Naval Sea System Command’s (NAVSEA) Warfare Centers this week released an updated 2021-2025 Strategic Plan aiming to modernize infrastructure, develop capabilities in emerging technology, and transform business processes to move faster.
The Warfare Centers serve as the Navy’s principal research, development, test and evaluation assessment activity for surface and undersea systems and subsystems. This NAVSEA “Warfare Centers Strategic Plan 2021-2025” was released on May 10 and aims to identify the best pathway to success via three mission priorities and five strategic goals. The priorities are named as delivering combat power to the fleet, transforming digital capability, and building a team to compete and win.
The goals are listed as workforce and leadership development, mission-aligned strategies and the division level, technical innovation and excellence, business excellence and improvement, and right culture/values.
According to the plan, under workforce development, the centers “must hire, train, and develop the skills of the best scientific, technical, engineering, business, and administrative personnel to take on existing and emerging challenges.”
To that end the plan said the centers are committed to recruit and retain the best personnel and continuously develop their capabilities, develop leadership opportunities at all levels and include and engage all personnel to best leverage diversity.
“Our enduring relevance as the NAVSEA Warfare Centers stems from our ability to safeguard the technical success of naval programs, deliver an array of responsive options and services for fleet needs, and ensure that systems are safe and secure, integrating cybersecurity throughout the life cycle of our products,” the plan said under the goal of mission-aligned strategies.
The plan said under mission-aligned strategies goal, the centers must encourage all levels of the organization to think and plan strategically, develop capabilities for the warfighter in emergent technology areas and remove barriers and think differently.
On technical innovation, the plan said the Warfare Centers “ will focus on helping the Navy and Department of Defense determine technical capability requirements, now and in the future. Cultivating unique innovation ecosystems to bring the best subject matter expertise to bear on the Navy’s and the nation’s technical problems is a priority.”
The plan said the service must invest in modernized infrastructure, including advancing connectivity and improving virtual infrastructure as well as developing a long-term strategic plan for physical infrastructure; design, develop and field solutions for urgent operational fleet needs; and enable the Warfare Centers’ innovation ecosystem by initiating, expanding, and enhancing relationships in and outside the Defense Department.
To work towards the business excellence goal, the Warfare Centers aim to transform and improve business processes by challenging the fiscal and policy constraints to move faster, ensure recommendations and decisions are driven by data and analysis, and expand the adoption of common processes from business communities.
To further the goal of right culture/values, the plan says the Warfare Centers will develop a plan for communicating and measuring culture and values, strive to instill inclusion and diversity into their culture, and strengthen the Warfare Center’s “One Team collaborative culture.”
“Success often lies in finding the balance between persistence and flexibility. We remain committed and persistent in our pursuit of our vision to enable maritime superiority for today’s Navy, tomorrow’s Navy, and the Navy after next,” Dr. Brett Seidle, executive director of NAVSEA Warfare Centers, said in a statement.
NAVSEA Warfare Centers include 29,000 personnel at 10 divisions and represent about 30 percent of the Navy’s engineering and scientific expertise.