Warfare Innovation Workshops

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.

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.

NWSI Concept Branch Events: event pages for recent and upcoming workshops are hosted on the NPS Events Portal. Registration is accessible for all eligible pariticipants on the left navigation bar for each available event, and the Resource tab will store the workshop materials and final report for participant reference. The Program tab will display a schedule to give a sense of the event, and the Guide for Guests will share logistics details if the event is available to non-NPS participants.

Primary Lines of Effort

1) Workshops 

Facilitated workshops using tools of warfighter-centered design (WCD) on the NPS campus in Monterey or at other locations, workshops include Exploration Workshops, Warfare Innovation Workshops, and the annual Warfare Innovation Continuum (WIC) Workshop.

2) NWSI Facilitator Corps

To grow and nurture a community of warfighter-centered design (WCD) facilitators the primary activities include "garage" trainings, immersion opportunities, and sync meetings to socialize upcoming facilitation opportunities.

3) Warfighter Driven Challenges

Growing and maintining a robust network of operators and engineers surfaces capability gaps from the deckplates that meet an immediate and urgent operational need, and expose operators to the vast Warfare Center resources available to support them as they seek to solve complex military challenges.

4) NPS Writers Room

Communicating a future complex military challenge through narrative fiction requires tools of world-building gained through interaction with entertainment professionals, and The Ford Fellows work closely with the DoD Writers Room to generate required scenarios for upcoming workshops.

Concept Generation

With a curated overview of a complex military problem space, facilitators guide the teams through a rapid concept generation process. From one overarching design challenge, each team frames their own way into a complex military problem space, generate concepts, and share their best ideas for further development. Selected concepts often seed NPS student theses, NPS faculty research, and partnerships with others in the warfare centers, academia and industry. Many concepts are further developed through prototyping and testing in field experimentation.  

Tools of Warfighter-Centered Design (WCD)

Workshops use tools of design to generate concepts rapidly.  This video describes our process.

NWSI Facilitator Corps

In response to the ever increasing demand signal for guided exploration of complex military challenges, the NWSI Concepts Branch needs to grow our "bench" of trained facilitators. If you have interest in adding to your warfighter-centered design toolkit.  
Email wiw@nps.edu to join the Corps!
  • FACILITATOR GARAGE: the "Facilitator Garage" is an informal opportunity to brush up our skills and share tips and tools among facilitators. We plan to open the "Garage" two times a year going forward to "tinker" and sharpen our tools.
  • FACILITATOR IMMERSION: an in-service opportunity for facilitators to become participants again an approach a complex military design challenge and prototype the workshop design of another member of the community.
  • FACILITATOR SYNC: a regular drumbeat to touch base with others in this growing community who guide teams safely through the unknown as they address complex military challenges, and learn about upcoming facilitation opportunities and innovation seminars.
  • THE LAUNCH: NWSI offered our first facilitator training in February 2023 with support from the NavalX Center for Adaptive Warfighting (CAW). Click here for more information - view recorded sessions and access materials!

Upcoming Workshops

WIC Workshop 

22-25 September 2025 

We are in the final stages of selecting a topic. Registration will open by mid-July. Check back!

Like past years, our next Warfare Innovation Continuum (WIC) Workshop will address a complex military challenge that is "on the front lines" of Naval leadership agendas.

Recent Workshops

WIC Workshop

23-26 September 2024

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Sea control and sea denial in the Future Fleet is a topic of much discussion, and our next NPS Warfare Innovation Continuum (WIC) will explore related issues and intricacies.The foundational wartime Navy mission is to establish control of maritime environments where necessary to meet integrated naval and joint campaign objectives. Specific sea control missions range from protection of seaborne logistics to maritime defense of expeditionary basing. At the most basic level, this is the Navy’s primary contribution as a joint force enabler.

WIC Workshop

18-21 September 2023

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DESIGN CHALLENGE: How might the confluence of new technologies provide opportunities for new operational concepts in executing integrated naval campaigning across the full Spectrum of Conflict?

Future Hybrid Force

19-22 September 2022


DESIGN CHALLENGE: "How might the convergence of emerging technologies offer new operational concepts and force designs to create
a more effective and resilient naval, joint, and coalition force across the spectrum of conflict and in all domains?"

Teams engaged in the rapid concept generation process using tools of human-centered design, and these seeds of ideas will inform class projects, thesis work, and research across the NPS campus throughout FY23.

Workshop Outcomes

Read the WIC Executive Summary to learn about all the research and education activities produced over FY22-23.

Nimitz Research Group Warfare Innovation Workshop

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

WIC Workshop 2021 "Hybrid Force 2045"

"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

Archives

See the Warfare Innovation Workshop Report Archive currently available through the CRUSER website for access to available reports.