2018 Joint Undersea Warfare Technology Spring Conference

The next annual Joint Undersea Warfare Technology Spring Conference will be held March 12-14, 2018 at the Admiral Kidd Conference Center at Naval Base Pt. Loma.

This is a classified SECRET NOFORN, not for attribution, venue with the opportunity for attendees to hear from senior Navy leadership about the Navy’s operational and programmatic experience with USW.  Presentations at that level are encouraged.

The NDIA USW Conferences are one of the few opportunities industry has to learn about what is working and what is not working in USW, what the Navy needs help with and how and when industry may contribute to future initiatives.

Areas of focus include, but not limited to:

• Identifying issues in the USW arena that need to be solved (capability gaps) to improve future robustness of US capability, with accompanying operational vignettes help provide clarity.
• Current and future opportunities for industry partners to make a difference in responding to new challenges and solicitations.
• Describing the fiscal situation and where there will and won’t be money for good ideas and implementations.

The payback for the Navy is a better alignment of intellectual and industrial capital with Navy needs and initiatives.  The principal vehicle for focusing such capital is through company IR&D efforts, which are most often aligned with the tough nuts that are identified in such forums as the Spring Conference or contained in solicitations.  This is true whether those challenges are technological, integration, production, or just life cycle cost reduction. 

The conference theme, "The USW Force We Need:  Larger, More Distributed, and More Capable“ was adapted from the CNO’s recent White Paper (The Future Navy, May 17, 2017), specifically from the following quote:  “We must shake off any vestiges of comfort or complacency that our previous advantages may have afforded us, and move out to build a larger, more distributed, and more capable battle fleet that can execute our mission.”

This conference is classified Secret U.S. Only. There are no exhibits at this event.