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NAVAL AIR STATION NORTH ISLAND, Calif. – U.S. Marines from the Marine Innovation Unit (MIU) participated in Exercise Trident Warrior 25 at Naval Air Station North Island, California, from 28 July to 8 August, 2025, executing the Distributed Advanced Manufacturing concept with the Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research and Education (CAMRE) at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and FLEETWERX for addressing contested logistics challenges in expeditionary environments. While operating in remote, austere or deployed environments, units may not have access to traditional sources of supply, necessitating the development of new methods for providing logistical support.
“This is going to be an essential capability in future conflicts,” said Major Matthew Guido, an aviation maintenance officer assigned to MIU. “At some point, a part will fail where traditional sources of supply may not be accessible in the time the commander demands. We must validate these concepts for expeditionary production to deliver resiliency, ensure lethality and unmatched maneuverability.”
Working from spaces at Fleet Readiness Center Southwest (FRC-SW), a team of 9 MIU Marines with backgrounds in manufacturing, engineering, and project management focused on streamlining the process of fulfilling manufacturing requests from supported units. Through Trident Warrior 25, Marines tested a system of receiving and assigning production requests, then subsequently tracking the design, delivery and functions check of those parts. The exercise also served as an opportunity to evaluate the latest commercially-available advanced manufacturing machines to be considered for adoption and procurement by the Department of Defense.
“We are creating Uber for manufacturing, delivered with the efficiency of Amazon across the global, for nuclear-grade propulsion parts, in highly-contested environments,” said Lt. Col. Michael Radigan who was a principal organizer on the leadership team and a member of MIU. “This was the largest advanced manufacturing event the Department of Defense has done in its history, and we are writing the tactics, techniques and procedures that will operationalize these capabilities into unmatched combat power for the joint force.”
Trident Warrior 25 involved collaborative participation from 50+ organizations, including the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, NAVSEA, NAVAIR, SURFPAC, FLEETWERX, and the Defense Logistics Agency. Engineering analysts from Marine Corps Systems Command’s Advanced Manufacturing Systems Team conducted detailed parts research, utilizing multiple databases to assess part availability, the feasibility of advanced manufacturing production, and fabrication specifications. This comprehensive approach enabled Marines to exercise the entire manufacturing lifecycle, from initial request to final delivery and installation. The team designed and fabricated a wide variety of parts, including an aircraft canopy bracket, a component that supports aircraft structural repair processes at the FRC, valve manifolds, a spanner wrench with removable insert, and multiple parts for the ground, weapons systems and surface ship communities.
This exercise is the latest manifestation of a three-year collaboration between MIU and the Naval Postgraduate School’s CAMRE. These two organizations work together to strategically integrate advanced manufacturing technologies into expeditionary and contested logistics, where machinists and equipment are not geographically located at the point of need. During Trident Warrior 25, MIU provided reverse engineering, part design, parts research, and manufacturing support. The team engaged directly with FRC-SW, submarine units, USS Cape St. George (CG-71), USS Germantown (LSD-42), Special Boat Team 12, and F-18/F-16 depot-level repair facilities to identify parts suitable for production using advanced manufacturing. Requests were submitted through a QR-code-linked submission form which automatically uploaded data to the Joint Advanced Manufacturing System (JAMS) - a system that MIU designed and deployed.
“The Marine Innovation Unit has been instrumental to the success of CAMRE during these exercises. They bring technical expertise from their civilian employment and have seamlessly integrated with our expert faculty and active-duty student warfighters to help NPS operationalize advanced manufacturing. This unit’s involvement is vital to our advancements going forward,” said Mr. Chris Curran, Program Manager for CAMRE.
Over the course of the two-week exercise, MIU Marines helped to field more than 184 unique part requests. The team crafted an exhaustive due diligence process to gather all required information to produce accurate computer-aided design (CAD) models for additive manufacturing. In some cases, the design work was accomplished by MIU Marines working remotely hundreds or thousands of miles away. This successfully demonstrated the potential for the MIU Advanced Manufacturing Section to serve as a centralized reverse engineering and design capability for the Marine Corps – a concept currently being explored under the name of the “Marine Corps Reverse Engineering and Design Cell” (MCREDC). Much of the support was focus on the joint force’s most critical supply gaps to deliver true readiness solutions.
MIU plans to continue internal development of the MCREDC concept while participating in future joint exercises with NPS and CAMRE to further refine expeditionary and distributed advanced manufacturing concepts, evaluate commercially available technologies, and inform the Marine Corps' Additive Manufacturing Program of Record.
| Date Taken: | 08.08.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 09.04.2025 14:08 |
| Story ID: | 547253 |
| Location: | CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 23 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, MIU, Partner Organizations Exercise Advanced Manufacturing Techniques at Trident Warrior 25, by MAJ Thomas Kleiber, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
