CRANE, Ind. –
Dr. Nathaniel Husted, Chief Scientist for Cyber and Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) Technologies at NSWC Crane, is not only training and equipping the workforce but also leveraging his expertise to advance crucial technology for the warfighter.
Dr. Husted holds a B.S. from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in Informatics from Indiana University, where his research focused on the intersection of Computer Security and Complex Systems, with contributions in mobile device wireless tracking networks, GPU-accelerated applied cryptography, and macroeconomics of information security.
After graduating with his Ph. D. and working in private industry, Dr. Husted was recruited to work in the federal government by a fellow Ph.D. candidate. He started at NSWC Crane in EW in 2015 and has spent the last five years leading efforts in Cyber and EW technology as a Chief Scientist. He also serves as the Office of Naval Research’s Expeditionary Cyber Portfolio Strategic Technical Advisor and is the Primary Investigator for CraneGPT, a project developing tools around large language models to explore how they can automate bureaucracy.
He said his interest in national security stemmed from his experiences in college.
“During parts of undergrad and early grad school, I started gravitating towards the national defense space because there were interesting problems going on that weren’t necessarily done elsewhere,” said Dr. Husted.
The relationship between cyber and EW is important to best support the end user and warfighter.
“Cyberspace defines the digital world, the digital space,” said Dr. Husted. “And in modern times, it has now become a warfighting domain. The hard part is cyberspace is invisible so we can’t visualize the domain very easily—but we have to operate in it. We have to manipulate it, and the electromagnetic spectrum is a key way we do that. Electromagnetic warfare is all about how to optimally use that spectrum to have an effect on the adversary, defend against the adversary, or gain information on the adversary.”
One of Dr. Husted’s roles includes bridging the gap between both the cyber and electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO) communities.
“These communities historically have separate training and separate career paths. One of the unique areas I get to be in is trying to speak both languages and pull both communities together,” he said. “There’s a number of us across the services and it is always nice when we get together and trade notes on how we are effectively engaging both communities and how we can continue to grow together.”
As Chief Scientist, he also focuses on growing NSWC Crane’s workforce in this technology area. He said it is important to develop scrupulous technical skills as well as mentality.
“You need to be willing to lean forward, and get creative, to develop products and capabilities before someone asks of you,” he said. “Cyber/EW is such a forward-thinking topic. You need to be willing to ‘put hands on keyboard.’ It requires technical skill sets that you may not have expertise in both areas of EW and cyberspace operations in the beginning, so you need to have a strong ability to learn. Usually, a computer scientist for example who focuses on computer security will understand cyberspace operations, but they’ll never be introduced to electromagnetic warfare, whereas an electrical engineer who works in radio frequency technologies will probably get some introduction to EW, but wouldn’t have background in cyberspace operations.”
In one of his latest efforts, Ubiquitous Edge connects Marines at the tactical edge through manipulating the electromagnetic spectrum.
“One significant strength of the modern surface Navy is we have battle groups, like surface or carrier ships, that are always in touch with each other and work together to defend the group,” he said. “[This connectivity] is much harder in the expeditionary space where we may not have that strong connectivity between units. Ubiquitous Edge is a way in which we can connect together our Marines at the tactical edge in a robust, reliable, and flexible manner using the electromagnetic spectrum and radio frequency (RF) space.”
Ubiquitous Edge supports legacy and modern forms of communication while leveraging lean practices for swift fleet integration.
“Ubiquitous Edge enables us to create that communications web with open standards hardware,” he said, “which allows for acquisitions flexibility and sustainment flexibility and government open-source software for collaborative development practices to really allow rapid innovation and increased software lethality for our Marines.”
Dr. Husted’s experience of leveraging open-source tools has informed his approach to innovation within the Navy.
“My history with the open-source community has very heavily influenced what I view to be the correct ways to approach acquisitions in a manner that are able to rapidly develop capability while also not rapidly increasing costs. Leveraging open-source methods and collaboration across the enterprise helps us increase speed and iteration cycles.”
For newer employees, tackling quickly evolving problems in the defense sector can mean a steep learning curve. Dr. Husted said putting yourself in the right mindset can set yourself up for success.
“Get yourself set up so that every bit of free time you have you can create new digital artifacts. Send ideas for the sailors and marines that we support; that’s a great opportunity to not only flex and improve your personal engineering talent, but it gives you the opportunity to develop a tool or a product that could eventually be used to save lives in a future engagement. Try and find the Chief of Naval Operations or Marine Corps Command reading list—get yourself in the mindset of those who do serve in the service you support because it is important to create whatever tool or product you think they will use that you can imagine yourself in their position using that tool—and potentially using that in a very dangerous, high intensity scenario.”
Future warfighters will face complex challenges, including the need to rapidly evolve to threats as they develop. Dr. Husted said the Navy workforce will have to adapt.
“If we look towards the future of potential conflict, one of the biggest things that we are going to need is wartime readiness, responsiveness to the fleet, and the ability to rapidly iterate on our non-kinetic techniques and to do that at a speed at which we have never done before,” he said. “And to make that happen is going to require continued growth. It’s going to require continued growth in our ability to perform technical development on systems that exist within that environment and to rapidly test those techniques on the systems that are representative in the field or potentially rapidly deploy capabilities that answer a critical need.”
He said leveraging AI can be fruitful to meet urgent needs if it is tailored for specific challenges.
“The true capabilities and innovations are going to come from very tailored usages of these technologies. Tailor-made AI tools, such as one we demonstrated with CraneGPT, can reduce the amount of time it would take to deploy the guidelines on an acquisition system. That has ended up feeding back into my work with the Office of Naval Research and we are looking at small language models to support cyberspace activities. Leveraging local and smaller resources where we can versus much larger and inefficient data center resources can be help the warfighter.”
Though the work is demanding, Dr. Husted is motivated to find solutions to meet the needs of the fleet.
“I like interesting problems—and there is no shortage of interesting problems. I also strongly believe that our job here as government civilians is saving lives, specifically the lives of the men and women in uniform who use the systems that we make—and being able to make sure that we do our best, so they come back home to their families,” he said. “The ability for our engineers and scientists who are highly motivated to be able to do the quality of work that they want to without friction [is important]—I really personalize the task of trying to remove those barriers for our talented folks to be able to work at a fast speed, because they too believe in that fact that what we do saves lives.”
About NSWC Crane | NSWC Crane is a naval laboratory and a field activity of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) with mission areas in Strategic Missions, Electromagnetic Warfare, and Expeditionary Warfare. The warfare center is responsible for multi-domain, multi-spectral, full life cycle support of technologies and systems enhancing capability to today's Warfighter.