What was most impactful about your time at NPS and the MOVES Institute? How has it impacted your career since?

My time at NPS and the MOVES Institute marked a pivotal transition in my career. It shifted my perspective from the tactical, battalion-level operations and execution that dominated my fleet experience to a broader, more holistic view of service-level and joint force priorities.

NPS provided the time, resources, and education needed to tackle real challenges faced by junior Marines while ensuring those efforts remained aligned with institutional and service-level objectives.

Most significantly, the education and credibility I gained at NPS directly enabled me to serve as Deputy Director and help stand up the Marine Corps Software Factory in Austin, Texas which would not have been possible without the foundation built during my time at NPS.

AERO-T grew out of NPS thesis research and continued through collaboration with Maj. Will Oblak, the Marine Corps Software Factory, and MCTSSA. Why was this project important enough to continue beyond the research phase, and what impact do you see it having on the Marine Corps and the joint force?  

At the Marine Corps Software Factory, we prioritize real, unmet challenges faced by the FMF that lack existing solutions. Similarly, NPS students often channel their operational experiences into thesis research, addressing critical gaps they encountered in the FMF.

Maj. Will Oblak’s thesis rigorously examined a persistent and essential training shortfall in the Marine Corps: inadequate understanding and awareness of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) at the tactical level.

‍Having served in the infantry and studied at NPS, I experienced firsthand the widespread uncertainty among Marines regarding EMS operations—questions like “Is my radio going to give away my position and get me killed?” or “What does the enemy see when I transmit?”

In contested environments, Marines are increasingly required to maneuver and operate within an adversary’s weapons engagement zone, yet many lack visibility into their own EMS signature as perceived by near-peer threats.

AERO-T directly addresses this gap by providing a realistic, training-environment solution that enables Marines to visualize and understand their electromagnetic emissions and vulnerabilities. By closing this training deficiency, AERO-T has the potential to save Marine lives on the battlefield and enhance tactical decision-making in electromagnetic contested domains.

AERO-T addresses challenges similar to those you examined in your research at NPS around operating and surviving in contested environments. Why was this challenge important for you to address and how does your thesis work affect how you think about the AERO-T today?

Major Oblak’s thesis took a novel concept and proved you can take live RF data and virtually emulate the signal into a simulated environment. That proof-of-concept was the genesis of making a user-friendly, easily understandable, low-cost solution to ensure Marines are simply handed another piece of gear but produces “sticky” training results that are easily understood and enforces positive behavior changes to increase the survivability to Marine units.

The Marine Corps Software Factory is producing tools that are being built and used by Marines themselves. What difference does that make when it comes to speed, relevance or trust in a capability?

Uniformed Marines have access, trust, and motivation to solve hard problems that they themselves or fellow Marines are experiencing. This significantly cuts down on the problem framing phase of application development and leverages the trust that Marines share between each other.

Further, we take the concept of user center designed as an absolute priority. Often, Marines are given complex equipment or software with little to no training. We place a priority on the end user being able to use our software without formal training. We believe the software should be self-intuitive to Marines that get sustenance from Crayola products, Monsters, and nicotine.

What role do organizations like the Marine Corps Software Factory play in ensuring that research and solutions coming out of institutions like NPS continue into capability development rather than stopping at concept?

We want to position ourselves as a unit that “operationalizes” useful research that would otherwise only exist as a PDF online. We are in the business of getting capabilities into the hands of Marines. So, if there is useful research generated by an NPS student that doesn’t have a path into Marines in the FMF, then we want to be involved.  

Ryan Helm is an example of this. His thesis research was able to make an immediate and needed impact on the FMF, but he initially he didn’t have the software factory to “operationalize” his research. Due to his own heroic efforts, he was able to use other means, and eventually partner with us and Marine Innovation Unit, to develop ARES. He knew the importance of ARES and trailblazed a path forward but far too many theses work doesn’t find its way into an operational capability.

You’re returning to the Naval Postgraduate School for Converge @ NPS to engage with students, faculty, industry partners and others. What types of connections are you hoping to make? What is the value of staying connected to NPS, for you in your role at MCSWF and more broadly for the joint force?  

I want students and faculty to dedicate their time to meaningful work and to the extent that the software factory can help get capabilities into the hands of Marines, I want to help make that happen. Further, some of our current applications can be improved by thesis work improving upon what we have already developed by refining algorithms or applying different use cases. As important as technology is, the Marine Corps is a people business. Knowing what is being worked on and connecting people to the right resources is of the upmost importance.

We also have been able to work hand in hand with industry with several of our products. We are eager to making relationships with industry that can lead to faster and better outcomes for the Fleet Marine Force.

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