Emerging Tech on CNMOC’s Radar

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In a conversation with SIGNAL Media, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command’s Jason McKenna and Capt. Mike Svatek outlined the disruptive technology they’ve currently got their eyes on.

“I’m extremely excited about our ability, or future capability that’s being developed in partnership with industry to develop a shipboard, pretty much AI-drive forecasting model,” Svatek stated. The tool will help forces ingest local observations and generate highly accurate, real-time atmospheric forecasts on the fly, while successfully operating in disconnected, non-permissive environments. 

Additionally, Svatek expressed enthusiasm for the use of autonomous aircraft for ground-truth observations.

“There’s a reason we have exquisite predictive capabilities on shore, because we have sensors everywhere, but in the ocean, we just don’t have them. So, any new sensing capability, whether it’s in the ocean or in the atmosphere that we can bring online that is able to get that data to us in a timely fashion, which means near real-time fashion, to be able to put into our models, both ashore and afloat, is going to be paramount.”

Echoing Svatek’s statement, McKenna commented on the potential of AI tools, noting the newly launched GenAI.mil site. 

“Right now, we’re trying to figure out how AI can help us assimilate data from the world’s oceans, millions and millions of observations in the atmosphere, the oceans and in space, to help improve fleet environmental predictions,” he said. 

Additionally, McKenna recognized the promise of causal AI.

“The ability to really unpack the relationships and to understand why AI is making predictions, understand the scenarios, and not just mimic and make predictions, but to truly understand the scenarios that are given,” he said.

The CNMOC is also monitoring the Navy’s quantum computing research, McKenna said.

Finally, the chief technology officer pointed out the evolution of chipsets and the progression from central processing units to graphics processing units. 

“These are all enabling technologies for not just AI but for processing the data that we need,” he stated.