Navy Awards $23.1 Million Contract for Shipboard Power Cybersecurity
The U.S. Navy has awarded Integer Technologies a $23.13 million contract to investigate how zero-trust cybersecurity can protect shipboard power systems against cyber threats while preserving the fast response times required for naval operations.
The Office of Naval Research (ONR), based in Arlington, Virginia, awarded the cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the Threat Resilient Integrated Defense for Enhanced Naval Technologies (TRIDENT) program. Integer Technologies, based in Columbia, South Carolina, will work with Florida State University and the university’s Center for Advanced Power Systems on the research effort.
The work is scheduled to run through October 2030. The contract combines a 36-month base period with a 36-month option period that begins 12 months after execution and runs concurrently with the base period.
The award addresses a specific challenge for naval cybersecurity: protecting interconnected electrical power infrastructure without disrupting systems that must remain responsive under demanding operating conditions.
Why naval power systems need a different approach to cybersecurity
Modern naval vessels depend on interconnected electrical and control systems to distribute power, monitor equipment and support shipboard operations. A cyber intrusion affecting these systems could threaten more than conventional information technology. Depending on the affected equipment and the nature of the intrusion, it could also interfere with the operation or monitoring of physical infrastructure.
Traditional cybersecurity measures often focus on protecting network boundaries, controlling user access and detecting suspicious activity. Zero-trust architecture (ZTA) extends that approach by requiring access to be verified rather than automatically trusted because a user or device is already inside a network.
For shipboard power systems, however, applying zero trust involves additional engineering constraints. Some control processes require low latency, meaning security checks and responses cannot introduce delays that interfere with time-sensitive operations. Naval platforms must also integrate legacy equipment with newer digital systems, which may differ in their communications capabilities, computing resources and support for modern security controls.
The Navy’s TRIDENT research effort is intended to address these constraints rather than simply apply an enterprise information technology security model to a ship’s electrical infrastructure.
What the TRIDENT program is designed to investigate
According to the contract announcement, the research will examine threat-informed zero-trust frameworks tailored to the cyber-physical security requirements of shipboard power systems.
The proposed approach is intended to let naval platforms monitor their cyber-physical condition, adjust their cybersecurity posture dynamically and continue operating during adversarial attacks while maintaining system performance.
Three elements are central to that objective.
- Continuous awareness: Monitoring the cyber and physical state of power systems can help identify changes that indicate a potential attack or abnormal operating condition.
- Adaptive security: Dynamically adjusting security controls could allow a system to respond to changing threats instead of relying exclusively on fixed network protections.
- Operational continuity: Maintaining power-system performance during a cyber incident is important because aggressive security responses can themselves disrupt legitimate control functions if they are poorly designed.
These are intended capabilities, not demonstrated results from the newly awarded contract. The announcement does not identify a completed prototype, a validated operational system or a deployment schedule for a specific Navy vessel.
The available contract information also does not specify which ship classes, electrical architectures or individual control systems will be used as test cases.
Contract funding and research timeline
The Navy has obligated $10.13 million in fiscal 2026 research, development, test and evaluation funding to cover the base period. The remaining contract value is not described as immediately obligated in the award announcement.
The contract was competitively procured under the Office of Naval Research’s long-range broad agency announcement, N0001425SB001, which solicits proposals for Navy and Marine Corps science and technology research. Because proposals are accepted throughout the year under this announcement, the number of proposals received for the wider solicitation was not available in the award notice.
The contracting activity is the Office of Naval Research, and the award carries contract number N0001427C1303.
The challenge is protecting power without disrupting it
The technical difficulty lies in balancing cyber protection with the operational demands of physical control systems. A conventional business network can often tolerate an interruption while administrators isolate a suspicious device or apply additional checks. A shipboard power control system may have much less room for delays or interruptions.
A threat-informed architecture could help systems distinguish between normal operating conditions and suspicious activity, then apply security measures suited to the risk. However, the effectiveness of that approach will depend on how accurately the system identifies threats, how quickly it responds and whether protective actions can be taken without affecting essential power-management functions.
Legacy equipment adds another challenge. Replacing older components across a naval vessel can be expensive and technically difficult, so security frameworks may need to accommodate equipment that cannot support the latest authentication, monitoring or software protections directly.
The research partnership with Florida State University and its Center for Advanced Power Systems brings university expertise into a program focused on these engineering and security questions. The contract announcement does not detail the division of responsibilities among the three organizations.
For the Navy, the immediate objective is research into a security framework suited to the demands of shipboard electrical infrastructure. Whether the work ultimately leads to operational deployment will depend on the results of development, testing and validation.
The award does not establish that the Navy has adopted a new shipboard cybersecurity system or that existing power systems have been compromised. It funds research into maintaining the integrity and availability of critical naval infrastructure in the face of cyber threats.
