NAVY: Broadening Information Systems Update That Had Saved $150 Million By 2022

In announcing an expansion of the Navy’s ‘Operation Cattle Drive’, the four year old program to consolidate information and data systems across the Navy and Marine Corps has already yielded a savings to the services of more than $150 million according to reporting by DefenseScoop.com.

Started in 2000 and continued on for the last four years, Operation Cattle Drive is upgrading often decades old information systems into consolidated data management and analysis systems and during that upgrade, the new technology has yielded substantial savings which by 2022 had been reported as having saved $150 million.

The Navy has used computers since the battleship era, first to calculate ‘time on target’ trajectory in which the computers of that era would calculate the path, position, and capability of numerous weapons in the naval arsenal to have multiple shells arrive on a single target all at once. This technique is considered one of the most important break throughs in World War II.

After 60 years of regular expansion in information systems, the Navy is in the midst of the most through reform of its data and digital capability in nearly a generation often utilizing off the shelf technology like Microsoft Teams to report results and manage ongoing efforts.

Operation Cattle Drive if fully implemented offers breakthrough capabilities for the US Navy, the military as a whole, and the millions of military members, vendors, and others who participate in the project. The Association of Western Employers will continue to report on stories like this one.