By Kirk White, assistant vice president for strategic partnerships, Indiana University

More than 400 business and academic leaders attended the annual Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Advanced Planning Briefing for Industry on April 10 at the WestGate@Crane Technology Park. The theme of the meeting was “Partnering to Expand the Advantage.” Leaders from Crane presented the center’s strategic vision and acquisition plans, detailed technical mission area descriptions and explained the new Other Transactional Authority, or OTA, acquisition consortium.

The Navy installation, just 45 minutes southwest of Bloomington on I-69, has three mission areas that support the Department of Defense: strategic missions, electronic/spectrum warfare and expeditionary warfare. NSWC Crane employs 3,500 people, of whom 67 percent are scientists, engineers and technicians, and has an annual business base of $1.4 billion. Crane Army Ammunition Activity employs another 800 staffers.

Main priorities in the Crane product mix during the coming years include cybersecurity, hypersonics, trusted electronics, threat modeling, predictive analytics, human systems engineering, artificial intelligence, and modeling and simulation. Indiana University is supporting these initiatives through departments at several campuses including Bloomington, South Bend and IUPUI.

Crane’s first OTA has been awarded and is in project development. The OTA uses a consortium partnering approach to identify solutions for DoD projects. Interested businesses should visit the Strategic and Spectrum Mission Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems website.