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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Adm. James Kilby shared a status update on that work and shed light on some of the sea service’s associated near-term, technology-enabling efforts during a media roundtable at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space forum.

“One of our goals — one of our seven targets — is this hybrid fleet [with] robotic and autonomous systems,” Kilby explained. “The challenge for us is to really robustly lay out a roadmap to get there. We’ve had some fits and starts there, so we must do better. Our initial focus is 2027 though, [for a] capability that will help us in the Pacific.”

Last year, then-CNO Adm. Lisa Franchetti unveiled a list of seven “Project 33 targets” to accelerate to enhance the Navy’s long-term advantage and ensure readiness for a possible war with China by 2027. President Donald Trump fired Franchetti in February, but as Kilby suggested, the Navy continues to pursue those immediate modernization aims under his leadership and while waiting on a new nominee to be named. 

He said personnel are currently moving to deploy a unified network of unmanned and manned platforms “in a meaningful way.”

“The MQ-25 is the first unmanned aircraft to integrate with the air wing. Beyond that, once we do that, I’m looking at sensors, I’m looking at electronic attack, possibly a loyal wingman concept — but I also have to have unmanned surface [capabilities] helping me in that fight, as well,” Kilby noted. 

He acknowledged that while the Navy is pursuing a range of activities to boost global readiness and enhance platforms’ maintenance and efficiency at shore and sea, its force and arsenal are simultaneously in high demand all over the world. Kilby pointed to the Nimitz and Vinson Carrier Strike Groups, which are conducting deterrence and other operations in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as the P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft and a guided missile destroyer supporting Northern Command on the Trump administration’s new U.S.-Mexico border missions.

“Over the past 18 months, our sailors in the Red Sea have successfully countered hundreds of Houthi missiles and [unmanned aerial vehicles]. We have had over 20 ships that have operated in the Central Command area of responsibility for this, and today, the incredible sailors of the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group are there carrying on that effort,” the acting CNO said.

As that conflict continues to disrupt commercial shipping and place sailors’ lives at risk, Kilby said he’s increasingly concerned about the Navy’s lack of options to more economically counter that threat, and America’s munitions industrial base.  

“As the former [deputy chief of Naval operations for warfighting requirements and capabilities, or N9], I was focused on a high-end laser, 500 kilowatts to 1 megawatt. And I have regret for that — that I had not been thoughtful enough to think about the UAV threat, where I think a much lesser-power weapon would have done what we needed to do,” he said.

The Navy’s secretive Project Overmatch marks another key element of its future warfighting capabilities and overarching intent to prioritize lethality, per Trump’s recent orders. 

That initiative is a major piece of the Navy’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) operational concept and will be crucial to the U.S. and its allies’ joint tactical network of the future.

“The classic example of Overmatch is I want to be able to communicate across every single modality I have at sea, based on prioritization of message. Comms-as-a-service and software-defined radios are a piece of that as well. So, that effort continues,” Kilby told DefenseScoop.

“This ability to communicate in a more effective manner at sea makes me more lethal, where I’m not having to wait for a certain prioritization of messages to go out — the system just understands the quickest means to do that and sends that message,” he explained.

For most of Kilby’s career, Navy forces have been able to conduct power projection, or sail anywhere in the world to carry out orders. But contemporary network advancements are introducing nascent challenges and making it easier for adversaries to locate U.S. forces’ whereabouts. 

“Overmatch, and [the fight from the maritime operations centers], and the mission control of my strike group is what I need to do to be able to have access into that environment,” Kilby said.

Earlier this year, the Project Overmatch team unveiled its first-ever formal project arrangement with the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.

“Certainly we need to work with our allies across the board here, and I’ll meet with several of them during this conference,” Kilby told DefenseScoop during the roundtable.

Naval Information Warfare Systems Commander Rear Adm. Seiko Okano was recently tapped as the newest lead for Project Overmatch. 

Kilby confirmed he’s impressed with her early work in this role, including recent moves to target readiness across the maritime operations centers and from the strike group commanders in new and noticeable ways — and largely by handling data differently.

“She’s been critical in helping us with the unmanned surface vessels, and communicating with C2 and command and control, and using artificial intelligence to do things like automatic target recognition, which are important for those targets, and to have that data set updated — so I see it continuing and only growing larger as we move forward,” he said.

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Overmatch is part of the Navy’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) effort to better connect the U.S. military’s sensors, shooters, platforms and personnel across the services and with key allies. Service leaders have described it as the bedrock for the joint tactical network of the future.

The 2024 iteration of RIMPAC, a biennial event that has been deemed the world’s largest international maritime exercise, ran from June 27 to Aug. 1 near Hawaii. It included participation from 29 nations, 40 surface ships, three submarines, 14 national land forces, more than 150 aircraft, and 25,000 personnel, according to the Pentagon.

“Project Overmatch has many different areas that they’ve been focusing on. When you have so many different ships, so much capability that comes to RIMPAC it’s very important to make sure that not only do you work with partners and allies and go through all the things that RIMPAC every other year does, but you also get to test things. Right? So having a detailed sort of test and evaluation plan — and 3rd Fleet did an excellent job of executing it — how Overmatch ties into every single facet of operations is important. And it’s on a sliding scale of technical maturation and time,” Cmdr. Jeremiah Daley, military director for Pacific Fleet, N9WAR, said Thursday during a panel at the Potomac Officers Club’s Navy Summit.

“RIMPAC is just another target of opportunity at a very large scale — scale that only happens every once in a while. And for RIMPAC it’s every other year to be able to use that scale, and then try to have a good plan and then execute that plan from a test and evaluation standpoint into that type of exercise. So RIMPAC is another opportunity where Overmatch went in with their plan and executed,” Daley said.

The Navy also sees these efforts as an opening to expand the vendor pool as the sea service pursues autonomous systems, uncrewed platforms and software-defined networking solutions.

“Project Overmatch has created an opportunity for other vendors to be able to provide some capabilities that may not have been available otherwise. And so it’s sort of [deleting] some of the first-to-market advantage that other vendors may have received being the first to actually coordinate with the Navy in the selection of autonomy, [and] creating an opportunity for other vendors, another place for other vendors to be able to introduce their capabilities into the Navy so now we’re not beholden to one or two vendors. Now we have a much broader spectrum of opportunities,” Capt. Eric Hutter, deputy director of the Department of the Navy’s Disruptive Capabilities Office, said during the panel.

Daley said the Navy is gaining important knowledge as it experiments with platforms such as uncrewed surface vessels, unmanned aerial systems and uncrewed underwater vehicles.

“It’s a cycle of learning, of having those other vendors into the equation that makes sure that we don’t miss a technology by a small company and how that would potentially … impact in a positive way — not just how autonomous systems work, or how we think we’re going to operate multiple USVs and UASs and UUVs, but how capable that capability could be, and just making sure that we don’t miss any of those spots,” he said.

Pentagon officials have emphasized the need to integrate allies and partners into the future warfighting construct. The word “combined” in CJADC2 parlance refers to that type of international collaboration.

Mario Miranda, director of technology transfer and international agreements at the Navy International Program Office, noted there are still some interoperability issues that need to be worked through, using Australia’s AIR6500 joint battle management system project as an example.

“If we’re going to deploy together and we’ve got our Overmatch and you’ve got your 6500, how are we going to be able to get messages and tracks from our ship to your weapon? How’s that going to work?” Miranda said during Thursday’s panel. “That’s another industry opportunity to help us to get to that technical challenge.”

Project Overmatch is a long-term effort. Officials have touted the progress that’s already been made, including a rise in deliveries of over-the-air software and capability updates to ships.

The Department of the Navy’s “core funding” request for Overmatch is $139.8 million for fiscal 2025 and $716.7 million across the five-year spending plan that’s part of the future years defense program (FYDP), according to the service.

“Using modern software methods and pipelines, we are fielding software-based networking technologies to provide as many pathways to connect and share information as possible, as well as software applications that aid decision makers and planners in executing [distributed maritime operations],” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in May.

“To date we have fielded our first increments of Project Overmatch across multiple Carrier Strike Groups and shore command nodes. The FY25 budget request will fund our follow-on increments of this capability, while growing the architecture, adding resilience and redundancy to our communications paths, and expanding into additional domains in conjunction with our Joint partners and Allies,” she added.

The service recently passed the leadership baton for Project Overmatch to Rear Adm. Seiko Okano, who took over for Rear Adm. Doug Small as commander of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) during an Aug. 9 change of command and retirement ceremony.

“This is an opportunity of a lifetime to lead this exceptional organization, one that stands the watch day and night for our Navy’s Information Warfare capabilities and fights every day to ‘own the domain,’” Okano said, according to a Navy news release. “We are living in a time where information dominance is critical to national security. In this dynamic environment, our mission is clear: to deliver and sustain superior Information Warfare capabilities, enabling our Navy to fight and win in the information age.”

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The next iteration of RIMPAC, a biennial event which has historically been the world’s largest international maritime exercise, is slated to take place this summer near Hawaii. The most recent version, which was held in 2022, involved 26 nations, 38 surface ships, three submarines, nine national land forces, more than 30 unmanned systems, approximately 170 aircraft and more than 25,000 personnel, according to the service.

A total of 29 nations were scheduled to participate in RIMPAC 2024.

“The investments that we’ve made in operation Overmatch … will be exercised during RIMPAC ’24, basically. We’ve also increased our collaboration with allies and partners for RIMPAC ’24, which is very exciting. And on the autonomous side of the house, the unmanned Navy side of the house, we’re actually looking to actually employ all four Overlord projects as well, too, in an incredible way. So we’re very excited about RIMPAC,” Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told lawmakers Thursday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Project Overmatch is the sea service’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) initiative, which is intended to better connect sensors, platforms and data flows from the U.S. military and key allies and partners under a more unified network for better and faster decision-making.

Experimentation with Overmatch tech began last year with Carrier Strike Group 1 and its flagship, the USS Carl Vinson, in the Pacific. Since then, it has been rolled out to additional units, including Carrier Strike Group 4 and Carrier Strike Group 15, and the aim is to continue scaling it across the force.

The Navy has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the project.

Officials have said the sea service is making significant progress, including using the capabilities to deliver over-the-air software updates to ships.

The department has requested an additional $139.8 million for the effort in fiscal 2025 and $716.7 million across the five-year spending plan that’s part of the future years defense program (FYDP).

“In order to ensure warfighting advantage, we must guarantee decision superiority for our warfighters,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said in her written testimony for Thursday’s SASC hearing. “Through Project Overmatch — the Navy’s contribution to Combined Joint All Domain Command & Control — we are fielding the connective tissue for today’s Fleet, while developing and experimenting with what is needed for our hybrid fleet” of crewed and uncrewed systems.

“Using modern software methods and pipelines, we are fielding software-based networking technologies to provide as many pathways to connect and share information as possible, as well as software applications that aid decision makers and planners in executing [distributed maritime operations]. To date we have fielded our first increments of Project Overmatch across multiple Carrier Strike Groups and shore command nodes. The FY25 budget request will fund our follow-on increments of this capability, while growing the architecture, adding resilience and redundancy to our communications paths, and expanding into additional domains in conjunction with our Joint partners and Allies,” she wrote.

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The initiative is the Navy’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) effort to better connect the U.S. military’s sensors, shooters, platforms and personnel across the services and with key allies. Service leaders have described it as the bedrock for the joint tactical network of the future.

“Through Project Overmatch, we’re building a software-defined network solution and modern software pipelines to provide as many pathways as is possible to connect and share information. This initiative is an effort to transmit any data over any network and is the connective tissue between today’s fleet and tomorrow’s emerging hybrid fleet” of manned and unmanned systems, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said last month at the WEST conference.

The Navy spent $226 million on Overmatch in fiscal 2023 and it requested $192 million for it in 2024. At press time, Congress hasn’t passed a full-year defense appropriation for fiscal 2024 and the Pentagon has been operating under a continuing resolution since October.

The sea services aim to keep the money flowing to Overmatch in fiscal 2025 and beyond.

“I just had a great discussion with [Rear Adm.] Doug Small and his team … that run that,” Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, told DefenseScoop during a meeting with reporters to preview the 2025 budget request. “This [funding] is for software development for capabilities and some hardware that goes on our ships. It goes into our numbered fleets and then provides them the capability to operate distributed. Also ties in with our Marines in the littorals, and then … allows these fleets to tie into the joint force.”

Small, the commander of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, noted at the WEST conference that the service has been making significant progress with Overmatch, including using it to deliver over-the-air software updates to ships.

“We did demos years ago where we were able to show them certainly it’s possible. But in terms of doing it as a matter of course, that’s come in the last probably a year-and-a-half or so,” he said. “We made tremendous headway. The ability to deliver updates, software over the air — you can imagine the amount of change that had to go on from the entire value chain and how you deliver capability. There’s been a lot of really good work on that. Still more to go.”

Carrier Strike Group 1 and its flagship, the USS Carl Vinson, were equipped with Overmatch capabilities last year in the Pacific to serve as a test bed. The tech is being rolled out to Carrier Strike Group 4 and Carrier Strike Group 15, and the aim is to continue scaling it across the Navy.

Mark Pomerleau contributed reporting from WEST.

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While there have been experiments and technologies that the Navy has been using for years to demonstrate these types of updates, frequent deliveries only came about fairly recently.

“We did demos years ago where we were able to show them certainly it’s possible. But in terms of doing it as a matter of course, that’s come in the last probably a year-and-a-half or so,” Rear Adm. Douglas Small, commander of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, said Wednesday at the annual WEST conference, adding that ships can be in port or be connected via a satellite link to receive updates.

“We made tremendous headway. The ability to deliver updates, software over the air — you can imagine the amount of change that had to go on from the entire value chain and how you deliver capability. There’s been a lot of really good work on that. Still more to go,” he said.

Small leads the Navy’s tight-lipped Project Overmatch effort, which seeks to connect the fleet and enable forces to operate in a distributed manner. That endeavor falls in line with the Pentagon’s number one priority to connect networks, data, platforms, sensors and shooters across the joint forces in order to make faster and more informed decisions than adversaries. The concept is known as Joint All-Domian Command and Control (JADC2).

Project Overmatch is a key initiative for Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who sees it as an opportunity to gain advantages and think differently about how to integrate disruptive and emerging technologies to adapt to changes in warfare.

“Through Project Overmatch, we’re building a software-defined network solution and modern software pipelines to provide as many pathways as is possible to connect and share information. This initiative is an effort to transmit any data over any network and is the connective tissue between today’s fleet and tomorrow’s emerging hybrid fleet,” she said Tuesday at the conference. “In using that connectivity, we’re working to evolve Aegis and the ship self-defense system into a single, hardware-agnostic software suite, like the integrated combat system, that all ships can pull from to conduct missions alone or in a group. This system will enable a surface action group, a strike group and a fleet, or any combination of integrated combat system-equipped ships to operate as a single, seamless system and become a true system of systems.”

Carrier Strike Group 1 and its flagship, the USS Carl Vinson, was one of the first to begin receiving Overmatch capabilities last year, serving as a test bed to experiment with accelerating the scaling of these technologies.

Since then, the Navy has equipped additional strike groups with Overmatch capabilities.

“We did a lot of testing on fielding of systems on Vinson. Vinson is deployed with our capabilities. We certainly have moved on and fielded out additional strike groups. It’s never something that we’re done with. It’s a constant learning and a constant improving process,” Small said. “What’s neat about the way we’re delivering our tools, software and things is that we can take in direct feedback and make the updates in stride with the fleet. Not only have we fielded, we’ve updated and re-fielded and delivered — over the air — capabilities based on what it is that the sailors need. It’s a constant learning, growing, getting better, updating our own systems, updating our own pipelines for how we field, how we do cybersecurity.”

To support the effort, the Navy’s information warfare entity is seeking to bolster its training to match the tempo and intensity of updates.

“We’re working across all the other type commanders, we’re working across all the other warfighting development centers, [Carrier Strike Group 4 and Carrier Strike Group 15] to really integrate Overmatch into the [Optimized Fleet Response Plan] on the fleet side,” Elizabeth Nashold, deputy commander of Naval Information Forces, said at the conference. “We have had to think about training differently, like when we’re delivering capabilities quickly to the fleet, our standard processes don’t work as well. We’re doing a lot of learning through that journey.”

Nashold later told reporters that officials need to speed the cycle of getting capability to the fleet and training sailors on it. Moving from inception to delivery takes a long time as the process must go through several steps such a requirements approval, acquisition and training.

“With Overmatch we’re looking at a speed to capability delivery to the fleet. If you’re talking about capability to the fleet faster, then the training has to be faster, too,” she said. “That’s why with training, that’s why we are asking for — it’s very important for us to have a point of presence training. Where can we have training delivered to where the sailors are? Where can we have virtual training environments? Where can we have the representative representation of the equipment [that] may be in the cloud for operators to use and become proficient on? That’s where we need to go is making that cycle faster.”

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The next iteration of the biennial event, slated for Aug. 9-18, will span 22 time zones in a live virtual, constructive (LVC) environment. It will loop in nine maritime operations centers, six carrier strike groups, three amphibious ready groups, 25 ships and submarines, more than 50 “virtual” ships, and 25,000 sailors and Marines.

LVC training constructs connect deployed personnel and platforms with virtual trainers and computer-generated entities.

The aim of the exercise is to “assess the Fleet’s ability to synchronize global naval operations at the operational-to-tactical level of war against strategic competitors,” according to the Navy.

During a meeting with reporters on Monday, officials said they were limited in what they could disclose publicly about the event. But they offered an outline of what it will entail.

“What I can say about this scenario, and this is what we’re trying to do is, is have [a combatant command] area of responsibility that has a very aggressive percolating event that will eventually turn into kinetic warfare. Simultaneously with that area of responsibility where that event is happening, there will be opportunistic second and third parties that are taking advantage of that, you know, with the hope that the United States has got its eye off the ball a bit and doesn’t have the capacity to deter those other opportunistic events going on. So that’s the general construct and how we lay this down globally, to make sure all of the commands throughout these 22 time zones are fairly challenged in theirs. And that’s what tensions, the resources that we have and making sure we’re getting the allocation correct,” Adm. Daryl Caudle, commander of Fleet Forces Command, told reporters.

“The event does, as you can imagine, have what we call a kind of a road to war … where we’re getting intelligence injected into the scenario,” he continued. “So, we’ll go kinetic, there will be plenty of opportunity to deter aggression in other areas of responsibility. And there could be things that we do that are flexible response options and flexible deterrence options and dynamic employment of our forces that try to actually dissuade opportunistic adversaries from taking advantage of the thing that’s going on in another part of the world.”

New technologies are expected to be integrated into Large Scale Exercise 23 including autonomous and unmanned capabilities and communication systems, as the Navy tests its ability to conduct contested logistics operations and targeting and to develop a common operating picture.

That will include Project Overmatch networking tools, which Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday has said will be the bedrock for the future joint tactical network.

“Any of the participants that have Overmatch Capability installed on their ship, like communications as a service, will be tested as part of this event. And the reason I can say that with such confidence is the Overmatch capability set by its very nature is tested anytime we command and control units with that capability. So yes, that will be part of Large Scale Exercise to further Overmatch to get more feedback. And in fact, we’re bringing that to bear in this live, virtual, constructive manner, [which] allows us to try to test some Overmatch capabilities that we maybe couldn’t do in the real world just because the situation wouldn’t necessarily lend itself to that during an actual deployment,” Caudle told DefenseScoop during the meeting with reporters.

He declined to provide details about the specific capabilities that will be tested using virtual and constructive elements, citing classification issues.

“I can say that again, as communication as a service allows Project Overmatch units — and eventually all ships will have this capability, including submarines — the ability to be able to have command and control [and] communications back with their headquarters, through every type of circuit that’s basically on those ships. And so that technology makes it extremely robust and hard to defeat in a contested environment, because of the ability for us to be able to command and control those ships across all those different circuits seamlessly to the sailor,” he said.

The Navy has been experimenting with Project Overmatch capabilities in the Pacific with the Carl Vinson carrier strike group. The plan is to roll those out more broadly to units in the region and then more broadly across the globe. The Large Scale Exercise will be another opportunity for the sea services to put them through their paces before deciding on next steps.

Lt. Gen. Brian Cavanaugh, commander of Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic, Marine Forces Command, and Marine Forces Northern Command, noted that the exercise will involve demonstrating C2 capabilities at the tactical level, not just the global and operational levels. The results will inform future investment decisions and program objective memorandums.

“We’re going to learn a lot from this. And there’ll be some successes, there’ll be some failures. We will learn from the failure. And we will inform future decisions for POM cycles and things that we’re going to buy. That’s a way to demonstrate what we have and what we can do,” he said.

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The highly secretive Project Overmatch is the Navy’s contribution to the Defense Department’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) initiative — a multi-billion-dollar effort to better connect the U.S. military’s many sensors, shooters and networks across the services. Gilday has said Project Overmatch will be the “bedrock for the joint tactical network of the future.”

The Navy is investing $226 million into the effort in fiscal 2023 and it’s requesting $192 million for fiscal 2024.

“What we wanted to try and do with this project is be able to take any data, containerize it and send it over any network. So instead of building a whole new operational infrastructure, [the aim] is to basically leverage what we have, primarily leveraging commercial technology, right, and just pivoting it to a military use,” Gilday explained at a Brookings Institution event Wednesday.

The initiative includes software-defined networking, he noted, “prioritizing what data is most important, and where it ends up and by what path.”

The sea service has had “great success” leveraging industry-provided technology, and it’s also been working with its allies and partners including the U.K., France and Australia, Gilday noted, adding that he expects that type of cooperation to expand over time.

The Carl Vinson carrier strike group has been putting the technology through its paces off the West Coast in the 3^rd Fleet area of operations.

“We’re now experimenting with a carrier strike group. So think about eight ships, across many different networks, for many types of data …. It is a DevOps kind of environment, so we’re learning as we’re doing,” Gilday said.

DefenseScoop asked Gilday about next steps and the Navy’s plans to roll out Project Overmatch capabilities more broadly across the force.

“I think it will likely focus in the Pacific first and then expand globally into our other fleets,” he told DefenseScoop at the Brookings event. He confirmed that 7th Fleet, which is headquartered in Japan and operates in the Western Pacific, will be receiving the capabilities.

Gilday later told DefenseScoop that the Navy hasn’t nailed down a timeline for when that rollout to 7th Fleet will happen, saying he wants to see the final results from the Vinson experiments before service leaders make a decision about that.

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Project Overmatch is the sea service’s contribution to the Pentagon’s broader Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) initiative to better link the U.S. military’s networks, sensors and shooters.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday has said Overmatch’s technology could be “the bedrock for the joint tactical network of the future,” and enable the military to “take any data and push it over any network in a software-defined environment, where the software decides what to prioritize information and how that data is going to flow to the endpoint — whether that’s a decision maker or whether that’s a weapon system.”

The sea service is currently deploying the C2-related capabilities with Carrier Strike Group One (CSG-1) and its flagship, the USS Carl Vinson, to evaluate them.

At the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference this week, Gilday said the testing is “in full swing right now” with the carrier force off the coast of California, and the service is looking to “scale it” after the experiment.

DefenseScoop asked Gilday what the next steps will be for the rollout after the activities with the carrier wrap up.

“I want to wait and see what kind of success hopefully we’ll see with Vinson. And that’s going to inform how quickly and how broadly we scale or not. You know, if we still have work to do, then we’re going to go back and do that work. Again, with all of these decisions, I’ve been very deliberate so that we don’t get too far ahead of our skis and then make big investments and things that we really regret. So I don’t have an answer for you yet, but I hope to talk about that more — we hope to talk about that more after Vinson is finished,” he said.

Gilday declined to say which units he’s eyeing as potential next candidates to deploy with the capabilities, nor would he discuss timelines for future rollouts.

“I won’t talk about publicly where we’re going next. We’re learning from each iteration and making informed decisions based on that, based on what we’ve seen. So far with Vinson, we’re on schedule, I will say that, and on track in terms of the objectives that we’re seeking and where we want to go with it,” he said.

Project Overmatch technology isn’t only intended for U.S. Navy ships at sea. The Marine Corps and allies and partners are also “tied in now,” Gilday noted. He told DefenseScoop that he “absolutely” would like for the Coast Guard to be tied in as well in the future.

The Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security, but it deploys its forces around the globe, including in support of the military.

The Navy’s Unmanned Task Force at the Pentagon is also looking at how the service can leverage the technology to better integrate drones into the fleet.

“The Unmanned Task Force is working primarily in the classified space, on lethal capabilities, as well as command-and-control enhancements … that are going hand in glove with Overmatch. I just can’t talk about it more specifically than that,” Gilday told reporters at the conference.

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Broadly, Project Overmatch marks the Navy’s complex contribution to the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) pursuit — a multi-billion-dollar plan to securely connect forces and military assets across all domains, including space and cyberspace. Each service is bringing its own elements to the table for JADC2, but many details about the Navy’s program have been kept secret over the last several years since its inception.

During the annual McAleese and Associates Defense Programs Conference in Washington on Wednesday, Gilday alluded to Project Overmatch-aligned progress now unfolding in California, via the homeport for Navy Carrier Strike Group One (CSG-1) and its current flagship, the USS Carl Vinson.

“I want to use the USS Vinson to accelerate the scaling” of Project Overmatch, Gilday told DefenseScoop after his keynote at the conference.

Investments the Navy has made and continues to make will ultimately enable that next-generation operational architecture, which during his keynote Gilday said “will be the bedrock for the joint tactical network of the future.”

He added that the in-the-making systems and technologies will allow Navy officials to “take any data and push it over any network in a software-defined environment, where the software decides what to prioritize information and how that data is going to flow to the endpoint — whether that’s a decision maker or whether that’s a weapon system.”

Though brief, in his keynote Gilday also mentioned that his team recently scaled Project Overmatch “to a carrier strike group, operating up the coast of California now” — and is “looking to scale that fleet-wide after that, and to scale even further across the Navy.”

In response to DefenseScoop’s follow-up question on that specific work, Gilday said he is “expecting big things” out of Vinson and that carrier strike group in fiscal 2024 to inform how Project Overmatch can be unfurled across the sprawling enterprise.

“I want to see a successful instantiation in the Vinson strike group as they deploy,” he noted.

Much like the Navy’s Fifth Fleet is doing with drones, Gilday said this work represents experimentation and delivery of capabilities “against real-world problems” — and is not simply “experimentation for experimentation sake.”

The Navy is requesting $192 million for Project Overmatch in fiscal 2024 — less than the enacted amount for fiscal 2023, which was $226 million.

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