Naval Postgraduate School Provides AI Workshop for NAVSUP WSS to Boost Warfighting Edge
Photo By Fox Murray |
Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support (NAVSUP WSS) employees attend an......read moreread more
Photo By Fox Murray | Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support (NAVSUP WSS) employees attend an AI workshop presented by the Naval Postgraduate School Feb. 24 in Philadelphia. see less
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Naval Postgraduate School Provides AI Workshop for NAVSUP WSS to Boost Warfighting Edge
To accelerate the Department of War's transformation into an "AI-first" force, Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support (NAVSUP WSS) has partnered with the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) to arm its workforce with critical AI knowledge and skills.
The partnership kicked off with a short course, "What is AI and What Can it do for me?," held for employees on Feb. 24 in Philadelphia and Feb. 25 in Mechanicsburg.
The workshop directly supports a push from the highest levels of government. Tishia Miller, the NAVSUP WSS AI Innovation Team lead, cited Executive Order 14179 from July 2025, which calls it a "national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance."
This was reinforced by a Jan. 9, 2026, memo from the Secretary of War directing the department to become an "AI-first' warfighting force across all components."
According to Miller, the course was designed to develop foundational AI literacy and help employees recognize the opportunities, risks, and limitations of applying AI to military operations.
"Ultimately, I hope this workshop gets the workforce excited about the capabilities of AI," Miller said. "We want to ease fears that AI will take people's jobs and reinforce that AI will be their partner to do their jobs more efficiently."
Randy Pugh, vice provost for warfare studies at NPS and lead for its AI Taskforce, said the course aims to demystify the technology.
"The intent is to explain where it came from, how it works, the different types of AI, as well as considerations for operational security and responsible use," Pugh said. The session included a hands-on demonstration of prompt engineering, giving attendees a practical feel for current generative AI tools.
Pugh emphasized that AI is a tool to augment, not replace, the workforce.
"AI can provide a lot of assistance in making the people who serve at NAVSUP WSS more efficient and more effective by offloading some of the more time consuming, rote tasks," he explained. "They should be spending the majority of their time thinking deeply about complex problems and solving hard challenges that require their unique talent, not doing tasks that can be offloaded to a computer."
A program analyst from NAVSUP WSS, Dmitry Leiderman, attended the day-long course and sees how AI can assist in daily workload management.
“The lecturer introduced the attendees to different functions of AI how to use prompts, chat logs, voice recognition capabilities, file, sound, and image manipulations, said Leiderman. “What was useful is that the presenter prepared hands-on exercises and demonstrations during the second half of the course, which helped me to grasp the AI concepts while applying them into everyday functions.
“It will help me in my daily activities of compiling reports, preparing meeting agendas while analyzing the current state of the problems and proposing the future state steps of resolving them, added Leiderman.
While this workshop focused on NAVSUP WSS, Pugh noted it is part of a broader mission to create an "AI-fluent workforce" across the entire Department of the Navy.
"AI is one example of a disruptive emerging technology that challenges the ways we’ve done things in the past," Pugh said. "The larger challenge for the Department of the Navy is understanding the capabilities that exist ... and then adopting and integrating them intelligently, quickly and responsibly to maintain an advantage, ensure deterrence and guarantee success if we ever go to war.”
NAVSUP WSS provides the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and allied forces the program and supply support for the weapon systems that keep naval forces mission ready. With locations in Norfolk, Philadelphia, Mechanicsburg, and Tucson, NAVSUP WSS manages operational readiness for almost 300 deployable ships, 92 submarines, and 3,700 aircraft worldwide.
