Reforms to Navy’s research office must come without sacrificing scientific freedom

For nearly eight decades, the United States Navy has benefited from what might be called an unfair advantage — a combination of technological superiority, scientific depth, and operational excellence that has deterred conflict and preserved global stability since World War II. That advantage did not arise by chance. It was deliberately cultivated through sustained investment in science and technology, guided by organizations such as the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

ONR now enters a new chapter of its storied history, one that brings opportunities to reimagine how the Navy innovates. Under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reforms, ONR’s leadership and structure are evolving to better align research with acquisition priorities and to accelerate the transition of technology to the fleet.

The new leadership has an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen ONR’s legacy — to preserve its scientific depth while enhancing its agility — as long as the changes are made without sacrificing the focus on early research and development that has led to America’s naval dominance.

Since its founding in 1946, ONR has been the quiet engine behind many of the breakthroughs that define both modern warfare and daily life. Early ONR investments led to radar, sonar, nuclear propulsion, GPS, stealth materials, and artificial intelligence. The office pioneered a model that linked academic research with naval needs — creating an ecosystem where university curiosity met military purpose. This model was the foundation for the government grants to universities, later adopted by the National Science Foundation and other government agencies.

Every ship that sails today — whether a stealth destroyer, nuclear submarine, or unmanned vessel — is the embodiment of decades of research funded and guided by ONR. Each hull carries the accumulated imagination of generations of scientists, engineers, and sailors who believed that knowledge itself is a form of deterrence.

Now, ONR is poised to change, for reasons that are not only sensible, but essential. As someone who has led ONR from the inside, I know how difficult it can be to bridge the gap between discovery and delivery. The Navy’s next generation of leaders, scientists, and innovators deserve every advantage we can give them to move faster, integrate smarter, and collaborate more deeply across government, academia, and industry.

Modern defense planning often focuses on near-term metrics — readiness rates, ship counts, sortie numbers. These matter, but they tell only part of the story. The other half — the one that ensures long-term dominance — is scientific curiosity and sustained research.

The technologies that will define naval warfare in 2040 — quantum sensing, energy resilience, intelligent autonomy — are in their infancy today. If we throttle their development for next year’s savings, we risk handing our adversaries a future advantage that cannot easily be reclaimed.

The same innovation pipeline that built the world’s most advanced Navy has also fueled America’s broader technological leadership. Many of the companies now driving autonomy, advanced materials, quantum, and AI trace their origins to early federal research — often seeded by ONR.

This continuum is deliberate. Federal science and technology investment de-risks breakthrough ideas, allowing private investors to scale them when ready for commercial application. It has built both the strongest military and the most dynamic technology economy on earth.

In my current role as a general partner in a growth equity fund, I see this firsthand. Many promising startups in autonomy, advanced computing, and next-generation sensors draw a direct line to early ONR or DARPA funding. They are continuing a cycle that has powered American innovation for nearly eighty years — ideas born in labs, matured through defense partnerships, and scaled by private capital to strengthen both national security and economic prosperity.

There is real merit in modernizing ONR’s operations — streamlining contracting, aligning investments, leveraging commercial innovation pipelines. The challenge is to do so without sacrificing the scientific freedom that makes discovery possible. Efficiency and exploration must advance together.

History offers warnings: After World War II, Britain’s underinvestment in emerging technologies ceded naval leadership to the United States. We could repeat that mistake if we lose sight of the value of early-stage research.

The new leadership has the chance to renew ONR’s culture of collaboration — drawing on the Navy’s technical workforce, the creativity of academia, and the energy of the private sector. The Navy’s future depends on both disciplined execution and bold exploration but while the former wins audits, the latter wins wars.

Because somewhere today, a young researcher — perhaps in an ONR lab, perhaps at a university, perhaps inside a fledgling startup — is working on a discovery that could define the next era of maritime power and global technology leadership. We owe that researcher, and the Sailors and Marines who will one day rely on their work, a clear message: America still believes in science. America still believes in the future.

Rear Admiral (Ret.) Lorin Selby served for nearly 37 years as a U.S. Navy submarine warfare officer and as the 26th Chief of Naval Research. He is now a general partner at Mare Liberum Capital Partners, which invests at the intersection of technology and the maritime domain.