The Naval Postgraduate School Warfare Innovation Workshop is an innovation engine leveraging our strength – our operationally experienced students and defense-expert faculty – to address complex fleet issues and discover opportunities available through emerging technologies. Primary activities in NWSI Concepts are workshops and field experimentation.

• WARFARE INNOVATION CONTINUUM (WIC) WORKSHOP: This four day workshop addresses a complex military problem space through a near future scenario-based, facilitated human-centered design process. NPS students and faculty are joined by guests from allied nations, DoD commands, warfare centers, academia and industry.
• WARFARE INNOVATION WORKSHOP: This three day workshop addresses a complex military problem space of interest to a key DoD stakeholder. NPS students and faculty may be joined by guests from allied nations, DoD commands, warfare centers, academia and industry.
• EXPLORATION WORKSHOP: This two day workshop supports a specific request and is scheduled as needed. NPS students and faculty may be joined by guests from warfare centers, academia and industry.  
• DESIGN SPRINT: This activity usually runs one to three days, usually supports an NPS course or curriculum, and only includes NPS students and faculty.

Beginning in 2009, these NPS rapid concept generation activities have emerged in several different forms and formats such as the annual Warfare Innovation Continuum (WIC) Workshop. In the annual WIC Workshop small teams of early career engineers from industry, Navy labs, and academia join junior officers from NPS and other commands with diverse perspectives and experience to respond to a design challenge. Teams brief their best three or four concepts to sponsors, industry executives, and senior officers on the final morning of the workshop. These workshops have addressed maritime topics of interest such as countering self-propelled semi-submersibles and other maritime irregular challenges, undersea warfare, hybrid warfare in littoral environments, electromagnetic maneuver warfare, distributed maritime operations, cross-domain operations, logistics, and national resilience.

Nimitz Research Group Workshop 

21-24 March 2022 

DESIGN CHALLENGE: “How might U.S. Pacific Fleet preserve the balance of power and, if necessary, defeat a near peer adversary in the Western Pacific?” 

Quick Look Report available here - full report will be linked once complete.

Small teams of junior officers explored this future problem space and generated concepts of operations and employment to benefit the future Fleet. This warfare innovation workshop explored four key focus areas:

1. Present combat power – maintain a highly capable Fleet/FMF in a high state of readiness
   • How might activities such as exercises, tests, and demonstrations exhibit capability and capacity, actual and/or perceived?
2. Strengthen alliances – deepen trust-based relationships and interoperability with partner nations
   • How might INDOPACOM improve cooperative efforts (bi-lateral and multi-lateral) with critical partner nation militaries in the western Pacific via policies, procedures, and technologies?
3. Improve posture – provide an adversary an unpredictable, complex, and confusing operational view and targeting problem
   • How might commanders array their forces in a way that presents an adversary with a formidable but confusing view of U.S. and Partner capability, capacity, and intent?
4. Integrate information operations – dominate the fight for information across the three dimensions of the information environment (physical, informational, and cognitive)
   • How might emerging technologies, activities, and new models of understanding “human system integration” enhance a combatant commander's ability to shape the Information environment in order to compete with adversaries below the threshold of armed conflict?

Workshop Outcomes

• Workshop materials and plenary recordings

"Hybrid Force 2045" Workshop

20-23 September 2021

DESIGN CHALLENGE: How might emerging technologies, new operational concepts, and alternative fleet designs contribute to a more effective naval force across the spectrum from competition to conflict?  How do the alternative fleet designs enhance the effectiveness and resilience of joint, combined and coalition forces across all domains?

This workshop was held as a Naval Postgraduate School Thesis & Research Week activity to apply emerging technologies to shape the way we fight. Nearly 130 participants served on one of six Concept Generation Teams, offered their services as a Mentor, or participated as an Observer.

Workshop Outcomes

• Quick Look Report            
• Final Report 

Maritime Gray Zone Workshop 

16-19 November 2021

DESIGN CHALLENGE: How might emerging technologies, new operational concepts, and new force capabilities contribute to a more effective force in the geo-political competition phase to deter adversaries, strengthen allied relations, and shape the strategic and operational environment?

Workshop Outcomes

• Final report

Resurrecting War Plan Blue Workshop

21-24 September 2020

DESIGN CHALLENGE: How might emerging technologies; concepts; and joint, combined and coalition forces contribute to enhancing the resiliency of naval forces, logistics, and support facilities in an extended campaign against a peer adversary? How do we best prepare for war in the era of competition and robotics warfare? 

The September 2020 workshop tasked participants to apply emerging technologies to shape the way we fight in a 2035 global conflict.  Over 150 participants from NPS, the Fleet and Force, industry, academia and allied partner nations gathered on the NPS "Virtual Campus" to address this design challenge around national resilience. 

Workshop Outcomes 

• Final Report
• A Strategy for National Resilience – Common Sense for the Common Good: An idea generated in this workshop turned a policy idea into a pilot program proposal
• This idea also resulted in a short article by Ms. Rana Foroohar in the 26 February 2021 issue of the Financial Times.