James Foggo, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and dean of the Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy, said shipyard optimization is a national security need and the service should see it as an opportunity to advance digital modernization.

In an opinion piece published Friday on Breaking Defense, Foggo proposed four recommendations that the Navy should consider when integrating digital adoption into the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program. One is allocating three percent of the SIOP budget to digital efforts.

Another way is starting with operator challenges. The service should converse with maintainers about their struggle areas, provide the training that they need to address skill gaps and identify commercially available platforms that could be tailored to their requirements, according to Foggo.

He called on the Navy to help establish trust using existing and simulated datasets to demonstrate the capability of digital technologies like artificial intelligence.

Foggo additionally said the Navy should “avoid ‘rip and replace’ of major data systems and focus on problem-oriented solutions that can be seamlessly integrated.”

The retired admiral also discussed how state-of-the-art digital technologies could help the Navy achieve efficiency and speed when it comes to its maintenance lifecycle.

“Analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools can be deployed to uncover critical insights, make data-driven predictions in real-time, and seamlessly share critical information across shipyard teams,” Foggo noted.

The Potomac Officers Club will hold its 4th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit on Feb. 16. Click here to register for this in-person event to hear notable leaders within the GovCon sector discuss key AI advancements achieved over the past year and cutting-edge development strategies for 2023 and beyond.

Max Peterson, vice president of Amazon Web Services’ worldwide public sector and a Wash100 Award winner, has listed his predictions for public sector technology trends in 2023.

Following conversations with global customers utilizing the cloud, Peterson identified five areas he expects to transform within governments globally in an AWS blog post published Monday.

“As we look toward the future, it’s clear that public sector organizations will need to continue to adapt and innovate to successfully navigate the constantly-evolving global landscape and changing needs of their end users and constituents,” he wrote.

According to Peterson, areas of potential expansion include artificial intelligence and machine learning, the cloud as it relates to citizens’ interactions with government agencies, digital twins and large-scale simulations, quantum computing and the commercialization of space.

With cloud technologies growing in popularity, Peterson anticipates the integration of AI and ML into these platforms to streamline the process of reaching mission success, reduce costs and improve overall efficiency.

Peterson additionally forecasts that the increasing cloud usage in government organizations will strengthen agency communications with employees and citizens by further automating facilities such as contact centers. Incorporating cloud services into these operations can decrease hold times, allow self-service options and boost cost-effectiveness, Peterson said.

As obstacles surrounding the use of digital twins and large-scale simulations are broken down, Peterson also suspects that the growing availability of these tools will result in government agencies leveraging their advantages.

Quantum computing is another area of interest for Peterson, who said that despite the recent emergence of the field, he expects the area to grow and become more straightforward, allowing government clients to harness the technology to support their missions.

The commercialization of space is the final prediction on Peterson’s list. With a vast majority of spacecraft launched into orbit in the first half of 2022 coming from the private sector, Peterson believes that digital technologies, such as those offered by AWS, will further assist companies in their space ventures.

Looking forward, Peterson aims to continue supporting customers with AWS cloud technologies.

“Having the right tools in place will help organizations prepare and respond to any circumstances yet to come, while also helping drive the next wave of innovation,” he wrote.

A study conducted by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory found negative as well as positive long-term effects of climate change on communication systems such as radars.

The results were published Wednesday and presented at the annual meeting of the U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Radio Science.

“Will climate change alter the environment enough to impact the design of sensor systems? Because if it does — even a little bit — that would be a surprise for designers and engineers who aren’t used to thinking about the environment as an evolving design factor,” said Jonathan Gehman, APL applied physicist and one of the scientists involved in the study.

He said that S-band radars will have better longer-range advantage, while X-band and other higher frequency remote sensing systems will degrade over the next 50 years. He attributed the discrepancy to increased moisture in the atmosphere, which will impede the resolution and bandwidth capability of X-bands.

They obtained data collected via the World Climate Research Programme’s Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, which examined factors considered in impact sensor design. These include moisture conditions and rising sea surface temperatures, which influence the effectiveness of radio frequency and infrared propagation.