DON IT West provides the opportunity for attendees to hear directly from Navy leadership, allowing them to obtain the necessary information to identify innovative IT solutions for current and future challenges.

During the conference, NAVWAR Commander Rear Adm. Doug Small discussed how the robust constellation of allies and partners remains a critical strategic advantage over our competitors. He also stressed the importance of speed and the role entrepreneurship plays in rapidly fielding systems for the future force.

"In today’s great power competition, we have some huge advantages,” said Small.  “The number one being our friends, allies, and partners all over the world. The other is our entrepreneurship. We can out entrepreneur anybody. The key is taking advantage of that and delivering it at the speed of relevance.”

He went on to discuss how the most successful entrepreneurs, the most profitable companies are the ones leveraging the best available commercial technologies and using them to their advantage, explaining how today we are seeing entire companies being replaced by new and emerging software applications, giving them real market value.

“That is what we are getting after in our corner of the world,” said Small. “Project Overmatch, how we are delivering software at speed and scale is nothing more than taking advantage of the best that commercial industry has to offer.”

Also focused on the future fight, NAVWAR’s Chief Engineer, Rob Wolborsky, highlighted the critical need to modernize the fleet and harness capabilities like 5G, or ‘future G,’ to maintain our advantage at sea. 

“We must push the boundaries of what is possible, taking an increased risk in aggressively adopting and rapidly delivering 5G to the warfighter,” said Wolborsky. 

5G enables the Internet of Things, training with augmented and virtual reality, faster streaming, smart warehousing, augmented telemedicine, remote engineering, improved aircraft readiness and distributed command and control.

“The future fight is not coming, it is upon us,” said Wolborsky. “We are looking to you, our partners across industry, to tell us how it is being implemented so we can get it right for the Navy.”

Wolborsky went on to identify the following areas in need of industry support:

• Driving ideation and application of emerging technologies for warfighting.
• Building digital engineering into Naval culture and processes.
• Standardizing data, models, and practices.

Concluding the event, Rear Adm. Kurt Rothenhaus, Program Executive Officer, Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (PEO C4I) also recognized the key role the commercial, as well as defense industry, plays in maintaining our current Fleet as well as developing and building platforms and capabilities for the future fight. He emphasized how much the warfighter is already benefiting from leveraging commercial technologies today, giving the example of our commercial SATCOM systems as well as our afloat and ashore network systems, but we need more of it for the future.

“The horsepower behind many of our systems are commercial hardware, and commercial software running on that hardware,” said Rothenhaus. “All of which has been optimized to support distributed maritime operations.”

He then looked ahead, talking about how emerging technologies in edge compute, non-geo stationary orbit SATCOM and AI/ML technologies are areas we are looking to leverage to support the Fleet.

“We are eager to leverage the investments of commercial sector technology, as well as small business. We are leveraging it, benefiting from it, and we are excited that there is more to come,” said Rothenhaus.

Other speakers from NAVWAR Enterprise included:

• Rob Keisler, Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic director of data science and artificial intelligence, discussing the vision of the Department of Navy Data Strategy as a data-centric organization, using data at speed and scale for operational advantage and increased efficiency.
• Ruth Youngs Lew, Program Executive Officer, Digital (PEO Digital), discussing the ways Flank Speed is adopting a cloud first approach to improve cyber and operational resilience.

In addition to the speakers, the following NAVWAR teams were presented with 2023 DON IT Excellence Awards for their work directly related to the theme of the conference, “Capitalizing on Innovation.”

• Authoritative Data Environment Transformation Team (PMW 240) - Information Technology Excellence Modernize Award.
• Rapid Assess and Incorporate for Software Engineering (RAISE) 2.0 / RAISE Platform of Choice Team (NAVWAR) – Information Technology Excellence Defend Award
• Navy Information Technology Procurement Request (ITPR) Reform Team (NAVWAR) – Information Technology Excellence Data Award
• Enterprise Power Platform Template Library Team (NAVWAR) – Information Technology Excellence Workforce Award
• Naval Base Coronado (NBC) 5G Smart Warehouse Team (NIWC Pacific) - Information Technology Excellence Modernize Award.

"As the Navy’s first operational 5G private government owned network we’ve established the framework for future DoN and DoD network capabilities which align with National Defense Authorization Acts and the DoD 5G Strategy Implementation Plan,” said Tim Ruth, NBC 5G Smart Warehouse Team lead. “This is important since 5G enabled technology offers a solution to problems that hinder warehousing and supply chain networks. We are testing and installing 5G enabled automation technologies that will enhance mission readiness and warfighter effectiveness by enabling data-driven decisions."

About NAVWAR

NAVWAR identifies, develops, delivers, and sustains information warfighting capabilities and services that enable naval, joint, coalition and other national missions operating in warfighting domains from seabed to space and through cyberspace. NAVWAR consists of more than 11,000 civilian, active duty and reserve professionals located around the world.