In the Navy’s effort to harness innovation Mr. James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition announced on September 3 the Navy’s plan to expand the Department of the Navy’s (DON) collaboration capabilities rapidly. The Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD) in Orlando will play a key role in this new effort.

“Earlier this year, the Naval Expeditions (NavalX) office was stood up to facilitate rapid adoption of proven agility-enhancing methods across the Department,” said Geurts speaking from the NavalX office.  “And today, I’m proud to announce that NavalX in collaboration with our workforce has furthered this effort by creating the first five regional “Tech Bridges” across the country to better connect the DON and the private sector.”

The Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD) is one of the first fully capable Tech Bridges, known as the Central Florida Tech Bridge. The other initial locations are Newport, R.I.; Keyport, Washington; San Diego, Calif.; and Crane, Indiana.

Partnering with the Office of Naval Research and the Navy’s Systems Commands, NavalX Tech Bridges will connect, reinforce, and sustain acceleration ecosystems in off-base locations across the DON enabling greater collaboration with non-traditional partners. Each Tech Bridge receives support from NavalX, which will facilitate project efforts in each region designed to solve hard problems and technology areas identified by Fleet and the DoN workforce. These Navy Tech Bridges will collaborate with start-ups, academia, corporations, small businesses, non-profits, and private capital. Additionally, Tech Bridges will serve within the growing ecosystem of DoD innovation groups, providing NavalX greater collaboration capability with Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), U.S. Army Futures Command, AFWERX, SOFWERX, and others.

“NavalX works with partners to support collision spaces and generate dual-use solutions,” said Geurts. “These five spaces will lower barriers that traditionally hamper external collaboration. I envision these as the first five, of a great number of tech bridges, to enable the Department of the Navy to achieve its goal of agility at scale.”

The Tech Bridges will operate on a “franchise” model that will allow each region to develop their own model to connect to their unique innovation ecosystem.

NAWCTSD Commanding Officer, Capt. Tim Hill explained how the Central Florida Tech Bridge will enable NAWCTSD to better support the fleet. "NAWCTSD houses the Navy’s experts on training and human performance, and we already have a strong connection with the fleet through our network of fleet training sites," he said. "But with the ecosystem that’s being created by Tech Bridge, we hope to expand and improve our connectivity with the fleet so that we can reduce the cycle time required for understanding and filling training needs."

Central Florida Tech Bridge Director, Diana Teel emphasized the importance of this new effort. "It's a big deal because we are one of only two tech bridges that is in a sustainment phase, which recognizes that we already have a vibrant ecosystem (with Team Orlando)… Being one of the original NavalX Tech Bridges will enable us to collaborate with other areas of the Navy much more effectively."

Hill explained how the existing "Team Orlando" relationships enhance the value of the Central Florida Tech Bridge. "Team Orlando has an outstanding history of collaboration within the modeling, simulation, and training community and across other Central Florida sectors. The Tech Bridge will facilitate connecting the Central Florida ecosystem with those at the other Tech Bridge locations, enabling the capabilities in each of those ecosystems to be brought to bear in solving the hard problems in other domains."
 

For more information on NavalX and Tech Bridges go to:

www.secnav.navy.mil/agility

https://www.secnav.navy.mil/agility/Pages/techbridges.aspx

Research, Development, Acquisition Public Affairs and NAWCTSD Public Affairs contributed to this story