SAN DIEGO — Some of the world’s largest defense contractors as well as U.S. Navy and Marine Corps leadership converged on the waterfront convention center here for the West conference Feb. 13-15. Reporters with C4ISRNET, Defense News and Navy Times were there as well, chronicling the events and conversation.
From Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro issuing a frank warning to industry to lessons learned from Houthi engagements in the Red Sea, here’s what you may have missed:
- Project Overmatch networking capabilities have been upgraded and rolled out to an additional number of Navy ships following testing last year with the Carl Vinson carrier strike group. All the details here.
- Northrop Grumman said it will participate in two events to demonstrate autonomy and electronic warfare payloads the company is developing for unmanned surface vessels under its Project Scion initiative. Click for more info.
- The Navy’s ongoing battles with Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have resulted in destroyers shooting down 14 anti-ship ballistic missiles “for the first time in history.” Interested?
- Six months into its effort to field thousands of attritable, autonomous systems, the Pentagon is planning the second iteration of the Replicator program — and this time, software will be the focus. What that means for the future.
- The U.S. Marine Corps will put a new type of missile-delivery drone to the test in an operational scenario this month, following a year of developmental work. And then what?
- The Navy plans to establish a second unmanned surface drone squadron in May, according to the head of U.S. Pacific Fleet. Keep reading.
The next West conference is scheduled for late January 2025.
Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.
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