Hosted by the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE), FMMS is an annual event, alternating between Hampton Roads and San Diego, bringing together the entire naval ship maintenance and modernization community. The symposium allows for an open forum of communications and exchange of technical information between the Maritime Services, Fleet Forces Command, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, industry, academia, deck plate users, and more.
The 2021 FMMS three-day agenda included senior military keynotes, industry speakers, informative panels, innovation theater speakers, technical paper presentations and a professional development course.
As a keynote speaker, NAVWAR Commander Rear Adm. Doug Small engaged with the audience, discussing the increasing threat of China as a driving need to change the way the Navy executes maintenance and modernization to ensure future force readiness worldwide.
“In order to give our Sailors and Marines the systems and tools required to succeed in this strategic competition, we have to deliver the best of our ingenuity and do it on time every time,” sad Small.
Also focused on readiness, Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific Cybersecurity Engineering Senior Scientific Technical Manager Jara Tripiano, highlighted the criticality of cybersecurity engineering in a digital world.
“To deliver resilient systems, we must treat security requirements like the technical requirements they are and integrate them into the systems engineering process from start to finish,” said Tripiano.
She continued, by identifying areas of opportunity and areas in need of attention to ensure our fleet is able to keep pace in today’s increasingly technological environment.
“Multiple factors are coming together that make me believe the time is right to transition cybersecurity engineering and risk assessment to the digital environment: DoD’s current emphasis on Model Based System Engineering (MBSE), the maturity of the technology and tools required and the rapidly evolving cyber threat.”
During a panel titled “Technology to Sustain a Manned and Unmanned Fleet,” NAVWAR Assistant Chief Engineer for Mission Architecture, Nick Freije, also talked about MBSE and the advantages it brings to the fleet.
“Across the Naval Enterprise, we are taking a MBSE approach to delivering and sustaining our naval systems,” said Freije. “These models are used by the program of record to conduct their engineering design and used for mission simulations to show the effects of change on fleet business and warfighting before we invest a lot of time and money in developing a solution.”
Continuing the conversation on fleet modernization, other presenters included Rear Adm. Kurt Rothenhaus, Program Executive Officer for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (PEO C4I) who discussed “Sustaining the Operational Fleet - Ensuring the Highest Material Readiness on Schedule", and PEO C4I Executive Director Dr. William Luebke, who spoke on a panel titled "Future Readiness – Building and Modernizing for a Relevant Fleet."
NAVWAR greatly values forums like FMMS as a productive way to engage people with different backgrounds, education, jobs, trades and experience to discuss issues and find the best solutions possible to win the wars of the future.
“Serving on ASNE’s FMMS Future Readiness Panel was exciting and very informative,” said Luebke. “Exchanging ideas and responding to audience-generated questions exercised us cross-SYSCOM/Coast Guard/Industry panelists and led to a pithy information-sharing session with Rear Adm. (ret.) Brian Antonio at the helm as our moderator. It’s clear we are all very focused on future readiness and are better working together as we take the journey.”
About NAVWAR:
NAVWAR identifies, develops, delivers and sustains information warfighting capabilities and services that enable naval, joint, coalition and other national missions operating in warfighting domains from seabed to space and through cyberspace. NAVWAR consists of more than 11,000 civilian, active duty and reserve professionals located around the world.