To help the Navy harness technological innovation, James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, today announced a plan to rapidly expand collaboration with industry by setting up five regional offices around the country.

“Earlier this year, the Naval Expeditions (NavalX) office was stood up to facilitate rapid adoption of proven agility-enhancing methods across the Department,” said Geurts, speaking from the NavalX office. “And today, I’m proud to announce that NavalX, in collaboration with our workforce, has furthered this effort by creating the first five regional 'Tech Bridges' across the country to better connect the DON and the private sector.”

These locations are Newport, Rhode Island; Keyport, Washington; San Diego, California; Orlando, Florida; and Crane, Indiana.

Partnering with the Office of Naval Research and the Navy’s Systems Commands, NavalX Tech Bridges will connect, reinforce and sustain acceleration ecosystems in off-base locations across the DON enabling greater collaboration with non-traditional partners. Each Tech Bridge will be supported by NavalX and will facilitate project efforts in each region designed to solve hard problems and technology areas identified by Fleet and the DoN workforce.  

These Navy Tech Bridges will partner with start-ups, academia, corporations, small businesses, non-profits, and private capital. Additionally, Tech Bridges will serve within the growing ecosystem of DoD innovation groups, providing NavalX greater collaboration capability with Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), U.S. Army Futures Command, AFWERX, SOFWERX, and others.

“NavalX works with partners to support collision spaces and generate dual-use solutions,” said Geurts. “These five spaces will lower barriers that traditionally hamper external collaboration. I envision these as the first five, of a great number of tech bridges, to enable the Department of the Navy to achieve its goal of agility at scale.”

The Tech Bridges will operate on a “franchise” model that will allow each region to develop their own model to connect to their unique innovation ecosystem.

For more information on NavalX and Tech Bridges go to:

www.secnav.navy.mil/agility

https://www.secnav.navy.mil/agility/Pages/techbridges.aspx