NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — From hands-on demos to stadium-quality video screens, more than 300 exhibitors are presenting the latest defense technology to Sea-Air-Space attendees. Here are some of the highlights from the Prince George’s Exhibit Hall, which will be open today from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

General Dynamics (Booth 1023) is showcasing its Columbia-class nuclear submarine. This replacement for the aging Ohio class of ballistic submarines is scheduled to be delivered to the U.S. Navy in 2027, said Greg Rose, General Dynamic’s chief of public affairs.

The Columbia class, which will be built into the 2040s, is similar in design to the Ohio class, but with some significant changes, Rose said. At 560 feet long with a displacement of nearly 21,000 tons, the Columbia-class fleet will be the largest submarines ever built in the U.S. They also will have a fuel core that lasts the life of the ship, eliminating the need for a mid-service refueling.

At Booth 737, Leidos has a replica of Sea Hunter, which along with Sea Hawk, are the first autonomous unmanned surface vessels used by the U.S. Navy.

The carbon-fiber craft have software that allows them to navigate the “rules of the road on the sea,” said Leidos representative Matthew Garner. Sea Hunter recently completed a trip from San Diego to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, completely unmanned. Together, Sea Hunter and Sea Hawk have logged more than 40,000 autonomous miles, Halley said.

There will likely be future iterations of Sea Hunter, Garner said, noting the U.S. Navy is calling for 150 ships in its 500-ship fleet to eventually be unmanned.

SAIC (Booth 803) conducted a demonstration of its virtual mission center Tuesday afternoon, communicating entirely virtually with a mission center in Aurora, Colorado.

“Traditional operations centers need people to perform the functions, but our mission center allows networking in a virtual environment across the entire planet,” said Gardner Congdon, SAIC’s director of extended realities domain.

SAIC uses virtual reality and tactical software for its virtual mission center, which is currently a use case for the Space Force, Congdon said. 

L3Harris Technologies (Booth 1037) is giving demonstrations of its new BNVD Fused Binocular Night Vision Goggle. The goggles fuse image-intensified tubes with a thermal camera to help detect heat and overlay. This is particularly useful for identifying hidden targets like someone in camouflage in the woods, said Leith Ames with L3Harris.

Visitors to the booth can see the goggles in action, with both visual and thermal images captured on a screen in real time.

HII (Booth 1322) is using its booth to showcase its rebranding from Huntington Ingalls Industries to HII. Along with models devoted to the company’s traditional background in shipbuilding, there are also exhibits of autonomous vehicles and other technologies.

Director of Communications Greg McCarthy pointed out displays of Odyssey, HII’s new suite of advanced autonomy solutions that can turn any ship or vehicle in any domain into an intelligent, robotic platform.

HII is also debuting integrated digital shipbuilding. USS Enterprise CVN-80 is the company’s first digitally designed aircraft carrier. Enterprise is currently in the keel-laying phase of construction, McCarthy said. 

During the Tuesday afternoon Navy is Open for Business forum, 11 small businesses had the opportunity to pitch their products and ideas to a panel of Department of the Navy procurement experts. The companies, which were chosen from a group of applicants to the Department of the Navy Office of Small Business Programs, included:

Chirality Capital Consulting

Chirality, from the Greek word for hand, is based on mirror images. The concept behind Chiralty Capital Consulting is that the left hand (the company) is a mirror image of the right hand (the federal government). Chirality provides program and product management; organizational design and development; technology modernization; data analytics; training logistics; and diversity, equity and inclusion capabilities to clients inside and outside the defense space.

Chitra Productions

CEO Vibhaa Vermani came to the U.S. as a bride in an arranged marriage 30 years ago. In 2008, she launched Chitra Productions. Products include risk management framework support. The typical Department of Defense RMF process takes 12 to 18 months to achieve, Vermani said, but Chitra products help make approvals faster and less expensive.

Giesler

In the private sector, Geisler has developed technologies that help secure the power grid and can network and encrypt data in fractions of a milliseconds. Working with the Department of Defense, it can also encrypt sensors around Navy vessels in real time without interrupting any systems.

International Trade Management Group

There’s a need to automate, secure and create resiliency in our supply chains. ITM creates logistic strategies to enhance global supply-chain assets and ensure visibility and accountability in the physical supply chain.

JA Moody

Seawater is a highly corrosive substance that can shorten the life of a ship. This family-owned business creates fluid products that use cold-spray technology that don’t heat metal to the melting point, and can double the lifecycle of a bow. In 2021, it introduced the Vanessa Hardened Seat Next Generation TOTS Valve to the U.S. Navy.

Maritime Arresting Technologies

This company sees itself as an evangelist for nonlethal weapons. Products include prophyalyptic maritime port security barriers that can detect security breaches and determine the intent. Maritime also manufactures the Stingray counter unmanned water vehicle net, which forms a barrier from the sea surface to seabed and captures hostile divers and UUVs. The company’s newest product is a recoilless launcher that can deploy non-kinetic effectors from small, unmanned platforms. 

Maureen Data Systems/FylaxCyber

Nearly six ransomware attacks occur every minute. Maureen Data Systems is partnering with Black Kite to develop the Ransomware Susceptibility Index to help both defense and private clients understand how likely they are to experience an attack, provide continuous system monitoring and identify which vendors are most susceptible to attacks.

Metamagnetics

This company spun out of the Northeastern University Center for Microwave Magnetic Materials and Integrated Circuits in 2009, and now designs and manufactures microwave and millimeter-wave components. Its products are designed to enhance the effectiveness of mission-critical radar, communication and power-supply systems, and its flagship technology can mitigate high-powered jamming that affects a signal of interest.

Mistral

This systems integrator and ideas company works with warfighters and first responders. Its products include the C-Master Diver Navigation System,which allows up to 15 combat divers  to securely communicate with each other, and provides the divers with mission-specific crucial data.

Physical Sciences

This company creates powerful, next-generation lithium-ion battery technology for maritime systems. Its manufacturing process creates more energy and power in the batteries. It also uses nonflammable electrolytes, making the batteries safer to handle than traditional lithium-ion batteries. The batteries are operationally deployed, and in use today.

Vision Engineering Solutions

U.S. warfighters need more imagery and intelligence from space. At the same time, data products from space are increasing in number and complexity. Optical communications can increase bandwidth over RF networks and are more secure, but there are a lack of optical-communication ground stations to communicate this data. Vision has a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research contract with the Navy to provide these optical ground stations.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — From a Stiletto to a Rekognition Video Analyzer, outdoor and dock exhibitors are giving Sea-Air-Space attendees the opportunity to check out cutting-edge defense technology.

The carbon-fiber, 88-foot M-80 Stiletto is a floating platform devoted to maritime experimentation, with the goal of supporting the Joint Forces in countering emerging threats. Operated by Joint Prototyping & Experimentation Maritime, Stiletto allows its customers to evaluate and refine their technologies in realistic environments, using representative threats in tactics-based scenarios.

Stiletto tests about 60 to 65 different technologies every year, and more than half of its customers are small businesses, said Dennis Danko, JPEM-Stiletto joint prototyping maritime programming manager.

“We foster commercial innovation by giving small businesses and nontraditional system developers an opportunity to experiment on the water and gain a deep understanding of military missions and maritime operations,” he said.

Stiletto has the capability of working a few feet or hundreds of miles off the coast, and carries its own 11-meter rigid inflatable boat. It can also launch drones and other unmanned systems from its flight deck.

Danko said Stiletto has tested radar and cybersecurity technologies, network systems and even ergonomic seats for boats. It conducts environmental vulnerability assessments for technology systems and engineering evaluations, including various coatings to prevent marine growth.

The Rekognition Video Analyzer is part of a partnership between Amazon Web Services, Viasat and Federated Wireless.

The Viasat system can detect objects from water, piers, docks, land vehicles, paths and even clothing or other apparel, said Steve Conklin of Viasat. Amazon’s Rekognition system analyzes the data, protecting text, data and other communications. Federated Wireless provides secure 5G encryption and protection.

“We can set up in any kind of edge location or disaster environment,” Conklin said, noting that two weeks ago, the system was operational in Poland, on the front lines of the Ukraine conflict.

On Tuesday, April 5, L3Harris Technologies will give tours and rides from the dock on its autonomous boat to showcase its C5ISR-T technology.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Navy Lt. j.g. Jen Fishbein is in transition. She has a baby due in August, she’s studying for a master’s degree in executive public management and she’s scheduled to separate from the military in two years — so, it made sense that she was visiting the Transition Connection Job Fair Monday afternoon.

The second annual Sea-Air-Space hiring event focused on providing job opportunities to members of the military and their families. More than 50 employers offered information and advice to attendees who were investigating civilian careers.

“I want to see what’s out there if I were to get out of the military,” says Fishbein, who currently works at the National Reconnaissance Office. “I’m looking at where life can take me.”

Marine Sgt. Owen Budd was also taking a proactive approach to his post-military career. He’s separating in 2023, but he’s already looking to the future. He’s studying for an undergraduate degree in sports and health science at the American Military University, and hopes to parlay his work in human resources with the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group into a civilian career.

Budd was interested in ClearanceJobs, the country’s largest career network for professionals with U.S. federal government security clearances. ClearanceJobs’ online networking platform lists more than 60,000 defense and intelligence jobs, along with free advice on military transitions and services like resume-building templates.

“We have over 1 million users who can connect with pre-screened employers and communicate directly with recruiters,” said Katie Keller, ClearanceJobs editor. “We’ve served the cleared community since 2002.”

Other exhibitors included the Penn State University Applied Research Laboratory, a Navy University Affiliated Research Center focusing on defense science, systems and technologies.

Many of the laboratory employees are ex-military or their spouses. “They understand what we do,” said laboratory representative Tina Kephart.

Northern Virginia also had a presence at the Transition Connection Job Fair. The Fairfax County Economic Development Authority recruits military veterans for careers at a variety of employers, said representative Rod Williams. There are over 90,000 job listings available at workinnothernvirginia.com, with a median salary of $115,000 per job, he said.

Some of those jobs are in air traffic control, which appeals to Staff Sgt. Abigail Scott. Scott, who has been with the Marines for seven years and works as an air defense controller at the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group. Her service doesn’t end until January 2024, but she was at the Transition Connection Job Fair as part of her post-military networking strategy.

“I’m looking for a career where I can transfer my skills in security and air traffic control,” said Scott, who has provided physical security at U.S. embassies in Kazakhstan and the Central African Republic.

In 2004, Deb Kloeppel left her executive job at American Airlines to make an overseas permanent change of station with her husband, U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Dan Kloeppel. She hoped to further her career in her new location but discovered the opportunities were virtually nonexistent.

Kloeppel realized she wasn’t alone. She met other highly trained and educated military spouses  who also had to choose between their careers or their devotion to family and country. So, with a $323 investment, she started the Military Spouse Corporate Career Network, or MSCCN, to help support people like her. 

MSCCN was so successful that in 2010, the Kloeppels cofounded CASY: Corporate America Supports You. CASY’s goal was to provide free vocational training and job placement services for people transitioning from all military services, veterans and members of the National Guard and Reserves.

By 2019, CASY and MSCCN had helped more than 57,000 members of the military and their spouses find new civilian careers. That year, the two organizations acquired VetJobs, an online military job board, and launched MilitarySpouseJobs.org. The company is one of the resource partners featured at today’s Transition Connection job fair, being held in Cherry Blossom Ballroom from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. This Sea-Air-Space hiring event focuses on providing job opportunities to those with a military family or defense background.

Today, VetJobs.org and MilitarySpouseJobs.org are the largest free online job training, counseling and placement resources for all members of the military and their spouses. Last year, they surpassed 75,000 verified job placements, and currently have more than 3 million job listings, says Don Fried, a Marine Corps veteran who now serves as director of branding and marketing for VetJobs.

“When I separated out in 1999, there were nowhere near the resources we have today,” he says. “I think we had a three-day TAPS [transition assistance program] class. Now, people start planning their transition six to 12 months before they leave the service.”

This is key, Fried says, because statistics show that more than 60% of former service members work at different types of jobs than they did in the military.

“It’s sometimes hard to know your interests and what to look for in a civilian job,” he says. “VetJobs can help with that.”

Any current or former member of the military or their spouses can use VetJobs’ and MilitarySpouseJobs’ online employment listings, job assessment quiz and video job training resources for free. If they register with the sites, they also have access to a free career specialist who can help them navigate a new career search. They can get a direct introduction to employers with job openings, and can also participate in mentorships with industry partners.

Fried estimates that 400 to 700 people use VetJobs every week. The organization is funded by charitable foundations, grants and sponsorship by corporations like Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Boeing, Wells Fargo, Prudential, Deloitte and Swift Transportation. Job listings are provided by the nonprofit DirectEmployers Association.

Fried says companies like to hire service members for a variety of reasons.

“In a time when employers are having a hard time putting butts in seats, we show up. We have an air of maturity and discipline, and we’re contributors,” he says. “Employers like those types of soft skills. They can take our soft skills and then train us in the technical aspects of a job.”

Every day, every hour, even every minute, the conflict in Ukraine is evolving. Monitoring and understanding those changes is key not only for geopolitical entities, but also corporations, humanitarian organizations and other private-sector groups.

But sifting through the abundance of data coming out of Ukraine can be overwhelming. Propaganda abounds. Videos and images may be manipulated. And traditional satellite imaging can’t capture the real-time data necessary to make informed decisions.

Seattle-based BlackSky (Booth 957) is solving those problems through its global monitoring services that combine artificial intelligence, cloud computing, multisensor data fusion, activity analysis and autonomous satellite tasking. Using a proprietary worldwide satellite constellation, BlackSky’s Spectra AI analytics platform provides real-time geospatial intelligence to customers in both the public and private sectors

This is quite an evolution from the core technology behind global satellite imagery, says Patrick O’Neil, BlackSky’s chief innovation officer. Traditionally, satellites are used for mapping applications, identifying landmarks like roads and buildings. But those images tend to be updated only a couple times a year, and that’s not helpful in today’s fast-moving world.

“You want to be able to take images rapidly as the situation changes,” O’Neil says. “We’re seeing the conflict in Ukraine as a kind of proving point for why real-time intelligence matters so much. Customers can’t wait for days for their overhead imagery or the analytics we supply. We’ve built our system to support that.”

The automated satellite constellation that fuels Spectra AI passes a site roughly once an hour, with the capability of tracking virtually every spot on the planet. The satellites also monitor thousands of active targets, including major airports and commercial ports around the world.

That image data is then combined with open-source information such as social media postings, news reports and press releases. Other information, such as infrared data, can show active fires and pinpoint where conflict is occurring. Spectra AI uses artificial intelligence to fuse all of this data into a single dashboard analysis that customers can pull up on a web browser, with a 90-minute delivery timeline.

“Being able to just log in and have an e-commerce-like experience where you’re buying satellite imagery and the analytics that go on top is really a pretty significant change from the historical satellite imagery patterns,” O’Neil says.

In Ukraine, BlackSky can provide images of where damage is occurring, how transportation networks are impacted and how refugee travel is flowing. It can help companies understand the macroeconomic impacts, including the availability of energy in Europe and the flow of commodities from Ukrainian port cities.

BlackSky can also track other events around the world, including natural disaster cleanups, climate-change events, wildfires, drone strikes and supply-chain operations.

“Applications like that are really quite interesting and are enabled by our unique technology,” O’Neil says. “They’re opening up use cases that previously would not have been possible.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — In the three years that Navy Lt. j.g. Sarena Padilla and Eric Padilla have been married, they’ve lived in four different states. Sarena has changed her career from a nuclear officer to a meteorology and oceanography research officer, which necessitated the moves. But now that she’s ensconced at the U.S. National Ice Center in Suitland, Maryland, the couple is looking to settle down. And that means a more permanent job for Eric.

Eric, who has a physics and engineering background, took advantage of Sea-Air-Space’s inaugural Transition Connection hiring event on Tuesday. Military members, spouses and civilians had the opportunity to interact with more than a dozen companies, and were also able to upload their resumes and virtually chat with potential employers through the Transition Connection page on the Sea-Air-Space website.

“I’ve had contract jobs during our marriage, but it’s been hard to find opportunities to further my career,” said Eric, who’s interested in space-oriented work. “It’s been great to be able to talk to potential employers about my career intentions.”

Employers said there has been plenty of interest in their companies. Gianna Lamanna of  Manassas, Virginia-based Hepburn and Sons said her company, which does advisory work for the maritime industry, received about 150 resumes through the Transition Connection portal prior to the hiring event. She and her Bill Lewis colleague conducted back-to-back job interviews throughout the day.

“We really appreciate the opportunity to meet with so many people,” Lamanna said. “To have a [show like Sea-Air-Space] with a connected hiring event is unique.”

Lamanna estimated that about 75% of the people who sent her resumes are either planning or thinking about transitioning out of the military to civilian life.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Collin Fox is one of those potential transitioners. Fox, who has served for 17 years, most recently in the Navy Foreign Area, comes from a military family. Both his father and grandfather served, and Fox is certainly open to continuing his career after he hits the 20-year mark. But Transition Connection gave him opportunity to evaluate civilian career options as well.

“I do a lot of writing, so I’m interested in jobs that involve analysis and concept development,” he said.

At the Amazon booth, one of the recruiters had firsthand experience in moving from military to civilian life. Madeleine Caballero served in the Army for two and a half years before retiring for medical reasons.

“I understand how hard the transition can be,” she said. “I had someone tell me today how anxious they are.”

Amazon is committed to hiring 100,000 military veterans and spouses by 2024, Caballero said. The company currently employs more than 43,000 veterans and spouses in areas such as operations, human resources, safety, onsite medical facilities and Amazon Web Services.

Not all of the job seekers at Transition Connection were military, however. Faisal Munshi, who works in marine engineering, moved to the United States from India four months ago. He found the Transition Connection event on LinkedIn and decided to attend with his wife, Afroz Indorewla, a health information management student at Northern Virginia Community College.

“This is the first job fair I’ve been to since I moved to the U.S.,” Munshi said. “I’ve found many opportunities in my industry.”

Less than 30% of youth today are available for military service, said Michelle Godfrey, senior advisor for diversity and inclusion, U.S. Coast Guard. As the nation becomes more diverse, one of the keys to attracting and retaining that scarce talent is to foster equity and inclusion efforts, said Godfrey and other panelists during the Aug. 3 session on Inclusion and Diversity as a Force Multiplier.

“The data backs it up — the more diverse team you have, the higher your performance,” Godfrey said.

In the Navy, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts help foster warfighting readiness, said Vice Adm. John Nowell Jr., deputy chief of naval operations for manpower, personnel, training and education and chief of naval personnel.

“If you want to outfight the enemy, you have to outthink them, and the way you do that is by leveraging diverse and inclusive leadership,”  he said.

Nowell said the Navy is currently implementing 56 recommendations from a DEI task force. For instance, recruiters now look at applicants’ whole personality rather than just quantifiable measures like SATs. Navy leader trainer development is taking DEI into account and is looking at bias in terms of decision science. Navy classrooms are also using a bias mitigation tool. The key, Nowell said, is to use data analytics while still being able to rely on intuition as well.

The Marine Corps is modernizing its manpower system, including talent management, said

Brig. Gen. A.T. Williamson, director, Manpower Plans & Policy Division, U.S. Marine Corps. Along with ethnic inclusivity, diversity of thought, experience and background also helps build a cohort of inclusive teams, he said.

The Marine Corps is currently working on and vetting a DEI framework, Williamson said. It’s also conducting a survey to see if there’s bias within the personnel evaluation system, and asking questions about inclusion during exit surveys.

The Coast Guard has a DEI action plan with 36 distinct actions, Godfrey said. The organization has completed a women’s retention study and expects a study to be published this month on recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities. In April, the Coast Guard deployed a virtual mentoring program that helps foster DEI efforts. Close to 1,000 people have signed up for the program’s mentoring app, she said.

The Coast Guard also offers tools on how to have DEI conversations, Godfrey said. It’s trained more than 100 diversity and inclusion change agents, who offer coaching for various DEI situations. Performance appraisals also include diversity and inclusion competency.

The Department of the Navy has exceeded its social and economic DEI goals for the past six years, said Jimmy Smith, director, Office of Small Business Programs, Department of the Navy. During the last fiscal year, it spent $17.3 billion on small businesses that were in diverse socioeconomic categories, he said. It’s also working with historically black colleges and universities on recruitment efforts.

“We’re fighting to attract talent,” Smith said. “We’re spending money in places we haven’t before.”

In terms of equity, only some companies can perform jobs like shipbuilding, Smith pointed out. But the Department of the Navy is committed to doing a better job of enforcing how those companies are distributing funding to their subcontractors.

“We need to change our bias from always going to certain places to get certain things done,” he said. “We need to create more competition. At the end of the day, it’s all about fairness.”

All of the speakers emphasized that DEI efforts encompass more than just race, religion, age and sexuality. They also include factors like inclusivity of education and viewpoints, and diversity of thought and problem-solving.

Smith believes DEI initiatives should be deeply personal as well. “Being a father of three girls, there are things women in our workforce go through today that I never want to see my girls ever have to go through,” he said.

The Navy requires a single, strategic-scale, sustainable design for supply-chain management, with the right mix of commercial and organic activities to project and sustain the force required for war fighting.

With that in mind, Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) kicked off the newest vice chief of naval operations-led naval sustainment system in October 2020. Naval Sustainment System-Supply (NSS-Supply) aims to unify numerous independent supply-chain functions under the leadership of NAVSUP Commander Rear Adm. Pete Stamatopolous, with the goal of improving end-to-end supply chain readiness and affordability.

As NSS-Supply nears its first anniversary in operation momentum continues to build as NAVSUP and mission partners have progressed through several waves of deliberate transformation.

“The Navy’s supply chains lacked end-to-end coordination and alignment for decades, which has created numerous issues: insufficient and inefficient organic repair capacity, high rates of part cannibalization, an excess of unrepaired parts, a cash shortfall and, ultimately, degraded readiness,” Stamatopoulos said.

“Over the past several years, uncoordinated decisions made upstream were constricting our supply chains and causing significant downstream inefficiencies. NSS-Supply is working to better orchestrate, integrate and synchronize the many functions of our supply chains to correct these issues and deliver higher readiness at lower costs throughout the lifecycle of the weapons systems.”

Grounded in commercial best practices pioneered by industrial companies such as Caterpillar, Delta Tech Ops and John Deere, NSS-Supply elevates supply chain management into the Navy “C-Suite.” Designated as the Navy’s single end-to-end supply chain integrator, Stamatopolous is responsible for elevating the visibility of supply-chain performance by holding supporting functions accountable.

Stamatopoulos leads an organization of supply chain professionals responsible for providing responsive logistical support worldwide, through a global network with a presence in more than 17 countries and 21 states, districts and territories.

NSS-Supply is also moving supply-chain decisions upstream to better shape and design life-cycle logistics strategies for which the costs are lower. To hold the Navy accountable, NSS-Supply has created a cash-based metric to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of its supply chain in the long term. This north-star metric, the Supply Chain Effectiveness Figure of Merit (SeFOM), is the Navy’s first enterprise-level metric that balances readiness and costs. For every dollar put into sustaining a platform, the SeFOM measures the value of readiness generated.

In addition, NSS-Supply is driving unity of effort across six pillars that dissect and transform different functions of the supply chain.

• The Achieve End-to-End Integration pillar.
• The Demand Management pillar aims to reduce demand fleet-wide and increase predictability through improving reliability and maintenance.
• The End-to-End Velocity pillar focuses on accelerating the movement of material and parts in the Navy supply chain by lowering repair turnaround times and repair, overhaul or reconditioning queue times.
• The Optimize Working Capital Fund pillar reorients financial management to a commercial cash flow-centric approach designed to improve transparency of cash allocation, collections, expenditures and pricing for long-term stability.
• The Optimize Organic Repair pillar rebalances organic depot repair volume to fully utilize capability and capacity.
• The Shape Industrial Base pillar, the most aspirational pillar, aims to expand competition and deepen partnerships with strategic suppliers to make acquisition and sustainment more efficient, cost-effective and affordable.

NSS-Supply is a hugely ambitious project for the Navy, due both to its broad scope and the speed at which it moves. While NSS-Supply is a multiyear undertaking, it’s divided into three-month “waves” during which three to five initiatives run simultaneously across the six pillars.

The timelines for the waves’ initiatives are based on an agile framework (another commercial best practice). Each initiative has multiple two- to four-week sprints, with clear outcomes at the end of each sprint that define and shape the work of the subsequent sprints.

Although this is a new approach for the Navy, it’s already yielding positive change and realizable gains since launching last fall. With each wave and sprint, NAVSUP and Navy are gaining new supply-chain competencies and confidence in the effectiveness of this way of doing business.

“These first several months of NSS-Supply have given me great confidence and optimism that we are finally within reach of a decades-long goal of achieving a fully integrated and sustainable Navy-wide supply chain,” Stamatopoulos said. “I look forward to its continued success.”