Navy Turns AI Adoption into ROI Competition

The Department of the Navy is asking sailors, Marines and civilian employees to document and compete on measurable AI-driven productivity gains as part of a new effort to accelerate adoption of generative AI across the workforce.

The service launched the department-wide challenge in a March memo reflecting how it approaches technology innovation.

“We want to make sure that [using AI] is something that folks see themselves in and feel ownership on,” the memo’s co-author and Navy CTO Justin Fanelli told GovCIO Media & Research in an interview.

The department is seeking to identify existing decentralized innovation and allow department staffers to become what Fanelli referred to as “high-achieving mavericks.”

“We found the mavericks who were leaning farthest forward, and we wanted to share their work with the rest of the workforce so that we can get as many people on the lean forward boat as possible quickly,” Fanelli said. “We see that happening now. We want to make sure that it is institutionalized and that we are able to document the success stories.”

At the center of the effort is the AI Efficiency Challenge, which invites individuals and teams to submit verified time-saving data and replicable use cases. Modeled after successful Marine Corps innovation programs, the challenge uses transparent metrics and a department-wide scoreboard to highlight measurable gains and encourage participation.

“When we give them better tools, we want them to show us who can turn better tools into bigger outcomes. It’s an ROI contest,” he said.

Alignment with Pentagon’s AI Push

The initiative builds on a December 2025 directive from War Secretary Pete Hegseth requiring department personnel to incorporate generative AI into their “daily battle rhythm” through GenAI.mil. The Navy’s memo directed all Navy and Marine Corps organizations to transition to the platform.

Launched late last year, GenAI.mil initially deployed Google’s Gemini model as part of the department’s broader push to rapidly integrate commercial AI capabilities. Fanelli said Navy personnel have been among the platform’s most active users.

“The Department of Navy is the leading user of GenAI.mil on a per-capita basis, and we want more people using it,” Fanelli said.

The department is now focused on how quickly personnel can translate those capabilities into operational and administrative advantages. That emphasis is reflected in the memo’s warning that AI adoption has become a matter of national competitiveness.

“The bottleneck is no longer capability — it is adoption speed,” the memo said. “It is a national security imperative that we learn and adapt to these technologies faster than the competition.”

Implementing the Challenge

The memo established a four-step methodology for commands to measure and log their efficiency gains:

1. Establish baselines by measuring the time required to complete routine workflows without AI assistance.
2. Track performance by measuring the time required to complete the same tasks using AI tools.
3. Evaluate quality to ensure outputs remain effective.
4. Capture efficiency data through a centralized Navy portal.

Fanelli said the approach is already producing results. During the first week of the challenge, Senior Chief Aviation Electronics Technician Joyce Silkworth-Mallory identified multiple ways to save time within her helicopter squadron, he added.

“This is exactly the trailblazing we’re inviting. She brought value and she brought the numbers to prove it, which makes it easier to scale,” Fanelli said.

According to Fanelli, DON will feature rolling challenges, hackathons and localized competitions. AI, he said, provides opportunities to save money and time, and ultimately enhance mission delivery throughout the service.

“If you think about overall workflow improvement, we have started to see that in terms of reinventing how we do our work,” Fanelli said. “We want [AI] to increase the ability to get rid of whole swaths of work that are low value.”