CIMSEC – Last summer, the academy hosted its second Naval Academy Warfighter-Centered Design (WCD) Challenge in partnership with the Naval Research and Development Establishment (NR&DE), and Naval Warfare Studies Institute (NWSI) at Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) to capture the talent and creativity of its graduates. Envisioned by Rear Admiral Lorin Selby, the WCD initiative seeks to “train people to think differently and challenge the current system.”¹ This year’s workshop included eleven USN Ensigns and two USMC Second Lieutenants with a broad range of academic majors including Electrical Computer Engineering, Weapons Robotics and Control, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, and Naval Architecture. Collectively, these students combined their academic experience to meet this year’s challenge, to develop low-cost solutions for offensive and defensive unmanned surface capabilities.

The War Zone – Here is what the squadron commander and program manager said about the EA-18G’s new AN/ALQ-249 jamming pods, which were thrust into combat last year.

War on the Rocks – It’s time warships move into the software-centric reality of the 21st century. Should their designs continue to center on humans and hardware, they will not evolve fast enough and – as a result — will become steel tombs.

National Interest – James Holmes says that the White House should appoint some senior overseer, probably housed within the National Security Council, with the authority to manage all U.S. government endeavors relating to maritime strategy.

CIMSEC – Educational wargaming is not merely an exercise in concept development in the upper reaches of command. It is a crucible for forging the decision-making skills, adaptability, and intellectual overmatch required for contemporary naval challenges in the earliest stages of a young officer’s development. Wargaming, particularly at the pre-commissioning level, transforms the learning experience by engaging participants in narrative-rich, synthetic environments that mimic the pressures of real-world decision-making. Drawing on historical precedents and recent innovations, we see a central role of wargaming in cultivating the next generation of naval leaders at the U.S. Naval Academy. 

The War Zone – The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) has helped develop an autonomous underwater float that can monitor and transmit oceanographic and underwater acoustic data near-indefinitely, and in near real-time. Known as the Persistent Smart Acoustic Profiler (PSAP) Voyager, it is powered by temperature differences in the ocean, providing enough energy to run its instrumentation for far longer than other non-wired undersea eavesdropping hydrophones currently in operation. Such an innovation could have big implications for undersea sensing and detection.

War on the Rocks – Decades of global policing and crisis response have taken a toll on the U.S. Navy. If the United States wishes to deter China, Beijing must believe Washington can fight a sustained, brutal war, one in which the U.S. Navy can take major losses and still fight on. Today, that is not the case, and the concept of “naval forward presence” bears much of the blame.