Co-hosted by the NPS Division of Protection Administration’s Acquisition Analysis Program and the Naval Warfare Research Institute (NWSI), the two-day occasion illustrated the worth of primary and utilized analysis to drive operational innovation and put together leaders with the important and inventive considering required to resolve the onerous issues dealing with the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and joint pressure.
The occasion’s keynote speaker, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Analysis, Growth, and Acquisition (ASN RD&A) Nickolas Guertin, acknowledged that his a few years producing and presenting analysis on the symposium ready him to reach his present place because the Navy’s chief weapons purchaser.
“I do not suppose I’d have the job I’ve if it weren’t for the work that I’ve performed by means of the Acquisition Analysis Symposium to take these concepts, to consider them onerous, to work with one other particular person as a co-author or co-authors and put down concepts about what we ought to be doing otherwise about this work,” Guertin mentioned. “By that, I turned often called somebody who isn’t reckless however purposeful about innovation.”
Guertin additionally highlighted the symposium’s collaborative surroundings, various subjects, and construction, which permits contributors to discover completely different tracks and acquire insights from numerous fields.
As with earlier occasions, this yr’s Acquisition Analysis Symposium featured analysis papers and briefing shows targeted on lately accomplished and ongoing initiatives sponsored by the Division of Protection (DOD) and Division of the Navy (DON) and carried out by researchers at numerous establishments.
Consultants delved into such points as synthetic intelligence (AI), cybersecurity integration, shipbuilding, provide chain resilience, software program acquisition, and optimizing relationships by means of contracting. All through the symposium, particular person analysis initiatives have been linked with bigger strategic naval and protection priorities.
Guertin, as an example, mentioned his rigorous strategy to the Navy’s latest shipbuilding evaluation, a tricky evaluation of weaknesses in industrial capability, workforce, budgeting and acquisition processes which have put the Navy behind in assembly targets for a fleet that may guarantee maritime dominance. A separate panel assessed each previous and current challenges in shipbuilding, together with a case examine on the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, one of many packages operating delayed and over value.
Chief of Naval Analysis Rear Adm. Kurt Rothenhaus, himself an NPS alumnus, chaired a panel on AI in acquisition. Researchers thought of how massive language fashions can be utilized to streamline processes in contracting, program administration, and techniques engineering; Rothenhaus located this analysis inside the framework of the lately launched Naval Science and Know-how (S&T) Technique that identifies the Secretary of the Navy’s analysis priorities.
Rothenhaus famous that NPS and the symposium are important in serving to enhance science and expertise not simply within the U.S., but additionally for companions and allies.
“What the navy does once we purchase weapons techniques or different capabilities is really difficult,” Rothenhaus mentioned. “It is one thing that deserves examine. And so what brings me again is seeing the scholarship of the scholars right here on the Naval Postgraduate College and colleagues from across the nation and the joint neighborhood actually taking a tough have a look at how we do acquisition and the way we are able to get higher at it.”
A second panel on synthetic intelligence, chaired by NWSI Director Randy Pugh, addressed AI in sustainment, expertise administration, and price modeling. Pugh, a retired Marine Corps colonel, linked his previous operational expertise buying software-intensive intelligence techniques to immediately’s challenges buying AI.
“On the time, there was nothing extra dangerous or advanced than buying a software program utility. It’s simply full of ambiguity and price and danger,” Pugh mentioned. “Buying AI instruments or doing AI for the acquisition neighborhood goes to be like buying software program, solely exponentially extra advanced and exponentially extra dangerous.”
The symposium additionally supplied a platform for scholar analysis. Throughout a poster showcase on Could 8, dozens of NPS warrior-scholars from the Division of Protection Administration mentioned their modern research and thesis findings with attendees.
Amongst these presenting on the poster present have been Marine Corps Capt. Daniel Lim and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Hans Lauzen, whose categorised analysis venture on resilient satellite tv for pc communications structure and autonomous techniques delivered not solely analysis, however a tangible answer developed in coordination with trade companions and fielded in lower than two years.
Lim mirrored that the power to have conversations with senior leaders on the symposium and all through their analysis course of “allowed us to not solely enhance management consciousness of what we’re doing and the influence that academia can have within the operational surroundings, but additionally combine their suggestions into our design course of and speed up the expertise, finally rising mission accomplishment and the worth that we ship to the warfighters.”
Along with Navy and Marine Corps college students, presenters on the poster present included officers from different DOD providers in addition to worldwide college students from Germany, Djibouti, Brazil, and Ukraine, demonstrating the occasion’s various vary of views.
A standard chorus all through the symposium was the necessity to pair technological innovation with folks supported to steer by means of the quickly altering surroundings created by these applied sciences.
In his remarks, NPS Division of Protection Administration chair Ray Jones mentioned that “now we have to create an surroundings through which we proceed to teach and prepare our workforce and our industrial base at the forefront of expertise to have the ability to meet these challenges.”
“Whereas the procurement course of can lag behind the technological developments if we let it, the fact is we don’t have the posh to do this,” Jones added. “We should demand that not solely are our acquisition warriors technically competent of their tradecraft, but additionally that everybody within the enterprise of protection understands and is ready to affect change all through this course of.”
Through the years, the Acquisition Analysis Symposium has developed into an important area for fostering dialogue amongst students, policymakers, and acquisition practitioners on important procurement and logistics points. Rothenhaus expressed his appreciation and gratitude for the Acquisition Analysis Symposium and its function in fostering dialogue and collaboration.
“I’ve all the time actually loved the convention and located it fascinating,” he mentioned. “It actually is a chance for people from across the nation and our international and worldwide companions as nicely to spend time serious about how we do the enterprise of acquisition higher to serve the Sailors, Marines, and different service warfighters higher.”
Analysis papers and shows from the symposium might be seen on the NPS web site at https://occasion.nps.edu/conf/app/researchsymposium/residence#!/web page/558?c=66.
