DONRCO and NSWC Crane Advance Passive Decoy Countermeasure Innovation Through Disruptor Days

DONRCO and NSWC Crane Advance Passive Decoy Countermeasure Innovation Through Disruptor Days

By Shaylee R. Fowler (ctr), NSWC Crane Corporate Communications

Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division (NSWC Crane), in partnership with the Department of the Navy Rapid Capabilities Office (DONRCO), recently hosted the "Passive Decoy Countermeasures Disruptor Days" event, also known as "Disruptor Days," at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, from Sept. 21-23, 2026.

The event brought industry partners together with Navy leadership, acquisition professionals, engineers, and other subject matter experts, fostering direct engagement centered on emerging passive decoy and enabling technologies. Disruptor Days moved beyond a traditional industry-day model by allowing companies to demonstrate their technologies, engage one-on-one with government experts, and receive direct feedback on the potential relevance of their solutions.

Contrasting conventional trade shows and booths that rely on static briefings and spec sheets, "Disruptor Days give us a front-row look at what these technologies can do," said Vice Adm. Seiko Okano, Performing the Duties of Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition. Participating teams evaluated vendor capabilities through one-on-one technical exchanges, physical prototype demonstrations, and limited radar profile testing.

The hands-on format provided the government with a better understanding of current capabilities across the industrial base. It also created a venue for companies - including component manufacturers, nontraditional vendors, small businesses, and first-time federal contractors, to interact with each other and explore potential partnerships. NSWC Crane provided the overarching event framework, radar and countermeasure expertise, and test instrumentation, adding an aspect of empirical performance data that is not often associated with a vendor demonstration.

"Disruptor Days created the conditions for meaningful technical exchange," said Adam Parsley, director of the NSWC Crane Rapid Capabilities Cell, an office established at Crane in 2026 to support naval and rapid acquisition. "When technology providers demonstrate their capabilities directly to the technical audience and decision-makers closest to the problem, we gain a better understanding of what is in the realm of the possible."

The event drew government representatives and technical experts from across the naval enterprise and defense innovation community, including the Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Mission Systems; Naval Warfare Centers; Navy Information Forces; the Defense Innovation Unit; Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State; Task Force RAPTR; and the Indiana National Guard.

This Disruptor Day event reinforced the value of bringing together government and industry in a focused, demonstration-driven environment. Many participants adapted, refined, and prepared concepts and prototypes on short timelines to take part in this event, underscoring the responsiveness and innovative capacity available across the defense industrial base. A similar event was held the same week at Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division at Patuxent River, MD, focused on optical sensing of unmanned ariel systems.

Jared Kaib, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for DONRCO, attended both events at Camp Atterbury and Patuxent River. Kaib provided insight, saying, "These initial Disruptor Day events gave industry an opportunity to tackle some of the Department's toughest operational needs on an accelerated timeline. Going from announcement to demonstration in just two months is a significant achievement by Government standards. With a clear demand signal from the DONRCO and the test ranges, instrumentation, and technical rigor of our warfare laboratories, industry partners-large and small-can quickly evaluate and refine their designs. That helps reduce risk and move the most promising capabilities into prototyping and fielding faster for the Fleet and Fleet Marine Force. We look forward to building on this model as a more agile way to engage industry and accelerate rapid prototyping."

For NSWC Crane and the Navy enterprise, the Disruptor Day model establishes a repeatable, agile model for warfare centers seeking to support the acceleration of technology development and assessment timelines. The rough model is to define an acute fleet problem, convene cross-functional stakeholders in an instrumented field environment or range, lower barriers for nontraditional commercial industry, and execute empirical prototype evaluation. Building on this framework, the next Disruptor Day event focused on Maritime Domain Awareness will be hosted by NIWC Pacific in San Diego, CA, starting the week of Nov. 30, 2026, for a two-week duration running through Dec. 10, 2026.

Disruptor Days support the DONRCO's mission to identify, assess, and accelerate capabilities with potential operational value for Sailors and Marines. Participation in the event does not constitute a procurement decision, guarantee an award, or imply a contractual commitment.