Military servicemembers speaking at WEST 2025

Commander, Naval Air Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet, Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, center right, speaks during WEST 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Aron Montano)

WEST 2025, the largest West Coast Sea Service operations event focused on current and future technology solutions, welcomed for the first time in its history about 10,000 attendees. Held Jan. 28-30 at the San Diego Convention Center, it is co-sponsored by AFCEA International and the U.S. Naval Institute and attracts military and industry thought leaders for discussions on state-of-the-art networking capabilities, technologies, and defense tech demonstrations. This year’s theme was “The Future is Now: Are We Advancing Operational Capabilities That Pace the Threat?”

“It’s been a fantastic experience to come and be able to better understand all the different technologies that are out there that we can help pull together and network so that these different platforms, like helicopters, F-18, E-2D, even B-52 and B-1 are able to communicate with each other and effectively accomplish their mission,” said Fuse Integration founder and CEO, Sumner Lee.

Eyes on AI

As the new year kicks off, buzz around artificial intelligence continues in full force. The Navy has plans to release a digital strategy outlining specific uses of the technology by the end of 2026, said Lt. Artem Sherbinin, Chief Technology Officer of Task Force Hopper, a Navy entity established in 2021 to enable AI and machine learning across the service’s surface force.

The use cases for AI will span the kill chain, maintenance, administration, and readiness. The government buys more AI than it researches, with the technology accounting for less than 2% of overall R&D spending, compared with industry, Sherbinin added.

Still, procuring AI has its challenges. For one, the Navy must be careful with the commercial solutions sailors use, such as monitoring the supply chain. Another challenge is the volume of sensor data coming in from autonomous systems that AI must analyze with intelligence data before moving ahead to operations.

Rear Adm. Elizabeth “Seiko” Okano, head of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, said that the Navy is being particularly “aggressive” about using AI for readiness. One of her program offices deployed about 20 ChatIT systems, which are similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT but for Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services and the Automated Digital Network System.

“The planning piece is another area that we’re really focusing on to understand and have AI look at courses of action,” Okano added.

Other use cases abound, other officials said. Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, commander of Naval Air Systems Command, pointed to modeling and simulation for fighter jets, while Stephen Bowdren, Marine Corps Systems Command program executive officer for Land Systems, said that his organization uses AI to reduce procurement administrative lead time.

“There’s a huge push in AI,” Okano said.

Boosting Security

Military servicemember speaks at WEST 2025

Rear Adm. Wilson Marks, commander, Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC), listens to an audience member’s question at the “Operations in Focus” stage during WEST 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Petty Officer 2nd Class Demitrius Williams)

Cybersecurity is a topic with staying power, and demand is growing for quantum-resistant cryptography — technology that can withstand the powerful code-cracking capabilities of the emerging field of quantum computing. And procuring it will require close collaboration between GovCon and the Department of the Navy and Department of Defense, said Jane Rathburn, DoN chief information officer.

“It is going to require understanding of our mission use cases, understanding of our use of spectrum, and so engaging them and working with them so that when they come to us and say they have post-quantum-resistant crypto built in, we can say, ‘Yes, you do,’ or we can say, ‘No, you don’t. We’re not going to buy from you,’” Rathbun said.

Speed is important here, too, she added, so problems need to come to be addressed sooner, rather than later. “We understand that there is a lot of work to do in that space with our…providers, making sure that what they’re developing, how they’re developing, meets our standards, because post-quantum resistant crypto is not going to be a one-size-fits-all kind of proposition,” she added.

Another area of cybersecurity progress for DoN is zero trust. In August 2024, it unveiled the Information Superiority Vision 2.0, which comes with a goal of being 100% zero trust by the end of fiscal 2027 — a target Rathburn said the Navy won’t be able to reach. Still, it tracks with the need to shift to a readiness mindset from a compliance one, said DoN CIO Barry Tanner.

“Device, identity, network, state of the devices on that network, the applications, the data, every lever has to be looked at, all that telemetry has to be assessed, and you have to make good decisions on the fly,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps is focusing on data centricity in its cybersecurity as it moves toward a unified network, a DoD modernization initiative that will bring separate networks together for seamless data exchange — a great idea, but a security nightmare. This is easier to achieve with cloud platforms vs. distributed environments, noted Keegan Mills, engineering IT and cyber tech lead at Marine Corps Systems Command.

Partnerships with industry will be critical here, said Shery Thomas, cyber technology officer at Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command. She called on GovCon to develop continuous monitoring of the system variants they supply agencies to hone in on potential security threats.

Facing the Future

The Navy and Marine Corps are working to modernize their energy infrastructures to better serve warships and bases. Andrew Higier, energy portfolio director at the Defense Innovation Unit, says that if tools such as batteries and data storage are “not safe, they’re not effective.”

“We need to ensure that the bases are resilient and have power at all times,” he added. “We need to ensure that our aircraft are efficient. We need to ensure that our batteries are safe and the supply chain is resilient.”

Additionally, the Navy is looking to integrate disruptive technologies into its portfolio to gain a warfighting edge. One way they’re doing that is by pairing engineers to work alongside tacticians, “so they can develop it at speed,” said Rear Adm. D. Wilson Marks, commander of the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center.

Considering how quickly technology evolves, it will be fascinating to see how this plays out before AFCEA 2026!