The blueprint, first developed over a year ago, documents the reference architecture to move from a host of interconnected systems to a capability platform model. Version two of the plan was published last fall, further defining features such as how cloud services interact with each other, Jennifer Edgin, assistant deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare (N2N6B), said in an interview at the Sea-Air-Space conference this week. She added that the plan also helped drive down some network redundancies to eliminate legacy networks.

The blueprint has “really laid a strong foundation for a lot of our infrastructure in terms of our network modernization … we want to have our interconnected MOCs,” Edgin said.

The Navy has stated that those MOCs, short for marine operations centers, will be the primary warfighting platform from which the service will fight and command and control its forces. This has been necessitated by the greater distances — particularly in the Pacific — that the Navy must be ready to fight across. Forces will be distributed and must command and control their assets while passing critical data back and forth — a task too great for carrier strike groups to do alone.

“To ensure that we maintain our warfighting advantage, our commanders have to have information and decision advantage. Our maritime operations centers is where we fuse that information. It’s where we make warfighting decisions. It’s where we outthink — it’s where we outmaneuver the adversary and where we generate orders to the fleet,” Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare and director of naval intelligence, N2/N6, said during a panel at the conference. “In all cases, the complexity and the speed of the fight will rely on us synthesizing vast amounts of information. The amount of information that is flowing now compared to what it was in the past is a tremendous order of magnitude difference.”

Edgin explained that the MOCs are where the fleet will begin the process of commanding and controlling information and forces.

The Navy is targeting 2027 for all MOCs to be certified, beginning with the Pacific theater. Each MOC is slightly different, and to get to that point by 2027 will take a variety of efforts, such as developing back-end technology to enable the interfaces and information flows. They will also have to focus on training forces to ensure sailors are proficient learning in live, virtual and constructive environments.

“Just think of, you do something once, and then you don’t have to do it for a number of months, your skills atrophy. That’s just normal. We want to create that opportunity for sailors to get reps and sets of continuous,” Edgin said. The focus is “making sure that we’re getting the right sailors to the right places. Sailors today are our biggest strategic advantage. They come to the Navy with a whole host of skills that maybe my generation didn’t have. They’re digital natives. Unleashing them in a virtual environment, they’re going to help us advance even more rapidly.”

Moreover, that plan lays out a common reference architecture for what officials described as the tech stack for the MOCs, which will leverage the power of cloud and zero trust to allow customizable apps and interfaces for forces to use with standardized data. With forces using over 70 systems, they will rely on a tightly coupled tech stack from hardware up to the data, according to officials.

“Just like if you were building a subdivision, you would have a couple of different blueprints with some specific options for the houses. That’s exactly what we’re doing in the information environment,” Edgin said.

Edgin noted that the Navy’s Project Overmatch seeks to complement the ashore efforts.

“A lot of times when we think of our blueprint, we think of just our ashore infrastructure. Well, for the Navy, it’s ashore and afloat. Overmatch is our effort to implement our naval operational architecture, particularly at that tactical end,” she said. “That experimentation and that delivery of capability has really yielded great results, not only solving some problems, but for us to define how we want things to work. As we define that at the top of the kind of infrastructure that’s important. It’s a great kind of symbiotic relationship between the two.”

Among some major lessons from Overmatch, Edgin noted it has helped the Navy determine how to use what it already has in different ways, rather than having to make completely new investments.

“When we talk about something new, there’s often a perspective of, oh, you have to get rid of everything. No, there are some good things that we’ve put in place that have allowed sailors to be successful. We want to make sure that those things are kept in place, those continue to advance and it isn’t just a new build,” she said. “That’s where I think some of our biggest learning has occurred is how do you take something new, bring it into an environment that has years and years of capital expenditures and make it all work together. That’s what I think is our biggest lessons learned from Overmatch.”

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Published in the past year, the Information Environment Ecosystem Blueprint, developed by the Navy’s office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, documents the reference architecture to move from a host of interconnected systems to a capability platform model.

“With our information ecosystem blueprint, we’ve we have highlighted that reference model that we want to align to, so that we can seamlessly employ from our ashore and our afloat-based platforms,” Jennifer Edgin, assistant deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare (N2N6B), said Thursday at the annual WEST conference.

Edgin has experience developing blueprints for modernization, having been behind the Marine Corps Information Environment Enterprise — a blueprint serving as a unified technical, physical and business model to document the design of the Marine Corps Information Environment.

“In prior experiences with the Marine Corps and then coming to the Navy side, when you talk to the sailors, when you talk to the providers, you can see there’s some slight disconnects … You hear sailors tried to make two systems talk to each other or doing swivel chair operations to share data. We can do better,” she told DefenseScoop in an interview at the conference. “The idea of the blueprint was really born out of that user frustration. It’s really provided us an opportunity to get really right with our vision of the future.”

The blueprint also helps break down language barriers between technical folks and the actual users.

Edgin equated the need for the blueprint to guide modernization to any construction project trying to build or remodel something.

“Let me ask the audience this: How many of you have ever remodeled a bathroom, built a house, by a show of hands? Yeah, everybody … Did you just hire framers, plumbers, roofers, tile folks and say, ‘Come in and do the job?’ No. That’s a really costly way to do business. It’s also not all that effective,” she said at the conference.

So too is the case for the Navy as it seeks to improve the way its systems are architected with the ultimate goal of improving communications and data flows for a distributed force to sense and make decisions faster than the adversary.

Edgin told DefenseScoop that the blueprint applies to both new systems and architectures as well as existing systems and networks.

“If we look at the platform-centered Navy, we have big capital investments in ships and submarines and aircraft and also our ashore-based facilities. This isn’t a new blueprint for a new house, this is a blueprint for the update and remodel,” she said. “That requires us to take a fresh look at some programs, maybe invest in some new things, but also bring some of our existing things up to date.”

The plan is an iterative process that will eventually be updated, likely in the next 18 months or so.

The first iteration hones in on a few priority areas. The first is zero trust and discerning what the zero-trust principle means for the entire ecosystem.

The next is baking in cybersecurity upfront in systems rather than bolting it on after.

Additionally, Edgin said they wanted to move away from system-centered thinking to capability and services-centered thinking.

Moreover, the blueprint will help the Navy understand what it needs, and in many cases, more importantly, what it doesn’t.

“We’re using our blueprint to continue to unite our capabilities and we’re constantly using it to assess our business and mission value. Oftentimes, we can get enamored with technology,” she said. “We’re really great at identifying technology. We’re really bad at divesting of old things and switching things out. This blueprint is helping us create a comprehensive business and mission model leading to what we hope will be a set of return on investment metrics. This is our long-term journey.”

The plan also will help develop a common type language or architecture with the Department of Defense, other services and even partner nations in line with the Pentagon’s top modernization effort dubbed Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2).

That plan essentially envisions how systems across the entire battlespace from all the services and partners are networked and connected to provide the right data to commanders for better and faster decision-making. The “C” refers to the importance of integrating international partners from the beginning of that plan as well.

“One of the things that the blueprint is, it’s a reference architecture. In the department, we’re really good at solutions architecture and really microsystems architecture. Then we kind of try to piece it together like a jigsaw puzzle,” Edgin told DefenseScoop. “What the blueprint does is say, ‘Okay, here’s how it all comes together’ and then that from there, we can derive specific solutions and systems architectures. Where this comes in from something like CJADC2, they also have a reference architecture. So we can pull up alongside the side [of] those efforts, whether it be CJADC2, an ally or a partner or another service and say, ‘Okay, this is what we look like, this is how we’re aligned to use technology to support our mission threads. How do you look?’”

Ultimately, the plan takes the Navy — and the U.S. military writ large — from trying to make one system talk to another, up to the next level to achieve true integration, she added.

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