Navy program turns ships into continuous data pipelines for AI development

The Navy received its first Data Edge Collection Kit (DECK) from AI company Applied Intuition, a system designed to continuously gather and process operational data from ships to train artificial intelligence algorithms. Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced the deployment at the WEST Conference in February as a critical first step toward the service's "Golden Fleet" initiative, which aims to create a software-designed future force. DECK addresses the Navy's legacy infrastructure limitations by acting as a direct data pipeline that transforms raw sensor information into AI-ready data, automatically updating onboard systems without manual intervention. The kit operates similarly to autonomous vehicle systems, continuously collecting thousands of hours of environmental data to enable iterative algorithm improvements for perception, planning, and control functions. This effort aligns with the Trump administration's push for the Pentagon to accelerate artificial intelligence integration across military operations.