Navy Requesting Cutting-Edge Nuclear Prototypes to Power a New Era of Warfare

Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan put out a call Thursday to America’s technological innovators to power the Navy’s future with small modular nuclear reactors and cutting-edge power generation and storage technology.

“President [Donald] Trump’s commitment to unleashing American energy innovation is powering the Navy into a new era,” Phelan said of the Navy’s efforts. “We are calling on America’s most capable innovators to deliver advanced, installation-scale energy solutions, ranging from small modular nuclear reactors to cutting-edge storage and generation technologies that can deliver power with 99.9% availability, even if the public grid goes dark.”

The call for these prototypes expounded upon the secretary’s stated priorities. The criterion for 99.9% mission availability, the Department of the Navy release read, is to ensure Navy, Marine, and Department of Defense infrastructure can remain online even in the event of a catastrophic failure of America’s power grid, whether that failure is a result of a natural disaster or cyber attacks.

“Energy resilience is warfighting resilience,” Phelan said. “If a hurricane knocks out the local grid, our ships still sail. If a cyberattack takes down civilian power, our bases stay online. That’s the standard and we’re setting it now.”

These prototypes are essentially because as America’s military increases its use of AI systems and other advanced data technology, the military will have to increase and maintain large amounts of processing power in every scenario.

“This is about warfighting readiness, mission assurance, and making sure our bases remain operational under any circumstances,” the secretary added.

Phelan’s initiative was issued through the Center for Energy, Environment, and Demilitarization under the Other Transaction Authority agreement, an authority which allows the Navy and certain federal outfits to solicit and procure advanced technologies from non-traditional partners, such as academic researchers. This follows Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth making it a priority for the military to innovate through different procurement processes.

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