Navy Lab Tests Kitchen Innovations to Help Sustain Ships Longer at Sea
December 17, 2025As the Navy looks toward extending endurance aboard vessels in contested logistics environments, sailors who’ve served on any ship or submarine know the options available on the mess deck can depend on the ingredients and equipment available.
If a ship is sailing in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean, for example, it might not have many options to stop for replenishment.
With those restrictions in mind, a lab in Natick, Massachusetts, tests recipes and evaluates commercial kitchen equipment specifically for naval vessel galleys to help make life easier for culinary specialists and to give more options to sailors on board.
The lab is part of the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center’s Combat Feeding Division. It has two Navy project officers who spend their days researching and developing new recipes and equipment for the Navy Standard Core Menu.
“Those are developed specifically with the equipment that’s actually on board a ship in mind, and the limited ingredients they have,” explained project officer Rick Watts, who was a Navy cook for 26 years. “The Navy uses … a very small list of actual ingredients that they can procure and bring on board the ship.”
