MOORESTOWN, N.J—Lockheed Martin [LMT] unveiled a new laboratory at its Aegis Combat System production facility in New Jersey this week designed to explore cutting edge technologies for the Navy with a significant focus on how sailors interact with the systems they are operating.
Lockheed Martin opened the doors to the Surface Navy Innovation Center, or SNIC, for media and Navy officials on Tuesday, showing off new technologies and simulations to demonstrate interactive ways personnel can operate systems.
Jim Sheridan, the company’s director of Navy Aegis programs, who is overseeing SNIC, told a handful of reporters the center is not necessarily meant to develop new warfighting capabilities, but instead to improve ways sailors interact with a ship’s systems, including operations, maintenance and diagnostics.
Sheridan pointed out that many systems used on ships today reflect older technologies that are much less intuitive than what younger sailors are accustomed to using in daily life, such as touchscreens, video game consoles and the interfacing employed on smart phones and tablets. He said SNIC is in part meant to see how the interfacing technologies in modern devices could be employed in Navy systems.
Lockheed Martin spent $3.5 million to create the center that consists of about six rooms filled with digital displays and control stations. Lockheed Martin employees showed off the use of several commercial technologies the center is examining, like Google Glass. Google Glass could conceivably allow a sailor to view incoming battle space data simply by putting on the glasses and connecting to the system.
Other technologies on display would allow the user to create fictional warfighting scenarios on interactive screens, quickly adding to or changing threat scenarios and then simulate responses and results, with a focus on training.
Sheridan said part of the purpose of SNIC is to collaborate with other companies and industries and to experiment with commercial technologies to improve the Navy’s current systems. The idea would be to quickly find solutions and rapidly integrate them into the fleet, Sheridan said.
“The SNIC establishes a community space to promote rapid technology fielding that addresses the Navy’s most pressing challenges,” Sheridan said. “As the maritime security environment changes, we will find new ways to use products and best practices to benefit the sailors who rely on these systems to defend our nation.”
Sheridan said he even envisioned the possibility that sailors could have options to customize the digital displays in their work stations to their preferences, but with obvious limitations. During a reference to Facebook, Sheridan joked that sailors shouldn’t be allowed to set a preference to ignore incoming missile warnings.
Sheridan said the idea of SNIC is to generate new business by rapidly transitioning new technologies and solutions into Navy acquisition, and cautioned that the center would only remain open if it brought in revenue. Lockheed Martin would probably be willing to give SNIC about three years to bring in new business, and if unsuccessful by then would have to consider closing it, Sheridan said.