Source: United States Navy
“This was the age of battleships and people were dismissive of the potential of aircraft carriers,” said Selby. “But there was a group of rebellious naval aviators who said that aircraft carriers were the future. They turned out to be right after Pearl Harbor.
“I think we’re seeing the same thing with artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomy and unmanned systems today,” he continued. “It’s important to keep and maintain our large platforms, but we also need to look at ways to integrate these smaller systems into naval operations.”
Selby gave his remarks as the keynote speaker during an Aug. 23 Special Topic Breakfast hosted by the Navy League of the United States. The Navy League is an educational and advocacy organization supporting U.S. sea services: the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine.
The Navy League hosts eight Special Topic Breakfasts a year. These events feature prominent guest speakers from the government, military and defense industry, who discuss diverse topics of naval relevance.
During his address, Selby spotlighted his vision for reimagining naval power — “the small, the agile and the many,” which involves small, unmanned, autonomous platforms that can be constructed, tested and adapted quickly; can be built in large numbers; and are less expensive than larger platforms. These air, surface and subsurface vehicles can be outfitted with a variety of sensors and payloads for diverse missions.
By being built relatively inexpensively, and in greater numbers, these platforms offer multiple advantages: (1) They can be deployed in unique formations to confound and confuse adversaries and (2) if they’re shot down or lost, American forces will have dozens, even thousands, of backups in place.
Selby believes the concept of “the small, the agile and the many” represents a viable Strategic Hedge for supporting the large and complex platforms making up the bulk of today’s force structure.
Part of reimagining of naval power, Selby told the breakfast attendees, involves faster, more collaborative and more effective testing experimentation.
“When I first took the job of Chief of Naval Research, I asked people at the Office of Naval Research [ONR] to describe what we do,” said Selby. “They told me we help develop the science and technology for future generations of warfighters.
“I said that’s great, but we need to take what we do well — sponsoring research, fostering testing and experimentation — and find ways to get that technology into the hands of warfighters sooner,” he continued.
Part of this push is the ONR-sponsored SCOUT initiative, an ongoing, multiagency experimentation campaign that rapidly brings solutions to warfighter challenges. SCOUT is committed to getting nontraditional, commercial-off-the-shelf, government-developed and/or government-sponsored technologies to the fleet rapidly.
Selby also promoted the idea of an Experimentation Fleet Commander — a high-ranking officer tied into senior congressional and military leaders — who will lead a lean, well-resourced team to ensure ideas reach prototype status quickly; set up testing early and often; and get products to warfighters rapidly.
“I envision this as a kind of rapid capabilities office that can place technology with Sailors and Marines faster,” said Selby. “If we can do that, we can move technology faster than anyone in the world.”