Asia-Pacific
Naval Postgraduate School selects nine Digital Trident II projects for Pacific challenges
The Naval Postgraduate School has chosen nine research projects, from a counter-drone interceptor prototype to space awareness and unmanned-systems logistics, for its Digital Trident II Pacific initiative.
The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California, has named nine research projects that will receive resources and operational contacts under Digital Trident II, a programme aimed at problems facing U.S. forces in the Pacific. NPS Vice Provost for Research and Innovation Dr. Michael Hesse announced the selection on Oct. 7, and the school published the list on Oct. 21.
NPS describes Digital Trident II as an initiative that links operational challenges in the Pacific with the school’s faculty and students, emerging technology and outside partners. Projects chosen in a competitive process get support to refine their concepts, run experiments, judge their operational relevance and look for a route to further development or use.
Three groups of projects
NPS sorts the nine projects into three groups. The first covers awareness and decision support. SPECTRAL is meant to help tactical units find safe windows for radio communication and movement while limiting their exposure to adversary space-based sensors. Project ARSENAL would combine five emerging capabilities into a modular toolkit for U.S. Pacific Command information-warfare decisions. A third project would process data from event-based sensors operating in space to improve maritime and space awareness, and Project Adversarial Agents is intended to speed up analysis of an opponent in wargames and tabletop exercises.
The second group deals with autonomy, fires and mission planning. One project aims to deliver a flight-ready prototype of an affordable interceptor against unmanned aircraft, with a direct transition to Marine Corps development as its stated goal. Another would help warfighters build, test and refine joint fires plans faster, and a third would automate mission planning for long-endurance uncrewed aircraft, using weather prediction to optimise routes and endurance.
The third group concerns readiness and logistics. MCOO-X targets the allocation, positioning and sustainment of unmanned systems across the Pacific, so that U.S. Pacific Command and Special Operations Command Pacific planners can see capability gaps and risks under contested conditions. ANVIL would bring personnel, training, readiness and logistics data together in a decision-support tool for commanders.
What happens next
The selected teams will now work with operational stakeholders and technical partners to refine requirements and test their assumptions. According to NPS, the evidence and user feedback gathered will inform decisions on follow-on research, further experimentation and possible transition to use. The initiative is run by the NPS Office of Research and Innovation with the NPS Foundation, under a Partnership Intermediary Agreement with the school. Kaitie Penry, NPS Director of Emerging Technology and Innovation and the programme lead, said in the announcement that Digital Trident applies the school’s ability to bring together warfighters, researchers and technologists “directly to Pacific Theater challenges.”
The announcement describes research and development selections only; it does not state budgets, schedules or fielding decisions. The counter-drone prototype is the one project with a named service customer, the Marine Corps. Counter-drone demand is a recurring theme in recent U.S. reporting; see our coverage of how L-MADIS counter-drone system reaches 1st LAAD Battalion in Hawaii, with 15 systems delivered in six months.