PHILIPPINE SEA – Data scientists aboard the USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) and the aircraft carrier FS Charles De Gaulle (R 91) conduct the first-ever military Hackathon at sea during Exercise Pacific Steller 2025.

Pacific Steller is a multi-large deck event hosted by the French Navy in the Philippine Sea. This exercise was designed to advance coordination and cooperation between French, Japanese and U.S. maritime forces while simultaneously demonstrating capabilities in multi-domain operations, promoting a shared dedication to regional stability and highlighting the U.S. Navy’s enduring power projection capability.

Hackathons, more commonly hosted by tech companies, universities and community groups, are events that typically last several days. They bring people together to collaborate on solutions for a common problem or identify new opportunities within the technology space.

Vinson hosted a Data Science @ Sea (DS@S) team aboard the ship during the Pacific Steller exercise. DS@S is a program that was established in November 2022 with a broad mandate to use all available operational and intelligence data to solve warfighting problems at the tactical edge. The team includes a mix of uniformed and civilian personnel. By having the DS@S team aboard Vinson, the Navy continues to maintain its operational advantage by understanding when and how to innovate unique solutions to entrenched operational problems.

The objective of this bilateral Hackathon was to develop unique insights about surface and air platform behaviors and characteristics derived from shared tactical data link data. The two teams participating in the Hackathon consisted of the data scientist team from the French Carrier Strike Group aboard Charles De Gaulle and the DS@S team aboard Vinson.

“When approached about the idea of a Hackathon with our French allies during Pacific Steller, I knew this would be an innovative part of the exercise and stimulate deeper collaboration,” said Rear Adm. Wosje, commander, Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 1. “As a result of this event, our teams are stronger and have even more knowledge about how data can be viewed and, more importantly, shared with allies in an operational environment.”

Although this exercise proved it is possible to link mutual data and knowledge together between the two allied navies, it was not as easy as the teams originally thought it would be.

Isaac Schmidt, Center for Naval Analysis field representative and DS@S chief data scientist, had never done a Hackathon before and found it to be challenging. “I think ourselves and the French all faced similar struggles during the hackathon, but this experience forced us to understand our raw, ground-truth data.”

This unique exercise allowed the two teams to achieve the mutual objective of sharing and understanding field data while in an operational environment, within a 24-hour period.

“We, and our French counterparts, learned an enormous amount when it came to data collection, aggregation, cleaning and organization,” Lt. Cmdr. Adam Reiffen, CSG-1 intelligence officer and the DS@S officer-in-charge, reflected. “Our DS@S team has never worked with other countries like this before. I think these kinds of events will enhance our data interchangeability with other navies.”

The Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group is operating in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. U.S. 7th Fleet is the U.S. Navy’s largest forward-deployed numbered fleet, and routinely interacts and operates with allies and partners in preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific region.

For more news from CSG-1 and Vinson visit: https://www.dvidshub.net/unit/CSG1, https://www.dvidshub.net/unit/CVN70