Basic Research in Information Science and Technology for Air Force Needs (2006) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-16
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Precision strike implies the ability to place munitions with minimal error anyplace required to achieve a military objective, and also the ability to perform rapid damage assessment. And improved battlespace awareness requires the ability to fuse and convey information so that decision makers can fully understand the plan of action and its execution in real time and be able to rapidly assess and anticipate necessary changes to the plan.
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and that covers the most critical or broadly useful topics that fit within the purview of the Mathematics and Space Sciences Directorate; · Develop rough estimates of the funding needed to make credible progress in this program of IS&T-related research, with a prioritization that defines what could be adequately covered with flat funding, a 10 percent decrease, a 10 percent increase, and a 25 percent increase. Recommend how the directorate might transition from its current pro gram to the envisioned one under these various budget scenarios; and · Recommend an appropriate balance of funding mechanisms for the directorate's IS&T-related research, choosing among the various mecha nisms currently in use in the directorate.
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Networks and communications Software Information management Human-system interactions Distributed research and experimentation environments Grand challenges FIGURE ES-1 A vision for Air Force IS&T research: Team-focused, networkenabled systems are created by the four research areas shown. The concerted efforts in the four areas, which also affect one another, are to be focused by grand challenges identified by the AFOSR and by experiments conducted in distributed research and experimentation environments.
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More generally, the theory of networks has not matured to a point where one can predict how well protocols developed heuristically in one application setting will perform on a communication network built on radically different communication modalities. To deal with the new and complicated modalities of importance to the Air Force, fundamental tools must be developed to help understand how networks might perform in new environments and to optimize architectures.
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· Source compression and correlation methods for multiple sensors. The Air Force communication systems that operate on these networks require basic research in the following areas: · Unifying methodologies for modulation, coding, beam-forming, and scheduling optimization.
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To address the first of these, the committee recommends a program of research aimed at the coevolution of Air Force concepts of operations and system architectures. This program extends the philosophy of software development models such as iterative development that support rapid prototyping of a software system so that end users can experiment with the system to see if it satisfies their needs.
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Once a software architecture has been defined and the performance envelope explored, a logical third capability would be one that supports the continued evolution of complex software within its fielded context. While most other software engineering research focuses on developing new software-intensive systems, in fact the larger challenge is to learn how to maintain and upgrade the huge amount of Air Force software that has already been fielded.
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network energy on network interface and communica tion protocols of ad hoc networks, (2) processor energy and process management for scheduling various applications, (3)
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If such context-dependent processing were possible, perhaps information-understanding algorithms could be embedded in sensors and networks to enable rapid data assessment and rapid situation assessment. The committee recommends the following basic research in support of Air Force information management:
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An ultimate goal of HSI research would be to enable machines (or algorithms) to perform more of the complex data manipulation, correlation, computation, and data reduction -- and even some decision-making -- leaving humans to perform the most critical judgments that cannot be accomplished by algorithms or that rely on extrinsic knowledge.
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As an example, characterization and recognition of normal and abnormal behavior would, in general, help in surveillance at all levels. Characterizing which actions, postures, and so on signify worrisome behavior requires ongoing research in the social sciences, and the ability to automatically recognize such behavior in sensed data is an ongoing challenge for IS&T.
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With the current funding available for IS&T (the column headed "Stable") the committee recommends that networks, communications, and HSI research merit the highest priority, while information management and software research portfolios would be better able to weather any forced reductions in the level of effort.
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Therefore, the committee recommends a significant increase in IS&T funding within AFOSR centered on research to support team-focused, network-enabled systems of Air Force interest. The committee also recommends that AFOSR consider designating some topics as grand challenges as a means of focusing its IS&T research, motivating the academic research community, and connecting that research to Air Force goals.
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Building a program around grand challenges quite naturally facilitates new interdisciplinary research communities: "interdisciplinary," because the breadth of the challenges calls for varied expertise, and "naturally," because the associated researchers are interested in the whole range of efforts addressing the grand challenge. The committee recommends that AFOSR consider the following as possible grand challenges, but this list is by no means exhaustive: · Control of multiple UAVs.
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While exercises are ongoing, operational Air Force participants can clarify their real, not hypothetical, needs; IS&T applied researchers can investigate engineering issues with the prototype network; basic researchers in IS&T can experiment with fundamental changes (e.g., to communication protocols) ; and HSI researchers can instrument the experiments and learn from them.
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16 BASIC RESEARCH FOR AIR FORCE IS&T NEEDS The DREE approach to promoting experimental science should not be prohibitively expensive, because the necessary network infrastructure is rapidly falling into place and there is the possibility of leveraging investment in testbeds made by other AFRL directorates. For example, a research version of the Distributed Mission Training environment housed in AFRL's Human Effectiveness Directorate might support experimental science in areas ranging from control of UAVs to decision making in realtime environments.
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