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SAN DIEGO - Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) provided a full line-up of speakers and panel sessions at the Western Conference and Exposition (WEST 2015), one of the largest defense and technology exhibitions on the West Coast, Feb. 11-12.
The theme of this year's premier Sea Services event focused on "Lower Budgets and Higher Demands: How do the Sea Services Strike the Right Balance,” a topic that resonated throughout many of the keynote speeches and panel discussions.
Leadership from across SPAWAR reiterated the challenge of maintaining innovation while at the same time increasing cyber warfighting capability in an era of shrinking budgets.
“There is great opportunity in adversity. Budgets are down and that’s not always a bad thing because it makes us think harder about what we are doing,” said SPAWAR Commander Rear Adm. David Lewis. “When I look at the Navy’s history, many of our greatest innovations have come from times of down budgets following war.”
In order to remain innovative and speed capability to the fleet, product lines must be consolidated and adapted for modularity, a good example being SPAWAR’s Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) effort, which Lewis called a lightning rod for success.
“We have a double incentive here: budgets are down and cyber is up, so we ought to be able to really use those two burning issues and drive innovation into all of our processes,” said Lewis. “This is systemic across everything we do. It’s not just technology or better training or architecture. It’s everything.”
The drive toward innovation provides ample opportunity to determine how SPAWAR will work with industry and create better products for the fleet. In addition to touching on some of high-visibility initiatives like CANES and the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS), Lewis explained why the organization will play a key role in the Navy’s Task Force Cyber Awakening effort.
“Cyber is an all-hands-on-deck evolution, and everyone will have to be a cyber-expert,” said Lewis referring to the changing dynamics of the future workforce. “It is fundamental to what we do on ships and for the warfighter. If it has a computer, it will be affected by cyber. The current warfighting environment has changed radically, so we are going to have to change some of our behaviors to remain cyber defendable.”
Despite much of the budget foreboding that permeated the conference key notes, it did not take away from the discussion about innovation that has been the hallmark of the Navy's MUOS program.
Rear Adm. Christian "Boris" Becker joined with Maj. Gen. Daniel Hughes on a two-person panel during the three-day conference and answered questions regarding MUOS and joint acquisitions from a Navy and Army perspective.
"The history of space started with our Army and Navy. While the Army had the first crack at sending something into orbit in 1958, a couple of years later the Navy sent something and it is still there,” said Becker. “A few years after that, the Naval Research Lab sent a spacecraft up into space that was the first national intelligence spacecraft. That partnership, of Army and Navy working together on the medium of space, determining what capability we can bring to the warfighter, is one that stretches way back."
Becker reiterated the importance of industry partnerships and their relationship to the capability that MUOS brings to the warfighter.
"It takes a great deal of collaborative effort, not just to design the technology, not just to deliver something as innovative as MUOS, but to support the effort that’s behind it," said Becker. "MUOS supports an important mission. It enables us to shoot, move, communicate, locate, close-in and then destroy the enemy with fire in close combat."
Several top scientists and engineers behind SPAWAR’s innovative technologies hosted one-on-one technical innovation sessions for conference attendees aimed at providing a comprehensive overview of their portfolio. They explained how their cutting-edge efforts keep the warfighter ahead of the game. Moderated by Dr. Roger Boss, SPAWAR's deputy chief technology officer, the senior technical staff members answered questions about information dominance (ID), outlined opportunities for collaboration, and elaborated on the diversity of technical efforts aimed at creating ID capabilities for various cyber initiatives.
“The pace of technical innovation in fields related to cyber and C4ISR continues to increase,” said Boss. “In order to provide the warfighter with the most up-to-date capabilities, we must team with our academic and industry partners to both participate in collaborative research and development and to transfer the intellectual property we have developed for inclusion in future products. These sessions allow those of us to provide additional awareness of our technical capabilities and innovations.”
Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said that the technological advantage the U.S. currently holds is eroding. Trying to stop the erosion will be difficult because there is no single foe and commercial adaption of technology is complicating the issue. In order to keep pace, innovative must be applied to emerging technology, thus enabling the U.S. to maintain its superiority while providing troops with a competitive advantage in a burgeoning cyber warfighting domain.
"We need to use the force we have very dynamically to execute our strategic defense,” said Work in stressing the need to remain agile, flexible and innovative in light of the current economic environment. “Readiness remains at troubling levels and the surge force isn’t as ready as it has been in the past.”
WEST 2015 is co-sponsored by Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) International and the U.S. Naval Institute (USNI), both non-profit, non-lobbying membership associations. Now in its 25th year, WEST 2015 featured exhibits from key technology leaders and discussions by some of the top leading military and industry experts. This year, the conference had more than 10,000 attendees during the three-day event.
As the Navy's Information Dominance systems command, SPAWAR designs, develops and deploys advanced communications and information capabilities. With more than 8,900 active duty military and civil service professionals located around the world and close to the fleet, SPAWAR is at the forefront of research, engineering, acquisition and support services that provide vital decision superiority to our forces at the right time and for the right cost.
| Date Taken: | 02.12.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 02.12.2015 18:44 |
| Story ID: | 154358 |
| Location: | SAN DIEGO, CA, US |
| Web Views: | 140 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, SPAWAR cyber imperatives, efficiency efforts and fiscal constraints highlighted during West 2015, by Tina Stillions, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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