Table of Contents

Integrating Technology into the Fleet

There are three major parts in the process of integrating new technology into the fleet:

This process is too slow to accommodate rapidly evolving technologies. It takes years where it should take months (e.g., the "accelerated" Cooperative Engagement Capability was conceptualized over ten years ago, and it is just now being integrated tactically). It takes decades where it should take years (e.g., it took twenty years to move Aegis into the fleet, and then a few more years for the fleet to understand how to use that system at its full capacity).

Much mighty labor and many long hours are required to make the process move faster for exceptional projects drawing effort from the routine projects, which then slow even more. Not surprisingly, many people ardently seek to establish their own projects as "exceptional" (even those that are really routine), in order to make some progress. Result: the whole process clogs and lows down. Fingers point, people shout, and everyone works harder, but all are unable to make the process work as well as they know it must today, but especially tomorrow.

Who is at fault? No one. The system is at fault. It was a great system, painfully developed through much hard work by skilled and dedicated people. However, it is now an analog, series-connected, highly order system in a digital, parallel-connected, disorderly world. The Navy pays high salaries t6o some people to maintain the system, to others to make it work, and to still others to subvert it. What the Navy really needs to do is fix it.