A new Navy science-and-tech strategy will push technology to the fleet faster and concentrate limited research funds on problems industry won't solve on its own, the service’s research chief said Tuesday.
The Office of Naval Research strategy, called "Feed S&T at Speed to the Fleet and Force," is in final production, Chief of Naval Research Rachel Riley said Tuesday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Virginia.
"Speed is, of course, the word of the year in our business," she said during a panel discussion that included Jarred Conley, principal director for maritime efforts at the Defense Innovation Unit.
Riley said the document urges closer collaboration with DIU, warfighters, and other stakeholders. She said it also aims to explain "in plain English" what ONR does and what the Navy wants from industry. ONR is working to "de-layer and simplify" its bureaucracy, so that the limiting factor on technology development is "the physical science and not the processes and the policies around it," she added.
"Speed is, of course, the word of the year in our business.”
The strategy also aims to push ONR to identify the problems that only it can solve, so the office can make best use of its roughly $3 billion budget. But Riley said this isn’t as difficult as it may seem.
“I have 1,100 Ph.Ds who work for me, almost all in STEM. They're brilliant Americans who dedicated their lives to serving. And so many of them, when I showed up and asked them, you know, “How do we make sure that what we're investing in isn't duplicative with industry?” They said, “Well, it's just so hard to know what industry will and won't do.” And I said, “no, it's actually quite simple. If there is profit to be made, then it is something where industry capital will flow. Perhaps not perfectly, but eventually.”
Riley said ONR must focus on technology that’s far from ready, or that no one but the U.S. military needs.
“My favorite example, because it immediately resonates with everyone, is currently there's really no commercial need for very quiet tubes that move through the water for a very long time”—that is, submarines, she said. ONR must keep investing to keep the submarine force "the most lethal in the world."
Riley said she wants the office to do what it must so it can pass useful technology off to industry. She is pushing her program officers to serve as a “thought partner” to defense contractors—talking about, say, the Sea Hunter medium unmanned surface vessel that ONR has been experimenting with since 2017 and is now deployed with a carrier strike group.
What’s in maritime automation
The recent rescue of two Army helicopter pilots by an uncrewed boat made it a “great week at the Defense Innovation Unit,” Conley said, referring to the recovery of Apache aircrew using a 24-foot Saronic Corsair unmanned surface vessel—a system he said went "from first splash to success in four months."
Now, Conley said, DIU’s maritime unit is working on contested logistics, including an autonomous resupply vessel effort, and clearing naval mines of the sort that Iran has used—or possibly just threatened to use—to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Conley called mine-warfare one of the Navy's most underfunded domains, despite being "a huge problem for the global economy." Neutralizing mines still requires humans, either flying aboard an MH-60 helicopter or deploying in explosive ordnance disposal teams.
But that may soon become less true. Last month, DIU launched an MCM Modernization Prize Challenge to find ways to increase the role of machines. Candidate systems are to deploy by September, he said.
Riley said another grand challenge in uncrewed systems is moving from one-to-one control by a human to one human controlling many platforms. So far, too many approaches look like "little kids playing soccer," which is "not good enough for our American warfighters," she said.
She also noted that controlling undersea robots is more difficult than aerial ones.
"Folks think that if you can fly a UAV, you can fly a UUV," but it is "a different game," she said.
ONR is funding academic research into how insects and birds swarm, she said, to model that coordination mathematically and scale it to unmanned vehicles.
"Mass matters," Conley said, adding that going from zero to one is achievable, but going from one to 100 is hard. But commanders’ willingness to accept an "80% solution," provide feedback, and help iterate quickly is growing, he said.
