The U.S. Naval Institute on Naval Innovation. John E. Jackson
In the U.S. Navy, “Wheel Books” were once found in the uniform pockets of every junior and many senior petty officers. Each small notebook was unique to the Sailor carrying it, but all had in common a collection of data and wisdom that the individual deemed useful in the effective execution of his or her duties. Often used as a substitute for experience among neophytes and as a portable library of reference information for more experienced personnel, those weathered pages contained everything from the time of the next tide, to leadership hints from a respected chief petty officer, to the color coding of the phone-and-distance line used in underway replenishments.
In that same tradition, U.S. Naval Institute Wheel Books provide supplemental information, pragmatic advice, and cogent analysis on topics important to all naval professionals. Drawn from the U.S. Naval Institute’s vast archives, the series combines articles from the Institute’s flagship publication Proceedings, as well as selections from the oral history collection and from Naval Institute Press books, to create unique guides on a wide array of fundamental professional subjects.
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© 2015 by the U.S. Naval Institute
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN: 978-1-61251-854-1 (eBook)
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First printing
CONTENTS
Editor’s Note
Introduction
PART I: The Innovation Imperative
1 “Innovation: The Father of All Necessity”
(Selection from chapter 13 of The Accidental Admiral: A Sailor Takes Command at NATO)
Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.)
2 “A Time to Innovate, a Time to Steal”
Lieutenant Scott Cheney-Peters, USNR
3 “Recapturing Our Creative DNA”
Rear Admiral Terry B. Kraft, USN
4 “Adapt, Innovate, and Adapt Some More”
Lieutenant Colonel Francis G. Hoffman, USMC (Ret.)
5 “Payloads over Platforms: Charting a New Course”
Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, USN
6 “Making Room for Risk: Managing Disruptive Technologies”
Rear Admiral James Stavridis, USN
PART II: The Unmanned Revolution
7 “A Few Disruptive Thoughts”
Lieutenant Ryan Hilger, USN
8 “Disruptive Technologies: The Navy’s Way Forward”
Robert Morris and Captain Paul S. Fischbeck, USNR
9 “Aye, Navy Robot”
Captain Danelle Barrett, USN, and Captain James H. Mills, USN
10 “Drones to the Rescue!”
Dr. Daniel Goure
11 “How to Fight an Unmanned War”
Lieutenant James E. Drennan, USN
12 “Unmanned, Unseen, and Under the Sea”
Lieutenant Commander Brent Johnson, USN, and Vice Admiral John Richardson, USN
PART III: CYBER, the Most Disruptive Technology
13 “The Navy’s Newest Warfighting Imperative”
Vice Admiral Kendall L. Card, USN, and Vice Admiral Michael S. Rogers, USN
14 “A New Era in Naval Warfare”
Vice Admiral Ted M. Branch, USN
15 “Creating Cyber Warriors”
Vice Admiral Nancy Brown, USN; Captain Danelle Barrett, USN; and Lieutenant Commander Jesse Castillo, USN
PART IV: Thoughts on Possible Futures
16 “The Time for Lasers Is Now”
Commander Bryan McGrath, USN, and Timothy Walton
17 “The Railgun Advantage”
Lieutenant Maxwell Cooper, USNR
18 “Print Me a Cruiser”
Lieutenant Scott Cheney-Peters, USNR, and Lieutenant (jg) Matthew Hipple, USN
19 “Secretary of Defense Letter Establishing the Defense Innovation Initiative”
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
Index
Because this book is an anthology, containing documents from different time periods, the selections included here are subject to varying styles and conventions. Other variables are introduced by the evolving nature of the Naval Institute’s publication practices. For those reasons, certain editorial decisions were required in order to avoid introducing confusion or inconsistencies and to expedite the process of assembling these sometimes disparate pieces.
Gender
Most jarring of the differences that readers will encounter are likely those associated with gender. Many of the included selections were written when the armed forces were primarily a male domain and so adhere to purely masculine references. I have chosen to leave the original language intact in these documents for the sake of authenticity and to avoid the complications that can arise when trying to make anachronistic adjustments. So readers are asked to “translate” (converting the ubiquitous “he” to “he or she” and “his” to “her or his” as required) and, while doing so, to celebrate the progress that we have made in these matters in more recent times.
Author “Biographies”
Another problem arises when considering biographical information of the various authors whose works make up this special collection. Some of the selections included in this anthology were originally accompanied by biographical information about their authors. Others were not. Those “biographies” that do exist vary a great deal in terms of length and depth, some amounting to a single sentence pertaining to the author’s current duty station, others consisting of several paragraphs that cover the author’s career. Varying degrees of research—some quite time consuming and some yielding no results—are required to find biographical information from other sources. Because of these uneven variables, and because as a general rule we are more interested in what these authors