The Navy needs to more effectively share information with the defense industry to promote innovation as the service heads toward more Open Architecture (OA) systems, the commander of the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) recently said.
Rear Adm. James Shannon said he “felt like the doors were closed to industry” when he took up his post nearly three years ago and that he has sought to change that mindset.
“When I go out and talk to people out in the field, at our warfare centers, some of them don’t get it yet because they got their piece of the pie and they’re not really willing to share it with anybody,” Shannon said. “And that’s a behavior trait that needs to change.”
Transparency “is really the essence of open architecture,” he said. For too long a culture has prevailed that discourages NSWC staff from talking more openly about challenges and problems industry could play a role in resolving, he said at an Aug. 16 conference on open architecture (OA) in San Diego. The gathering was hosted by the Surface Navy Association.
“A lot of our warfare center people were under essentially–my words–gag orders from program managers on not to talk to industry other than the industry that specifically was working on a specific problem–whoever they were contracted with.”
The Navy needs to do a better job in clarifying the intellectual property rights of a certain company versus what the government controls so the workforce has a better understanding of what can be shared throughout the industry, he said.
“That is something that we have to referee a lot better than we have done,” Shannon said.
OA uses existing, commercially available technology to produce modular, interoperable systems with open design practices that can be easily upgraded and thereby reduce costs. A high priority for the Navy, it is intended to replace or integrate legacy systems that are expensive to maintain and upgrade as the service has come to realize it cannot afford operating older networks in their current state over the long term.