James Geurts, U.S. Navy assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition, said the service must have a fleet software update capability of within days if it is going to have a competitive edge over territorial enemies, C4ISRNET reported Wednesday.​
Geurts said Tuesday at Modern Day Marine the Navy has been working on software development as part of efforts to address software requirement issues, but added that the process was too slow to work in a modern warfare scenario.
The assistant secretary said the service needs to incorporate a software architecture that can take on rapid upgrades to avoid procuring new systems and installing them, which he said is tedious and costly.
Geurts said the Navy can also further optimize its efficiency by adopting cybersecurity standards that assess the value of having an upgrade strategy versus not having one.