“We will put more players on the field, which means ready players,” Franchetti said Tuesday during her keynote speech at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium. “Platforms that are ready with the right capabilities, weapons and sustainment, and people who are ready with the right skills, tools, training and mindset.”

Along with timely ship deliveries and improvements to maintenance practices, Franchetti said the Navy must take full advantage of unmanned systems and disruptive tech in order to ready the service for potential conflicts.

The goal isn’t to reach a specific number of manned or unmanned vessels, but rather ensuring all of the Navy’s assets are effectively contributing to an overall “warfighting ecosystem,” she told reporters after her keynote.

Like other components across the U.S. military, the Navy has made significant investments towards testing robotic platforms and incorporating them into operations. One of the most forward-leaning efforts for the sea service is Task Force 59, formed in 2021 under 5th fleet in the Middle East to help integrate unmanned systems and artificial intelligence tools that would strengthen maritime domain awareness and enhance deterrence. 

Task Force 59 reached full operational capability in early 2023, and the Navy has been experimenting more with drones and supporting technologies in the Indo-Pacific and Central and South American seas, Franchetti said.

“Now, we really need to look at what is all of our unmanned technology that we’re experimenting with?” she told DefenseScoop. “What are the concepts that we’re going to use to employ all these unmanned [systems]? How are we going to train people to work with them? How are we going to knit them together so they can augment our conventional platforms and really expand our force and the ability that we have to do things?”

The CNO also highlighted work underway at the service’s new Disruptive Capabilities Office, launched by Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro in September. The organization aims to rapidly deliver new advanced warfighting capabilities to sailors and Marines.

“I’m really excited about seeing what they come up with and how they really quickly scale good emerging technology and put that into the hands of warfighters in just a couple of years,” Franchetti said.

Her remarks at the symposium coincided with the release of a paper outlining her priorities as CNO — titled “America’s Warfighting Navy” — categorizing her focus areas into three lines of effort: warfighting, warfighters and foundations.

“We must move rapidly to stay ahead and continuously create warfighting advantages. We must think, act, and operate differently, leveraging wargaming and experimentation to integrate conventional capability with hybrid, unmanned, and disruptive technologies,” it states. “Tomorrow’s battlefield will be incredibly challenging and complex. To win decisively in that environment, our Sailors must be the best warfighters in the world with the best systems, weapons, and platforms to ensure we can defeat our adversaries.”

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Delivering remarks at the Naval Research Laboratory Centennial Exhibition at the Pentagon on Thursday, Del Toro detailed the creation of the Disruptive Capabilities Office, a new organization that will “push the bounds of rapidly delivering warfighting capability through the innovative application of existing and new systems, and harnessing today’s exponential growth in technology.”

The new office will work in concert with stakeholders from across the Department of the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, to deliver disruptive capabilities sailors and Marines need “at a pace and scale to close our Fleet’s most critical capability gaps,” Del Toro said, noting that the DCO will work hand-in-hand with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory’s Rapid Capabilities Office.

Notably, Del Toro said the new Disruptive Capabilities Office will play a key role in supporting the Pentagon’s new Replicator initiative — an ambitious plan launched by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks to help the U.S. military deter China by fielding thousands of autonomous systems at scale in various domains — by “partnering closely alongside joint efforts like DIU to accelerate production and delivery of the capabilities our Joint Force needs at-scale.”

During his remarks, Del Toro highlighted the Navy’s newly launched Science and Technology Board, which is chaired by former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig. Along those lines, the secretary said he has directed the chief of naval research to deliver a science and technology strategy for the department in the next 90 days.

Del Toro said: “This strategy will set forth our priorities and our approach as to how we invest our capital — both human and financial — to rapidly identify, develop, and field the capabilities our Sailors and Marines need today, and tomorrow.”

“As our department continues to re-imagine and refocus our innovation efforts, I encourage all of you — our nation’s scientists, engineers, researchers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and problem-solvers — to join us,” he said. “We are indeed in an innovation race — and it is one we must win. Innovation must permeate every aspect of our department’s approach to the delivery of the technologies and capabilities at a speed and scale necessary for our Navy and Marine Corps to confront the challenges of today and the future — just as NRL has done for over a century.

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