Fifth Fleet Showcases Fast Network Recovery Amid Middle East Conflict

The U.S. Navy’s network infrastructure was put to the test in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. In his first few weeks as director of Naval Enterprise Networks (NEN) at Program Executive Office (PEO) Digital, Richard Cunningham initiated a planning cycle to support Fifth Fleet sailors.

“Over the course of 48 to 72 hours, we were able to come back, produce a plan to support our forward shipmates, many of whom were under attack . . . they did receive incoming fire,” he said during a discussion at AFCEA NOVA Naval IT Day in Chantilly, Virginia.

Cunningham assumed his duties during this year’s WEST conference, which took place in February.

The ability to rapidly mobilize capability and respond assertively to operational forces was crucial, he noted.

Investment in cloud infrastructure with a sailor-first approach was proven successful, Cunningham added.

“I’ll thank the late ayatollah for helping us with cloud transition,” he said. “We were able to take damage to our network . . . but because we’ve designed it to be resilient, our users have entered a [primary, alternate, contingency, emergency (PACE)] plan, where as long as they have access to the internet, we have zero-trust protections for them, for their data. They’re up,” he said

Cunningham also emphasized the network as a warfighting system.

“I don’t always get the sense that we culturally see it that way, and my biggest concern is that the adversary does see it that way,” he stated. “Our command centers, our command-and-control nodes, our comms, our networks infrastructure, it’s going to be some of the first things to be targeted. They want to destroy our ability to command and control our forces, so we have to have resilience in the network.”

Kimberly Underwood contributed to this report.