The Department of the Navy is making sure its top-ranking officers have a solid grasp of artificial intelligence as the technology becomes increasingly central to modern warfare operations.
The Naval Postgraduate School is spearheading these educational initiatives, offering both specialized courses and cutting-edge technology to support that mission.
Randy Pugh, who serves as NPS’s vice provost for warfare studies, director of the Office of Warfare Studies, and leader of the AI task force, said that classroom instruction and research are critical components. But NPS’s newly formed partnership with Nvidia is accelerating the learning curve significantly.
“Through our partnership with Nvidia, we now have access to their Deep Learning Institute, which offers commercial certifications and covers a wide range of topics in machine learning, modeling and simulation, and advanced GPU-based hyper-computing. The main goal is to make everyone as knowledgeable and skilled as possible in AI,” Pugh explained in an interview on Ask the CIO. “Nvidia, through the NPS Foundation, has also donated a $15 million AI supercomputer that is currently being installed at the Naval Postgraduate School. It’s one of a kind in the Defense Department — serial number two off Nvidia’s assembly line is coming to NPS, so our students and faculty will be the first to see it and get hands-on experience with it.”
NPS, which inked a new Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Nvidia in December 2024, is also gaining access to a $5 million Omniverse modeling and simulation platform. This tool will help train the “brains” of robots and drones in a virtual environment before the Navy integrates them into physical hardware.
“This Nvidia AI Tech Center connects NPS students and faculty directly to Nvidia’s headquarters and its deep well of subject matter expertise, as well as to Nvidia’s broader ecosystem of roughly 15,000 partners working on AI-related projects. It gives us access to an incredible body of knowledge, real-world use cases, and potential solutions for the department,” Pugh said at the recent West conference hosted by AFCEA and the U.S. Naval Institute. “Nvidia approached us with this gift. CEO Jensen Huang recognized that while they had strong expertise in commercial use cases and the infrastructure to support them, they lacked a deep understanding of military applications and the unique challenges of applying AI in those contexts. We’re going to learn by doing — by building this infrastructure at NPS and running it at full capacity over the next year or two. Along the way, we’re also figuring out what kind of infrastructure others will need to deploy AI at the tactical edge — whether that’s on a ship, a submarine, or an expeditionary advanced base with Marines. These three lines of effort are deeply interconnected.”
Research initiatives like the Nvidia partnership and many others are laying a strong groundwork for educating NPS students. Roughly half of NPS’s research budget directly supports student education.
NPS operates by a straightforward principle: “If you want to educate people at the cutting edge, you have to be at the cutting edge yourself,” said Dr. Michael Hesse, the school’s vice provost for research and innovation.
Hesse, who came to NPS from NASA, said collaborations with industry and Navy organizations such as the warfare centers help reduce the risk of introducing new capabilities into the fleet.
He identified AI, space, and autonomous vehicles as some of NPS’s top research priorities.
“The school has an enormous focus on AI, and rightfully so — we apply it everywhere from knowledge management to operational decision-making to human-machine interaction, ensuring that people maintain decision-making authority in environments where autonomy and AI are becoming increasingly essential,” Hesse said. “Directed energy weapons is another major area of focus here. Autonomous vehicles is another. The Secretary of the Navy has talked about deploying autonomous platforms alongside crewed ones in a complementary way, and that’s something we’re actively working on through programs like CRUSER. Space is another key priority. It matters to the Navy in countless ways — from positioning, navigation, and timing to reconnaissance, detection, and communications, including over-the-horizon radar and similar capabilities.”
These research efforts translate directly into better training opportunities for sailors, Marines, other service members, and civilian personnel.
First Master’s degree cohort just getting started
Pugh highlighted a new one-year pilot program created by Vice Adm. Michael Vernazza, commander of Naval Information Forces, offering a Master of Science degree in artificial intelligence.
According to Pugh, Vernazza saw the value in launching the program, which began this summer with an initial cohort of 27 full-time students who already have programming experience or an undergraduate degree in computer science.
“Adm. Vernazza and his team also understand the value these officers will bring after they graduate. They’re identifying specific billets within the operating force where these graduates can continue educating others about AI — what it is, what it isn’t, and what it can and can’t do. They’ll serve as change agents and thought leaders within their organizations to speed up AI adoption and integration across the Navy,” Pugh said. “This degree is well balanced: the first half covers foundational concepts that remain constant — how machine learning works, including supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning. The second half focuses on electives exploring emerging AI technologies and techniques. Most importantly, students tie everything together by solving a real problem through a thesis or capstone project.”
NPS will monitor the first cohort’s progress and report findings back to Vernazza, which will help determine whether to continue with future cohorts.
Vernazza’s backing of this educational program is a prime example of how NPS identifies its research and innovation priorities.
Hesse explained that NPS often receives a request from a commander and then asks, “What role can we play in addressing that need?”
“Maybe we already have something in our portfolio, or a research project that directly addresses it, or something we can redirect to meet their needs. If there’s a gap, we can help find someone to fill it,” he said. “Our students bring operational knowledge that feeds into our research projects. They leave with a dual-track understanding that transitions directly into operations. In a typical research track, you conduct research and work to raise the technology readiness level (TRL). But when you then partner with a company or customer on a higher-TRL effort to bring it into real-world use, we can draw on the insights our students carry back to their commands. That’s something only we can offer.”
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