to identify those enterprise solutions that help us drive down the amount of duplication, eliminating that duplicate cost, the duplicate set of people that have to maintain the systems,” St. Pierre stated.
“Overlap is good, redundancy is good. Duplication of effort is extremely costly,” St. Pierre added.
The AEGIS combat system has also encountered some roadblocks in integrating modernized software into hardware already in place across fleets. To combat this problem, Hendrey said the Navy is employing a “cloud computing infrastructure” onboard ships.
“So think of a microservice architecture with a bunch of different applications. So like the iOS that sits on your phone with different apps,” Hendrey detailed. “So for us, we think this really allows us to bring more vendors on the field to support our players on the field.”
As the Navy pushes toward a more cyber-ready workforce, Lt. Col. Jack Long, acting Navy chief artificial intelligence officer, emphasized the ability of AI to be effectively manufactured in today’s environment.
“AI is not going to solve every problem, can’t just fairy dust it on top of stuff, but it does have some very applicable use cases, and they’re easier to find than they used to be because you can build AI while sitting at your desk,” Long said. “You can build a model to do that. You can’t build a nuclear reactor in your dorm room. At least, I hope you can’t.”
St. Pierre said the Navy will aim to develop resilient capabilities based on mission performance rather than just delivering the product.
“Mission is very straightforward: deliver and sustain secure and interoperable mission performance,” St. Pierre said. “We focus on mission performance as opposed to delivering a product. It’s not a product. It’s mission performance for our sailors as well as our Marines.”
You can learn more about how AI and cyber readiness are being leveraged throughout the military branches amongst government and industry professionals at the 2024 Intel Summit on Sept. 19. Secure your spot in the conversation now!
