Carderock, Dahlgren Team Analyze How to Power and Sustain Future Navy Capabilities

Carderock, Dahlgren Team Analyze How to Power and Sustain Future Navy Capabilities

By By Alisha Tyer, NSWC Carderock Division Public Affairs

Ensuring that the Navy's future capabilities, weapons systems, and ships can accomplish their mission extends beyond whether they perform as designed. Engineers must also determine how the Navy fuels, powers and logistically sustains those systems throughout operations.

That is the focus of a joint team from Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division and Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, whose work in Energy Supportability Analysis recently earned the 2026 Warfare Center Innovation Award.

The partnership combines Dahlgren's weapon systems expertise with Carderock's strengths in platform integration and military effectiveness. This collaboration allows the team to evaluate not only how individual capabilities consume energy, but how those demands affect operations across the broader fleet.

According to Andrew Pinaire, team lead for Carderock's Military Effectiveness Group, the group's work helps acquisition programs evaluate whether future systems can meet operational requirements and remain fully mission-capable before the Navy fields them.

"We do these analyses to make sure that the new Navy platforms and weapon systems have the energy or fuel or electricity to successfully complete their desired missions," Pinaire said. "We also make sure the new systems that we buy can actually be logistically supported so that we can use them."

Rather than identifying sustainment challenges after a capability reaches the fleet, the team conducts analyses early in the acquisition process, when engineers can still make more changes more efficiently and at a lower cost. Their assessments help Navy decision-makers better understand how future platforms may perform in realistic operational environments before leadership finalizes requirements and systems enter production.

To conduct those assessments, the team uses campaign-level modeling and logistics planning tools to evaluate how future ships, weapon systems would operate under a variety of operational scenarios. Their analyses consider factors such as energy consumption rates, mission duration, and supply constraints and fleet-wide replenishment, providing acquisition leaders with information that helps shape future programs.

According to Pinaire, the analyses go beyond evaluating an individual platform. They also examine how introducing a new capability could affect the Navy's overall logistics network, including the availability of replenishment assets needed to sustain operations during future conflicts.

Although the term "energy" may suggest a focus on efficiency or fuel savings, Pinaire said the team's mission centers on operational effectiveness.

"We're not trying to save fuel costs," he said. "The idea is making sure the systems we give to our warfighters are effective and not limited by fuel or other energy."

For Sailors, that means one less concern during operations.

"The warfighter doesn't have to be concerned with, 'Do I have enough fuel? Do I have enough energy?'" Pinaire said. "They can just focus on the mission at hand."

Kyle Risher, an operations research analyst on the team, said the work helps reduce risk for operators by evaluating how future capabilities will perform under the demanding conditions they may encounter during combat operations.

"If we're not doing this work, we're potentially exposing the warfighter to more risk," Risher said. "They may not have enough fuel. They may not complete their mission. They may not be where they need to be, or they may be more exposed to the threat because they have to return for fuel or other support."

The effort represents an ongoing collaboration between Carderock and Dahlgren engineers, who work together to develop and refine Energy Supportability Analysis methods for Navy acquisition programs. Rather than operating as separate organizations, the teams routinely collaborate on analyses, share methodologies and leverage each command's technical expertise to support the Department of the Navy's acquisition community.

"It's kind of Carderock and Dahlgren's energy team," Pinaire said. "We're interacting and collaborating with each other on a weekly basis."

According to Pinaire, the capability has continued to mature over the past several years as demand for Energy Supportability Analysis has grown across the acquisition enterprise. Interest in the team's work has also expanded beyond the Department of the Navy, with other military services seeking to better understand the team's methodology and approach to evaluating sustainment early in the acquisition process.

For Pinaire, the growing interest reinforces the importance of considering sustainment as an integral part of capability development rather than an afterthought.

"We're providing Navy leadership with analysis and recommendations so they can make better-informed decisions," Pinaire said. "Our job is to help give them the information they need to make the best decision they can."

That combination of technical innovation, cross-command collaboration and mission-focused analysis earned the joint Carderock-Dahlgren team the 2026 Warfare Center Innovation Award, recognizing its contributions to helping ensure future Navy capabilities can be effectively sustained in contested environments.

As the Navy continues developing increasingly advanced platforms and technologies, the team expects Energy Supportability Analysis to remain an important part of the acquisition process, helping ensure future capabilities are ready to support the fleet from day one. Ultimately, the team's work aims to give warfighters one less thing to worry about before they ever enter the fight.