Navy tests secret Project Overmatch tech with Carl Vinson strike group

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Navy is testing technology developed as part of its secretive Project Overmatch using the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group in the waters off California, according to the chief of naval operations.

Adm. Mike Gilday told the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference, going on this week in National Harbor, Maryland, that the project “is in full swing right now” with the strike group, which typically has an aircraft carrier, at least one cruiser and a couple of destroyers, a carrier air wing and thousands of personnel.

Observations have so far indicated that the endeavor is “on track, in terms of the objectives that we’re seeking and where we want to go with it,” Gilday told conference attendees April 3, without providing details.

Project Overmatch is the Navy’s contribution to Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2, the Pentagon’s multibillion-dollar pursuit of seamless battlefield connectivity across land, air, sea, space and cyber. Since its 2020 inception, the project has been blanketed in secrecy — a condition experts say is necessitated by always-spying China and Russia.

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The Navy is seeking $192 million for Project Overmatch for fiscal 2024, less than the $226 million enacted for the effort this year, budget documents show.

Service officials late last year teased the deployment of Project Overmatch capabilities aboard a carrier strike group, with Rear Adm. Doug Small, the leader of both the project and Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, describing the move as the “starting gun.”

Additional carrier strike groups are expected to follow.

“We hope to scale that based on what we hope to see out of that experimentation in the next coming months,” Gilday said Monday.

Defense News reporter Megan Eckstein contributed to this article.

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