Page 34: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2011)

FEATURE US NAVY OFFICE OF NAVAL RESEARCH 34 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News

Can you share with us your view of the importance of partnerships between the

Navy, industry and academia?

Carr: Our relationships and partnerships within industry and academia are critical.

Just to put them in context, we have ap- proximately 1,000 touchpoints in indus- try, approximately 800 of which represent small business. Those are indi- vidual projects led by individual investi- gators. We have approximately 3,000 principle investors in academia; there are more projects, but they tend to be smaller.

Under those 3,000 principle investigators are another 3,000 or so Ph.D. students who benefit from or support these efforts, which helps with our science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) support and outreach. Now, “6.1” is our basic research, and the 6.1 funding is di- vided: approximately two-thirds go to ac- ademia and one-third to industry. By the time we get to “6.3,” developmental re- search, that ratio flips to approximately one-third to academia and the in-house labs and two-thirds to industry. There- fore, how we communicate our require- ments and help industry prioritize their funding is very important.

We can never say with perfect certainty where we’re going or what the next big thing is going to be, but we do have di- rections and areas that we’re interested in. We’re in the business of taking those areas of interest and trying to mature them to where they become systems that transition to warfighters. However, be- cause of the nature of science and tech- nology, not everything transitions. That’s an important point to remember when you consider that we can’t just say to in- dustry, ‘Okay, do the following 10 things and I promise there will be a contract.’

We try to figure out which technologies are going to pay off, and it’s a continual two-way conversation. We communicate through our website and conferences, in- cluding our biannual Science and Tech- nology partnership conference, which we held in November 2010 with 1,200 atten- dees, as well as the annual Office of the

Secretary of Defense DOD-level confer- ence and National Defense Industrial As- sociation and American Society of Naval

Engineers conferences. We participate in these events as part of our active, ongoing dialog with industry.

What about partnerships with ONR,

Navy labs and oceanographic research in- stitutes?

Carr: The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and ONR have always had a very close relationship with the oceanographic research institutes and the ocean commu- nity. The National Science Foundation was created in 1950, four years after

ONR. For a few years after ONR’s cre- ation, we performed a very key role in ocean sciences. Over time that has evolved so the National Science Founda- tion has a much larger budget than ours, but we still support ocean sciences. We have the Deep Submergence Vehicle

Alvin that is operated by Woods Hole.

We partner with the oceanographic com- munity for a variety of projects. We are increasingly interested in the arctic, where we do some work with the Uni- versity of Washington and other schools.

We essentially are the type commander for the University-National Oceano- graphic Laboratory System (UNOLS) fleet of Navy-built, commercially oper- ated oceanographic research ships that are operated by universities. We have two new ones that are going to be built, con- tracted in fiscal year 2011-2012, to be op- erated by Scripps Institute of

Oceanography and Woods Hole. There’s also the NRL branch co-located with the

Navy’s Meteorological and Oceano- graphic community at the Stennis Space

Center in Miss., and in Monterey, Calif.

So, we have a very long, close associa- tion with the ocean and weather commu- nities.

You mentioned risk earlier. Can you com- ment on efforts that do not have apparent tangible success?

Carr: That’s a key point to what we do.

We try and balance risk and payoff, and sometimes the highest payoff comes with the highest risk. Our approach is to man- age that risk, which sometimes means that technologies will fail. We have to be able to embrace that and learn from it and move on.

When you say “learn from it,” how would you characterize learning from failure?

Carr: Some of the basic research that we do is at a material science level. You may be developing a weapon or a gun barrel that fails when subjected to extreme loads. Well, you’ve learned something that you can use about the material’s lim- its. Sometimes failing helps you find the edge.

Recently you’ve talked about some inno- vative and flexible hull designs. Where is this effort headed?

Carr: This is the concept that littoral combat ship (LCS) is beginning. LCS is an important step down the road to truly open, modular, flexible ships, where we can change combat systems or combat capability rapidly and affordably. The ex- treme example that I use is an aircraft carrier. The strike combat system on an aircraft carrier is the ultimate open sys- tem. When you want to change that com- bat system, you launch the old one off the front end, you land a new one on the back end, and you’ve just changed that ship’s combat capability. The interface is the flight deck, so if you can modernize ships and keep up with that ever-changing pace of technology without going into an over- haul and ripping everything out and start- ing over again, you’ve made modernization affordable. On the other end of the spectrum, the baseline 1 Aegis cruisers were magnificent warships, but they were built with a launcher that couldn’t be upgraded and couldn’t launch

Tomahawk missiles and other kinds of ordnance. Those first five baseline 1

Aegis cruisers were eventually decom- missioned because they couldn’t be af- fordably upgraded. Starting with baseline 2, we brought in the vertical lunch sys- tem (VLS), and it was that open box that allowed us to affordably introduce differ-

Rear Admiral Nevin Carr, Chief of Naval Research, is

At the Helm of U.S. Naval Science & Technology

Through partnerships, Navy seeks “leap ahead” technology breakthroughs. An interview with Rear Admiral

Nevin Carr, Chief of Naval Research, Office of Naval Research. — by Edward Lundquist