Navy divides robotic-systems authority between a new warfighting center and a portfolio manager

Some of the trials a vendor's hardware will face at Little Creek start with the communications link degraded or gone. The center plans to test uncrewed platforms under realistic operational conditions and threats, and denied communications are on that list ^[6]. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle put the pass mark in an administrative note: "Systems that work will move forward." ^[7] The Navy plans to improve, redirect or stop the ones that do not ^[8].

For a vendor, the fleet trial now counts alongside the demo. The Navy said lessons and performance data from testing, experimentation and training will go back to developers and program managers ^[9].

The Navy's own account of why it needed this is candid. The years of experiments ran across "multiple warfare communities, commands, laboratories, and acquisition organizations," Caudle wrote ^[14]. He said the work "has produced important capability and invaluable experience" ^[13], then finished the sentence: "But much of it has advanced independently within individual domains." ^[13] Those domains include unmanned aerial systems, uncrewed surface vessels and unmanned underwater vehicles ^[15]. The Navy now intends to integrate them ^[13].

Smith described the job as consolidation. "Our purpose here is to consolidate the Navy's autonomous efforts across air, surface, and undersea domains, and give them a single home here at Little Creek," he said ^[10]. The single home is for employment ^[4]. A company that courts only Little Creek is courting the office that decides how its system is taught and fought. Budgets and technical standards sit with the portfolio manager ^[4], and the systems commands and type commanders keep their roles ^[5].

The press release emphasized faster delivery. Caudle said the pairing is "accelerating the delivery of unmanned capabilities from the foundry directly to the Fleet" ^[16]. What opened on September 24 is a command at the start of a phased implementation plan toward full operational capability ^[1][12]. "This is just day one," Smith said ^[11]. The Navy's announcement did not include a date for full operational capability.

I'd sort a vendor's position with two questions. The first is which office owns the decision at hand: the portfolio manager for whether a system is bought and funded, or the center for how sailors are trained to employ it. The second is where the evidence comes from, a vendor's own demonstration or the center's trials under operational conditions. A system with a funded portfolio line and only demo evidence is exposed, because fleet data now travels to its program managers ^[9]. A system that performs in fleet trials without a portfolio sponsor has proof and no budget.

My recommendation is to open the Little Creek relationship early. The trade-off is effort spent before the target is fixed. A vendor doing that is building toward doctrine and a tactical instruction framework the center has not finished writing ^[3][12].