What's the end goal? To remove the need for naval ships to carry a supply of freshwater? They still have to have enormous supply chain and logistics figured out to keep fuel, ammo, food, medicine, people, etc. at the front lines and out at sea. I'd bet, if anything, the navy would be way more interested in figuring out how to run their ships off of saltwater instead of their people.

Bombard's wikipedia page mentions the French and Taiwanese militaries conducted lost-at-sea exercises that supported Bombard's findings. The page doesn't have much in the way of citations, though, and I couldn't find anything on google about either the French or Taiwanese efforts (though I only spent a minute or two looking).

As other posters have mentioned though, the take-away isn't really that you can subsist soley on seawater, but that using seawater to supplement fresh water from rain and liquids from fish can allow one to survive for long periods at sea without an initial store of freshwater.