Office of Naval Research

Integer Technologies Wins $10.2 Million Navy Cyber-Physical Systems Contract

The U.S. Navy has awarded Integer Technologies LLC a $10.22 million contract modification to advance cyber-physical systems in Navy infrastructure, expanding research into technologies designed to protect maritime platforms from cyber threats that can affect physical operations. The Office of Naval Research, or ONR, awarded the modification under contract N0001426C1129 and exercised Option One.

The action raises the contract’s cumulative value to $10.47 million. Work will be performed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is scheduled to continue through March 2030, with $10.22 million in fiscal 2026 Navy research, development, test and evaluation funding obligated at award.

The research is being conducted through a partnership involving Integer Technologies and Louisiana State University. The effort is intended to develop a cyber-physical resilience framework for Navy maritime platforms and infrastructure.

What The Navy Is Funding

According to the contract announcement, the program will follow a phased approach beginning with an assessment of emerging cyber-physical vulnerabilities and progressing toward deployment of defensive technologies across naval vessels and shore facilities. The work includes simulation models, real-time dashboards and techniques intended to harden systems operating at the edge.

The distinction between conventional cybersecurity and cyber-physical security is important.

A traditional cyberattack may compromise data, credentials or network availability. A cyber-physical attack can potentially extend beyond the digital environment by affecting the operation of machinery, sensors, controllers or other equipment connected to a network.

That makes cyber-physical resilience particularly relevant to naval platforms, where propulsion, power distribution, environmental controls, navigation, communications and other functions increasingly depend on interconnected computing and embedded control systems.

ONR already identifies safe and resilient cyber-physical systems as a research priority. Its Applied Cyber Resiliency program specifically focuses on making naval data and software systems more resistant to adversarial cyber interference while addressing the challenges created by complex, highly connected systems and legacy equipment.

Why Cyber-Physical Resilience Matters To Naval Operations

Modern warships are not simply collections of independent mechanical systems. They are increasingly integrated platforms in which software, networks, sensors, processors and physical machinery interact continuously.

That integration provides operational advantages, but it also creates dependencies.

A vulnerability in an embedded component may have consequences beyond the component itself if it is connected to other systems. Similarly, a disruption to communications or computing infrastructure can complicate the ability of operators to monitor equipment, understand system status or maintain mission functions.

ONR’s Cyber Security and Complex Software Systems program recognizes this problem and specifically identifies the integrity of cyber-physical systems as a research area. The program covers systems in which computational and physical devices are tightly coordinated, including embedded real-time systems.

For the Navy, the challenge is especially significant because ships and shore facilities contain heterogeneous systems with different generations of hardware and software.

Some systems also have long service lives. ONR notes that naval environments can include legacy systems for which source code may not be available, increasing the difficulty of applying conventional cybersecurity methods across an entire platform.

Simulation Could Help Identify Vulnerabilities Before Deployment

One of the more significant elements of the Integer Technologies effort is the use of advanced simulation.

Simulation can allow researchers to examine how cyber disruptions could propagate through interconnected systems without having to expose operational equipment to live attacks during early testing.

For cyber-physical systems, that distinction matters because cybersecurity testing has to account for both digital behavior and physical consequences.

A useful model can represent relationships between software, communications, controllers, sensors and physical equipment. Researchers can then examine how changes in one part of the architecture affect the wider system.

ONR has separately identified advanced modeling of cyber interaction as a research challenge within its cyber programs. The agency also supports work involving digital twins and simulation for complex, interdependent naval systems.

This suggests that the Integer effort fits within a broader Navy research direction toward using models and system-level analysis to improve resilience rather than relying exclusively on conventional perimeter defenses.

Real-Time Dashboards Could Improve Mission Awareness

The planned use of real-time dashboards addresses another challenge: turning large quantities of system data into information that operators can use.

A cyber-physical environment can produce data from network activity, equipment health, sensors, controllers and other components. Simply collecting that information does not guarantee that an operator can recognize a developing problem quickly enough.

A dashboard designed around mission and system health could provide a consolidated view of abnormal behavior and emerging risks.

This is consistent with the Navy’s broader emphasis on decision support and operational resilience. The Department of the Navy’s information technology leadership has increasingly described resilience as extending across data environments, infrastructure, enterprise services and cybersecurity operations rather than being confined to individual networks.

The technical challenge will be separating meaningful indicators from normal operational variation. Naval systems operate under changing loads, environmental conditions and mission requirements, so defensive tools must account for legitimate changes in system behavior.

Edge Hardening Targets Systems Where Data Is Generated

The contract also identifies edge-hardening techniques as part of the research.

Edge systems are particularly important in naval environments because computing and control functions are often distributed throughout a platform. Data may be generated and processed close to sensors, machinery or embedded controllers rather than being sent to a centralized enterprise network.

Protecting these systems can reduce opportunities for an adversary to exploit a vulnerable endpoint and move deeper into a platform architecture.

It also creates an engineering tradeoff. Security mechanisms deployed on embedded or edge equipment must operate within constraints involving processing power, communications bandwidth, power consumption, latency and compatibility with existing equipment.

A solution that adds excessive computational or network overhead may not be suitable for a real-time naval control environment.

Integer And LSU Expand An Existing Research Relationship

The award builds on a broader relationship between Integer Technologies and LSU.

Louisiana Economic Development reported in June 2026 that Integer was expanding its Baton Rouge research and development presence through its partnership with LSU, building on a previously awarded $9.8 million ONR effort. That earlier work focused on software and systems intended to improve intelligence, autonomy and decision-making for distributed maritime autonomous systems.

Integer’s current research portfolio also includes cyber-physical resilience, secure systems, mission assurance and distributed maritime autonomy. The company said its LSU Constellation Lab is focused on cyber resilience and the movement of data across distributed battlefields.

The partnership therefore places cyber-physical security alongside related research in autonomy, sensing, decision support and maritime systems.

That combination is increasingly important as naval forces distribute sensors, unmanned platforms and computing capabilities across larger operational networks.

Contract Details

Source: U.S. Department of War contract announcement.

Broader Navy Strategy Points Toward Resilient Embedded Systems

The Integer award fits a wider Navy research effort aimed at protecting increasingly interconnected platforms.

ONR’s Applied Cyber Resiliency program describes the objective as developing systems capable of maintaining mission effectiveness despite adversarial interference. Its research areas include resilient cyber-physical systems, exploitability reduction and approaches for dealing with complex and interconnected architectures.

The Navy is also examining cyber resilience in critical infrastructure ashore. NIWC Atlantic’s MOSAICS initiative, for example, addresses cybersecurity and systems engineering for industrial control systems used in infrastructure such as power generation and water treatment.

The common thread is a shift from protecting isolated networks toward protecting the complete relationship between digital infrastructure and physical operations.

For naval forces, that approach has practical importance. A cyber defense architecture must ultimately help a ship continue performing its mission even when portions of its digital infrastructure are degraded, compromised or unavailable.

The Main Technical Challenge Is Maintaining Mission Function

The significance of the $10.2 million award is therefore not simply the development of another cybersecurity tool.

The larger challenge is building systems that can detect abnormal activity, determine whether it threatens a physical function and support a response without creating additional operational problems.

That requires integration between cybersecurity, systems engineering, embedded computing, control systems and mission operations.

The research will also have to account for the Navy’s existing equipment base. A future system designed for a new platform can incorporate cybersecurity requirements from the beginning, while older systems may require defensive measures that work within existing hardware and software constraints.

The ability to apply resilience techniques across both new and legacy infrastructure could therefore be as important as the individual technologies developed under the program.

Research Extends Through 2030

The $10.22 million modification gives Integer Technologies and LSU a multiyear opportunity to mature the cyber-physical resilience framework from vulnerability assessment and modeling toward operationally relevant defensive technologies.

The contract is scheduled for completion in March 2030.

For the Navy, the effort addresses a growing technical requirement: ensuring that the computer-controlled systems underpinning maritime operations can continue supporting missions when confronted with sophisticated cyber interference.

As naval platforms become more connected and increasingly dependent on embedded computing, resilience at the boundary between cyberspace and the physical environment will remain an important part of mission assurance.