AWS Cloud: Ready to Power American Shipbuilding

The transformation of American shipbuilding requires more than just moving existing processes to the digital realm—it demands a fundamental reimagining of how ships are built. AWS brings proven Industry 4.0 capabilities to create the connected shipyard of the future, where digital systems and physical operations work in harmony to accelerate production while improving quality. 

Imagine a shipyard in which thousands of IoT sensors continuously monitor everything from welding parameters to environmental conditions, all securely connected through AWS IoT Core. Real-time data flows from the shop floor to the cloud, where advanced analytics provide immediate insights to operators and managers. In the fabrication shop, integrated inspection systems help verify quality, while digital work instructions are delivered directly to workers’ devices through seamless integration with existing manufacturing execution systems.

AWS Industrial Fabric can revolutionize shipyard operations by creating a unified digital foundation that connects disparate systems, data, and processes across the entire shipbuilding lifecycle. In a typical shipyard, various systems manage everything from design and engineering to production and quality control, often operating in silos. Industrial Fabric provides a standardized approach to integrate these systems, enabling seamless data flow between CAD/CAM software, manufacturing execution systems, enterprise resource planning, and shop floor equipment. For example, when engineering updates a design specification, Industrial Fabric can automatically propagate these changes to affected production systems, update work instructions, and notify relevant teams—all while maintaining configuration control and regulatory compliance. This connectivity enables shipyards to reduce errors from manual data transfer, accelerate production cycles, and maintain a comprehensive digital thread throughout the vessel’s construction.

Smart Factory transforms traditional shipyard operations by implementing intelligent, data-driven manufacturing processes that adapt in real-time to production needs. In shipbuilding, where complex assemblies must come together with precise timing, Smart Factory orchestrates operations across multiple workshops and trades. The solution continuously collects data from connected tools, machines, and environmental sensors to optimize production flow and resource allocation. For instance, if a delay occurs in steel fabrication, Smart Factory can automatically adjust downstream assembly schedules and redistribute resources to minimize impact. The platform also enables predictive maintenance for critical equipment, automated quality inspection workflows, and real-time tracking of materials and components throughout the yard. This level of automation and intelligence helps shipyards reduce costly rework, improve first-time quality rates, and maintain more predictable production schedules—essential factors in meeting the Navy’s ambitious shipbuilding goals.

This digital transformation is powered by AWS GovCloud (US), providing the security and compliance required for defense industrial base operations. The transformation begins at the edge, where AWS IoT Greengrass enables local processing of critical operational data, ensuring production continues even if network connectivity is temporarily interrupted. This edge capability is particularly crucial in the challenging RF environments common in shipyards, where steel structures and industrial equipment can impact wireless communications.

The AWS Global Network provides a secure foundation for the shipbuilding enterprise, to include shipyards and refit facilities. AWS' infrastructure delivers high-throughput, low-latency connectivity supporting geographically dispersed components with redundant network paths. AWS is eager to scale across the enterprise at key locations.

The U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding process faces challenges in efficiently scheduling and coordinating work at shipyards and refit facilities, resulting in significant delays and impacting fleet force readiness. Many shipyard processes for developing schedules, work packages, and engineering reports are highly manual and time consuming, requiring users to find and reference various system documentation, databases, and applications and increasing the possibility of human error. Unplanned work adds additional challenges for these users and processes. AWS’ expertise in scaling technology to support critical DoD technical focus areas can deliver scheduling solutions to better serve the warfighter. By leveraging scalable AWS data lake, advanced analytics, and Generative AI capabilities, the Navy can transform shipyard data into a strategic asset to drive efficiency, enhance readiness, and accelerate fleet operations. AWS offers a comprehensive suite of services to build centralized digital twins, deploy intelligent maintenance assistants, generate real-time analytics dashboards, enable multi-agent collaboration, and unlock deeper insights from complex graph data. 

The digital thread extends beyond individual processes. Through AWS IoT Analytics, shipyards gain deep insights into their operations, enabling teams to optimize production flows and identify potential improvements. These insights, combined with machine learning models running on Amazon SageMaker, help identify bottlenecks and predict potential issues before they impact production schedules.Security remains paramount in this connected environment. AWS’ industrial solutions implement defense-in-depth security architectures that protect both operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) systems. This includes end-to-end encryption of industrial data, zero-trust security architectures, and role-based access control that meets Department of Defense requirements.

The United States seeks to coordinate with allies to accelerate shipbuilding as part of the Australia-United States-United Kingdom (AUKUS) Trilateral Security Pact and through new investments and learnings from top allied commercial shipbuilders. AWS understands the U.S. Navy will need capabilities to share information rapidly, consistently, and securely. AWS environments for allied mission data sharing could be expanded to include digital engineering capabilities and Trusted Secure Enclaves technology for scalable collaboration in new areas. For example, we envision each AUKUS country ultimately having their own digital engineering environments in the cloud, for both MIB and Navy users, with an AUKUS environment serving as a secure allied collaboration environment at the intersection. AWS has isolation design patterns for secure enclaves to support collaboration, while providing the breadth and depth of available cloud services to drive innovation—and a network of 140,000+ partners.

AWS proudly supports U.S. government customers and Defense Industrial Base (DIB) partners with secure cloud solutions that advance national security missions. AWS and partner technologies are available today. Through the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract, AWS continues providing Department of Defense (DoD) customers with secure, reliable cloud services for their mission-critical needs. 

AWS Marketplace has earned “Awardable” status in both the Chief Digital and AI Office’s (CDAO) Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace and the P1 Solutions Marketplace for Department of Defense (DoD) work. This designation allows DoD organizations to access and procure solutions through AWS Marketplace using established acquisition pathways. With extensive experience executing Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs), AWS delivers streamlined access to cloud services with the speed and flexibility essential for exploring new capabilities and prototypes.