San Diego, CA, March 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Artificial intelligence development, innovative data-gathering techniques and the Chinese threat were among the top topics sea service leaders discussed at WEST 2020 in San Diego. The conference featured a town hall discussion among maritime chiefs, a look at the training needed to prepare for future fights, and an examination of acquisition techniques that bring technology to sailors, Marines and coast guardsmen faster. AFCEA International and the U.S. Naval Institute co-sponsored the event.
Adm. Philip S. Davidson, USN, commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said a broadly expanded and multifaceted training effort entailing multiple friends and allies will be necessary to forestall Chinese adventurism in the Indo-Pacific region. He laid out an extensive description of the threat China poses to the global community.
“The Chinese communist party represents the greatest long-term strategic threat in the 21st century,” Adm. Davidson declared. “It wants to supplant the existing rules-based international order.”
To avoid going to war, the United States must build a credible deterrent against China’s many types of aggression. “Deterrence is only effective if the adversary believes a [good] combat capability exists,” the admiral pointed out, adding, “Deterrence by punishment alone leaves few options if deterrence fails.”
Using the U.S. Navy’s Readiness Analytics and Visualization Environment, known as RAVEN, is one way in which the United States can prepare for future fights. The technology, which recently reached full operating capability, provides three dozen data lakes, delivering a picture of systems operations readiness. The Navy now intends to extend the use of RAVEN to manning, training and equipping readiness as well as cyber readiness, according to Vice Adm. Brian Brown, USN, commander, Naval Information Forces.
The RAVEN platform, part of the Navy’s extensive digital transformation effort, was created to unite authoritative data sources for systems operation testing, Adm. Brown stated.
“We started seeing things in the data that we didn't recognize before and we started to see a larger potential for how to [extend its use],” Adm. Brown noted. “I believe that I could use the RAVEN data to help me understand the manning, training, equipping material readiness of all the shore commands that I have administrative control of in a way that [avoids] manually rolling up and manually going into different databases.”
Despite the success of RAVEN, the Navy still has its work cut out for it regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning or robotic systems. Data and the ability to obtain it remains an impediment to the increased use of AI, as does the ability to verify that adversaries have not tampered with AI-related code, said experts speaking on a WEST panel moderated by Capt. George Galdorisi, USN (Ret.), director, Strategic Assessments and Technical Futures, Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC), Pacific.
“It is worth noting that our peer adversaries are galloping ahead with AI and machine learning investments,” Galdorisi said. “You’ve heard the statements from leaders in Russia and China. They are not kidding. They are making huge investments.”
For the service, though, “Big Navy is still sorting through how it will get organized for AI,” he added.
But the Navy is making long strides in other technologies. For example, the service is cloning ship systems by creating digital twins that will help improve procurement and training times. The project is being incorporated into the 26 ships of the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group. It will allow new systems to develop, and sailors to train, in their deployment environment.
The Naval Information Warfare Systems Command hopes to cut years off of development times and provide more realistic training, said Pat Sullivan, the command’s executive director. Tedious laboratory work to verify the applicability of new systems will be eliminated by evaluations conducted in the native environment.
Adapting to great power competition also requires better acquisition operations, and the U.S. Defense Department's acquisition headquarters has been revamping contracting practices to meet this need. The efforts are succeeding in reducing contracting burdens, timelines and workforce hours and is bringing in more innovation into the department, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord reported.
The Defense Department has delegated all but nine of its 87 major defense acquisition programs to the services. In addition, the department’s new agile acquisition framework is helping speed up processes. Lord reported a 15 percent reduction in Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplements (DFARS) clauses, a 60 percent decrease in DFARS publication backlogs, and a 50 percent reduction in procurement and administrative lead times.
The shift in the contracting focus brings in more small businesses or nontraditional contractors, extending the defense industrial base, and Lord’s office is currently conducting a contracting financing study to examine the impacts of these partners.
Additional coverage of WEST 2020 is available online. To watch videos of the presentations, the sea service chiefs speaking about the coronavirus, and one-on-one interviews with some of the speakers, visit the website.
WEST 2021 takes place February 16-18, 2021, at the San Diego Convention Center, California.
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