U.S. Navy Evolving To Incorporate Disruptive Technologies

Personnel with the U.S. Navy are striving to integrate disruptive technologies into their services and operations to outperform the enemy. To accomplish this, officials with the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC) are working on making several upgrades. 

Firstly, Naval SMWDC leaders are adjusting the position of their warfare tactics instructors (WTI). These advisers are highly trained and extremely experienced Navy officers specializing in four major categories: Amphibious Warfare, Mine Warfare, Anti-Submarine and Surface Warfare, and Integrated Air and Missile Defense, according to the Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet. Naval SMWDC officials aim to station one WTI on each ship, destroyer squadron and amphibious squadron, a change that will ideally improve tactical training across the Navy, according to Rear Adm. D. Wilson Marks, USN, commander, Naval SMWDC. Currently, WTIs are located on about 66% of all ships, Marks added. 

Naval SMWDC officials are also working toward pairing WTIs with engineers at the Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems. Marks predicts this will enable crews behind the scenes to develop and produce disruptive technologies quicker, leading to warfighters becoming more prepared and effective. 

“So, we have tacticians next to the engineers who are developing the next level of systems, so they can develop it at speed, and they’re thinking about it from not only an engineering perspective but also a tactical perspective,” Marks said at the WEST 2025 conference in San Diego. “And we’re seeing some great strides in that in reducing some of our timetables on being able to bring things to the fleet faster.” 

Additionally, personnel are experimenting with and testing out unmanned systems to further help with the mission of putting advanced disruptive technologies into the hands of the warfighters faster. 

Marks also announced that Naval SMWDC has created a “surface requirements group.” Team members will be responsible for researching which disruptive capabilities surface warfighters need and checking with engineers to see which of those disruptive capabilities are feasible and can actually be developed. The group will also aim to examine existing capabilities to see if these technologies can be used in more than one way to serve the warfighter, which goes together with the idea of pairing up the WTIs and engineers, according to Marks. Officials with two different backgrounds will bring more experience and expertise and a different perspective that could lead to discussions taking place about some technologies helping in unexpected ways. 

Finally, Naval SMWDC officials are changing the way that personnel and warfighting technology receive training. They are ensuring that sailors and ships positioned in the Red Sea are taking the lessons learned from that battle and immediately using them to ready and prepare warfighters for future conflicts. Additionally, those lessons learned are being communicated back to the naval schoolhouse to educate sailors even earlier. Marks predicts that live virtual construction will play a massive role in informing and training Navy personnel in a timelier manner. 

“This is the real game-changer of how we’re going to increase the speed of tactics development, of training to the higher level that we need because that LBC capability allows us to do this where people can’t watch,” Marks said. “We can take a new capability, program it in, train to it, and then when we bring it out to the fleet, the fleet already knows how to use it because they already have TTP [tactics, techniques and procedures] to use right away.” 

The Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, Research and Engineering and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Intelligence and Security define disruptive technologies as “technologies that portend transformational change,” and some examples include artificial intelligence, collaborative unmanned aerial systems swarms and biotechnology.  

WEST is co-hosted by AFCEA International and the U.S. Naval Institute. SIGNAL Media is the official media of AFCEA International.