The US Navy has selected Defense Unicorns to advance to the next evaluation phase of a Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic rapid capabilities program.
Testing will now move from laboratory trials to operational evaluations aboard navy ships and at shore-based facilities.
Engineers will assess whether the company’s software platform can be deployed, managed, and maintained in real naval environments, including air-gapped and disconnected networks.
The at-sea and shore-based evaluations will measure the platform’s performance, reliability, and scalability.
Findings could help inform future procurement decisions and wider deployment across the fleet.
“Modernizing how the Navy delivers software to ships at sea requires rigorous operational validation,” said Commander Eric Shuey, Assistant Program Manager for Tactical Networks Technologies within PMW 160, the US Navy’s Tactical Networks program office.
“This evaluation phase is designed to produce the operational data needed to support sound, long-term fleet decisions.”
Unified Defense Stack
Selection for the next phase follows the completion of a prototype effort under the navy’s Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services Next Generation program.
During the trials, Defense Unicorns demonstrated its Unified Defense Stack (UDS) by rapidly configuring hardware and deploying software in shipboard environments.
According to the company, UDS is designed for air-gapped networks that operate without direct internet connectivity.
The platform consists of two components: UDS Enterprise, which provides a standardized environment for deploying and managing software, and UDS Fleet, which enables infrastructure and software management across multiple ships and shore sites from a common framework.
