Summary

The statement of task that guided the work of the Army Research Laboratory Technical Assessment Board (ARLTAB) is as follows:

During the 2015-2016 assessment, the ARLTAB is being assisted by six panels, each of which focuses on a portion of the ARL program conducted in ARL’s science and technology (S&T) campaigns: Materials Research, Sciences for Lethality and Protection, Information Sciences and Computational Sciences, Sciences for Maneuver, Human Sciences, and Assessment and Analysis.

This interim report summarizes the findings of the Board for the first year of this biennial assessment; the current report addresses approximately half the portfolio for each campaign; the remainder will be assessed in 2016. During the first year the Board examined the following elements within the ARL S&T campaigns: (1) within Materials Research: biological and bioinspired materials, energy and power materials, and engineered photonics materials; (2) within Sciences for Lethality and Protection: battlefield injury mechanisms, directed energy, and armor and adaptive protection; (3) within Information Sciences: sensing and effecting, and system intelligence and intelligent systems (SIIS); (4) within Computational Sciences: advanced computing architectures, computing sciences, data-intensive sciences, and predictive simulation sciences; (5) within Sciences for Maneuver: human–machine interaction, intelligence and control, and perception; (6) within Human Sciences: humans in multiagent systems, real-world behavior, and toward human variability; and (7) within Assessment and Analysis: mission capability of systems. A second, final report will subsume the findings of this interim report and add the findings from the second year of the review, during which the Board will examine additional elements within the ARL S&T campaigns.

The mission of ARL, as the U.S. Army’s corporate laboratory, is to provide innovative science, technology, and analyses to enable a full spectrum of operations. In 2013 ARL restructured its portfolio of ongoing and planned research and development to align with its S&T campaign plans for 2015-2035. ARL has maintained its organizational structure, consisting of six directorates: Weapons and Materials Research Directorate (WMRD), Computational and Information Sciences Directorate (CISD), Human Research and Engineering Directorate (HRED), Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate (SEDD), Survivability and Lethality Analysis Directorate (SLAD), and Vehicle Technology Directorate (VTD). The research portfolio has been organized into science and technology campaigns, each of which describes related work supported by staff from multiple directorates. Appendix Table A.1 shows the directorates that supported each campaign during the 2015 review. ARL’s technical strategy document

describes the portfolio of each campaign in detail.¹ ARL’s vision is compelling and raises expectations for an innovative program of research designed to be responsive to the needs of the “Army after next.” This is not yet fully evident in the portfolio currently being assessed. The reorganization of the portfolio into key focused campaigns is promising, but it may take some time to transform and mature the program of work to consistently align with new critical paths.

In general, the quality of the research presented, the capabilities of the leadership, the knowledge and abilities of the investigators, and proposed future directions continue to improve. Significant gains were evident in publication rates, numbers of postdoctoral researchers, and collaborations with relevant peers outside ARL. The research work environments were impressive in terms of their unique and advanced technology capabilities to support research. Overall these are all outstanding accomplishments and mark an advance over prior years.

MATERIALS RESEARCH

ARL’s materials sciences efforts span the spectrum of technology maturity as they address Army applications, working from the state of the art to the art of the possible—“25 years out,” according to the ARL. Materials research efforts and expertise, one of ARL’s core technical competencies, are spread throughout the ARL enterprise.

Biological and Bioinspired Materials

The biological and bioinspired materials effort has grown substantially over the last 2 years. Although still small, the group has an excellent track record, including the stabilization of proteins against thermal and chemical extremes using new chemistries and methods to derive antibody-like reagents that improve antibody properties—specifically, their bimolecular recognition and binding characteristics. These accomplishments are likely to lead to further program growth. The scientific quality of this thrust area is on par with the work at leading federal, university, and industry laboratories and is a crucial part of a broader national effort in biomaterials research. Because biology is a growth area, ARL now has an opportunity to identify and recruit a critical mass of biologists, including microbiologists and polymer/organic chemists, looking well into the future to create an integrated community of researchers.

Energy and Power Materials

Energy and power materials is a mission-critical research area with a clear focus on Army needs. The effort is broad in the sense that it appreciates the importance of moving basic research to technology and reflects an integrated research approach involving experiment, theory, and simulation. As one component of this thrust, ARL researchers have developed high-quality collaborative interactions with other programs within and beyond the Army research enterprise. The portfolio of research projects supports an appropriate balance of high-risk, long-term-impact projects along with mid-term and short-term projects. There is a broad, deep coverage of different devices, different fuels, and different applications covering a wide range of time and size scales. The quality of the research projects, the staff, and the facilities is comparable to that of top research laboratories elsewhere in industrial and academic environments. Questions remain, however, about whether ARL is mobilizing aggressively enough to capitalize on ARL’s own internal advances and as well as external advances made by the broader

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¹ U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory Technical Strategy 2015-2035, Adelphi, Md., 2014, http://www.arl.army.mil/www/pages/172/docs/ARL_Technical Strategy_FINAL.pdf.

ommunity—for example, are ARL’s recent world-leading results on enhancement in quantum-well infrared photodetector efficiencies being translated into capability demonstrators for manufacturers and customers? Similarly, ARL may not be working to leverage advances in silicon photonics taking place elsewhere, especially with regard to heterogeneous materials. In contrast to the expansion in first-principles modeling, engineering models are underutilized, perhaps owing to limited in-house expertise in this facet of modeling.

In some energy and power applications, such as lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells, there is a broad, vigorous, fast-moving, worldwide research effort directed at identifying fundamental scientific issues and developing novel materials and entire systems. Accordingly, some too narrowly focused ARL projects need to search out and gain access to the right niche in order to have impact.

Engineered Photonics Materials

Research and development for engineered photonics materials will be essential in support of the future warfighter. Accordingly, ARL has organized a research effort in this critical area that is among the world’s best. This is an impressive accomplishment in light of the technical program’s inherently wide scope, which is so essential to addressing diverse Army needs, both current and future. The quality of the work presented reflects a high level of technical competence and professionalism on the part of researchers and management. This thrust area shows a good balance of high-risk, longer-term work on the one hand with, on the other hand, nearer-term, customer-driven solutions and incremental—but critical—technology refinement. This well-balanced portfolio is supported by a strong materials capability in terms of both staff expertise and laboratory or clean room infrastructure. Investments in computational modeling and simulation have been successfully implemented to complement strengths and core competencies in materials synthesis and characterization, as well as device work. All of these facilities and capabilities are being leveraged into compelling device-and application-driven work, especially in ultraviolet materials and infrared devices and device physics in both areas.

SCIENCES FOR LETHALITY AND PROTECTION

The ARL research efforts in Sciences for Lethality and Protection that were assessed span, on the one hand, basic research that improves our fundamental understanding of scientific phenomena and, on the other hand, generate technology that supports (1) battlefield injury mechanisms in human response to threats and human protective equipment, (2) directed energy programs, and (3) ballistics and blast programs that address weapon–target interactions and armor and adaptive protection developments.

Battlefield Injury Mechanisms

A better understanding of the mechanisms of injury is vital to improving protective measures, making the program on battlefield injury mechanisms an important one for ARL. This is especially true for protection of the head, about which there is considerable uncertainty concerning allowable levels of shock, which greatly affect the protective options. The most impressive accomplishment of the battlefield mechanisms/human response/human protective equipment program is that a strong cadre of scientists is at work, and a credible program is under way. A long-term vision for the battlefield injury mechanisms projects could have a philosophy to guide resource allocation and program direction. Almost all the battlefield mechanisms, human responses, and human protective equipment research topics presented had a combination of computational and experimental approaches, but the real-time interplay of experiment and computation is needed.

Directed Energy

ARL’s campaign plans categorize directed energy (DE) as a focused area under the much broader category of electronic warfare (EW), in accordance with the Army’s definitions. The ARL posture designations for both radio frequency-DE and laser-DE are collaborate rather than lead. The subsuming of DE under EW and a collaborate-only posture indicate that ARL has downgraded the priority of DE within its technology portfolio from its previously robust effort. The consequence of this status change was evident in the programs presented: They appear to be a small collection of seemingly unrelated projects. ARL needs to take a strategic look at the area of DE to determine its priority going forward and rethink its effort with a view to the 2035 time frame. The strategic review needs to consider future capabilities that the Army will need that DE might enable and what DE capabilities might be fielded by our adversaries for which the Army will need countermeasures. A focused ARL DE program would benefit from a systems-level study addressing future Army missions in which DE could play a role and where DE effectiveness and alternatives to DE are traded off. A highlight of the overall program in DE is the project on adaptive and scalable high-power phase-locked-fiber laser arrays. This work is a notable achievement, is recognized as such by the technical community, and appears to be ready for the next step, transition to field deployment.

Armor and Adaptive Protection

ARL has a strong record of achievement in the basic and applied sciences and the engineering of penetration and protection. The research and development described in the armor and adaptive protection area showed how ARL is building on its tradition of excellence to provide the knowledge basis for current and future Army needs in protecting our warfighters. This remains a core competency that underlies Army capabilities across the entire Department of Defense, and it needs to be preserved and nurtured. There was significant evidence of teamwork and integration among the projects in, for example, adaptive protection. Examples of the linkage between experimentation and computational modeling to provide physical insight into problems were especially noteworthy and had the potential to aid in developing new designs and exploring new concepts. Benchmarking simulations with experiments and the emphasis on bringing advanced technology (particularly in the domain of x rays) to bear on diagnostics were impressive. Developing a predictive capability for damage and fracture in metals, ceramics, and polymers underlies the efficient development of new material systems for protection from emerging penetration capabilities. At present, there is no framework that has this capability. However, experimental, theoretical, and computational advances here and elsewhere are making such a capability seem possible in the not-too-distant future. A systematic approach based on understanding the key physical processes is needed, because such a variety of material systems are becoming available.

INFORMATION SCIENCES

In the research portfolio known as Information Sciences, research projects in the broad categories of (1) sensing and effecting and (2) system intelligence and intelligent systems (SIIS) constituted the focus of the review.

Sensing and Effecting

In the area of sensing and effecting, the projects were well aligned in support of future Army missions and were focused in areas of nonimaging sensors, image understanding, sensor and data fusion,

and radar signal processing. There was a significant emphasis on applications as opposed to the foundational science.

The research on acoustic sensors covers a gamut of activities focused on the application of new materials in the design of sensors to the development of innovative signal processing techniques that improve the effectiveness of the sensors. The work on signal processing extends beyond traditional sensors and is investigating the use of microelectromechanical systems-based, three-dimensional acoustical particle velocity sensors. Some of this research has been presented at recognized conferences and published in the archival literature.

The work related to image understanding was generally of high quality and is being published in respectable venues. The cross-modal face recognition work was of high quality and addressed problems relevant to Army missions. A significant opportunity exists for ARL to better connect with and provide intellectual leadership to the broader facial recognition community by creating and curating open, standardized data sets as well as challenge problems for researchers to explore.

The work related to polarization has excellent potential. In particular, collaboration in the project related to sensor algorithms for polarization imagery is representative of the potential benefits of the ARL open campus initiative. Similarly, the project on manmade object discrimination has important practical implications and recently led to a patent.

In the area of sensor and data fusion, the focus is on developing efficient techniques to fuse data from multiple sources to improve inference. In this context, research described as dynamic belief fusion allocates probabilities to sensor information based on prior performance and has shown an improvement in detection accuracy over conventional fusion methods.

Radar signal processing work was of good technical quality and showed promising results. In particular, new approaches for detecting moving personnel under tree cover and the broader issue of detecting targets obscured by artifacts have been investigated with success. The work related to nonlinear radar methods is concentrated on the use of nonlinear harmonic radar to achieve greater sensitivity across a narrow frequency band; this work has shown promise in early experiments.

System Intelligence and Intelligent Systems

Research projects in SIIS were presented in three areas: information understanding, information fusion, and computational intelligence.

The focus of information understanding is on critical methods and techniques for transforming data so as to provide useful information to the soldier. In particular, the work on temporal information extraction focuses on methods for extracting temporal relationships from text for constructing knowledge networks. The proposed approach is technically solid and has been published in prestigious venues. Projects related to activities in the network science collaborative technology alliance (CTA) include work on influence in social networks that seeks to identify mechanisms for trust formation in human networks. The emphasis of the effort has been on identifying main factors, and the work has not addressed this issue in the context of networks. Also related to the network science CTA is research related to agent-based semantic analysis in information retrieval. This thrust also includes an effort to perform language translation in an automated fashion with a goal of enhancing translation capabilities for low-resource languages. The novelty of the work centers on methods for constructing the language model.

Work on information fusion focuses on combining data from disparate sources to produce timely, actionable information for the soldier. Research related to estimating credibility through fusion of subject opinions is of good technical quality and was disseminated at a reputable conference. The work focuses on fusing multiple, inconsistent, and potentially conflicting information sources. Promising work is also represented by a project that seeks to develop an observer model for helping soldiers determine salient targets, with a special emphasis on anomaly detection in saliency models. This work draws on recent advances in image processing and neuroscience.

Research in computational intelligence is looking at interesting and potentially important problems in areas such as reasoning under uncertainty, robotic control and path planning, and models of cognition and tactical decision making. One promising approach deploys a semantic vector space for reasoning in the presence of uncertainties. The research features a combination of statistical and machine-learning methods with semantic rules for reasoning in an uncertain environment and has the potential for significant practical impact. Work on designing optimal paths for autonomous mobile robot movement has reached the demonstration level, and there is a good plan for future work that would deal with practical constraints. This is very high quality work with near-term applications.

COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCES

In the research portfolio under computational sciences, projects in the broad categories of advanced computing architectures, computing sciences, data-intensive sciences, and predictive simulation sciences were reviewed.

Advanced Computing Architectures

In the area of advanced computing architectures, research has focused on both tactical high-performance computing (HPC) and on the exploration of new and interesting computer architectures, including neurosynaptic computing, the epiphany of a many-core chip, and quantum networking. This work has important implications, but security and resilience have yet to be considered. Research on computation ferrying is exploring an important aspect of realizing ARL’s vision of tactical HPC—the issue of computational tasks that could be computed on handheld devices or on mobile tactical HPC resources. Beyond establishing modeling and simulation capabilities to guide offload decisions, ARL has explored critical issues related to programmability and performance of edge (handheld) devices, particularly in the realm of open computing language programs that enhance power and performance. Research in dynamic binary translation is focused on allowing fast cross-architecture execution of binary codes, and it has yielded dramatic improvement in performance. ARL has a clear opportunity to lead the broader community and could significantly impact the Army’s capability by focusing on tactical HPC.

Computing Sciences

The computing sciences group has established a strategic focus in quantum computing, parallel processing environments for large heterogeneous parallel systems, and tools to simplify application development for HPC environments. Research on the development of a threaded message-passing interface for reduced instruction set computing array multicore processors has yielded innovative solutions to the challenge of power-efficient parallel programming. The work on HPC-scaled quantum hardware description language is representative of one of the few efforts in the area of quantum networking, and it will promote the development of future systems. The computing sciences group has the opportunity to create the tools needed to optimize performance and scale for mission-critical applications and user environments.

Data-Intensive Sciences

Accomplishments in data-intensive sciences include new model order reduction methods for partial differential equations (PDE), cognitively steered exploration of solutions to PDEs at different resolution, efficient summarization and visualization of high-dimensional data sets, and concise

characterization of spall damage in materials. The work on developing a high-performance, sparse, nonnegative, least-square solver advances the state of the art and leverages ARL’s expertise in numerical analysis and HPC. Similarly, the work on neuromorphic computing represents a fresh and original approach. ARL researchers continue to make good advances in large, multiscale material modeling with a special emphasis on identification of damage modes. Its research approach provides a new method for characterizing spallation. The work related to the visual simulation laboratory focuses the use of a visualization-based framework to allow users to steer a multiresolution PDE simulation. The data-intensive sciences research could be strengthened by incorporating problem formulations that lead to results with theoretically grounded error bounds. Such research would contribute to ARL’s focus on verification and validation in computational science.

Predictive Simulation Sciences

Important contributions have been made to developing predictive capabilities for use on the low-power computer platforms available in the field. In materials modeling, research on scalable algorithms for simulating dislocations in microstructured crystals is promising and has broad applicability for material and structural failure simulations. One of the most difficult technical challenges for this work is the problem of effective load balancing of HPC resources, and the research could benefit from consideration of new developments in adaptive parallel load-balancing techniques.

SCIENCES FOR MANEUVER

In each of the three pillars of the vehicle intelligence (VI) program—intelligence and control (I&C), perception, and human–machine interaction—the research quality was generally high. Collaboration with other government agencies, industry, and universities continues to have positive benefits. Internal personnel advancement strengthens the science capability for the VI research and development (R&D) program. Each of the three pillars of the VI program has demonstrated significant progress in advancing its R&D objectives to support the warfighter in increasingly complex environments. The R&D activities were consistent with their defined objectives. Opportunities in multiperson/multirobot scenario simulation, the teaming of autonomous systems with soldiers in uncertain environments, multispectral sensing, range sensing, contact sensing, and immersive display of robot LIDAR imagery are likely to allow ARL to be of even greater benefit to the soldier.

Inclusion of soldiers in VI field experiments is commendable. Use of more realistic vignettes and real-life simulations in experiments would be very beneficial. In particular, the use of realistic war fighting vignettes, where researchers are in the field with soldiers, provides opportunities to test and evaluate research hypotheses more thoroughly, including the revelation of previous unknowns.

Some strategic goals and tactical milestones for VI R&D programs could be made more apparent. To help quantify general progress and application-specific performance, more efforts need to be made in baselining and benchmarking.

Intelligence and Control

The I&C pillar employs innovative approaches to developing and supporting advanced technologies, algorithms, and tools in support of the warfighter effort. It invests in advancing the effectiveness and efficiency of its research personnel. It has tight couplings with the robotics CTA program and the micro autonomous systems technologies CTA program, with some specific ARL foci. The higher-level cognition that the I&C theme focuses on is aimed at enabling autonomous assets to work in the environments of relevance to the military.

Perception

The perception group at ARL has made significant headway. The perception pillar benefits from high-quality collaborations with top universities that enable successful hiring of outstanding personnel at the Ph.D. level. Its research personnel publish in top journals. The group is well aware of the current trends in the research community through participation in top, highly competitive conferences in the field.

Human–Machine Interaction

The human–machine interaction pillar’s R&D program is of high quality, based on rigorous design and appropriate metrics. It benefits from a substantial increase in external and internal collaborations. Each project has its own appropriate algorithmic or experimental metrics, but the researchers did not, unfortunately, succeed in explaining the higher-level success criteria. The use of soldiers in experiments is commended. The research presented will be shifting from one-person/one-robot studies to multiperson/multirobot scenarios. This shift in research focus is appropriate as the Army moves toward use of more complex teaming architectures. This new direction highlights the need for additional research in trust and in human–machine interaction, raising questions about how one verifies software and validates systems to build confidence in the joint human–machine system, in the face of complex emergent behaviors.

HUMAN SCIENCES

The elements of human sciences that were assessed were humans in multiagent systems, real-world behavior, and human variability. A component of the Assessment and Analysis campaign portfolio on assessing mission capabilities of systems was also reviewed.

Humans in Multiagent Systems

As scoped, the area of humans in multiagent systems is very broad: It includes interactions between humans and technology and between humans and other human beings (sociocultural interactions), and it is not clear how those pieces fit together. This is an important niche area where ARL human sciences should establish competence. It has unquestioned Army relevance and is an interdisciplinary area where human sciences has a lead role to play. The key challenges are how to hold together a coherent vision for ongoing and planned research, to capitalize on useful existing baselines, and to cumulatively build to push the state of the art.

Real-World Behavior

In the area of real-world behavior, the collection and analysis of human behavioral data in dynamic, complex, natural environments is an ambitious and challenging undertaking. Not surprisingly, the accomplishments in this area are incremental given the immature state of the art and the challenges to developing the needed enabling technology and methodology. The research presented appears focused on mission-relevant problems and contexts and draws on measures from multiple domains (e.g., biomechanics, cognition, and neurosciences), consistent with the goal of addressing real-world complexity. Continued strategic investment in this area can yield significant payoffs for the Army with potential spillover benefits to other government and private sector R&D.

Toward Human Variability

Understanding and predicting human variability is an important and timely topic for investigation. Current systems are calibrated to the average performance of the average person in challenging circumstances; optimized adaptive systems might enable better use of human capacity when situations and states permit. Advances in this area reflect the availability of increasingly sophisticated techniques for behavioral and brain measurement and the development of new analytic and statistical methods that could enable adaptive systems in operational settings. This group has recruited an exceptionally strong set of researchers, including well-qualified postdoctoral and early-career scientists representing different technical backgrounds. Overall, the work in this area was of exceptional quality.

ASSESSMENT AND ANALYSIS

In the assessing mission capabilities of systems area, the work comprises human-centered engineering and decision support methods, models, and tools supported under ARL’s Assessment and Analysis campaign. Most of the projects that were presented in this area are responding to the needs of specific Army customers. Commendable efforts are under way at ARL to advance assessment science by developing new models, tools, and metrics to support the acquisition and fielding of effective human–machine systems responsive to emerging missions and threats. ARL has the opportunity to be on the forefront of the research in this area; however, the current portfolio of projects in human–system integration (HSI) may be too customer-driven. ARL could leverage this applied work and/or fund companion projects to advance the state of scientific knowledge for HSI and to broaden the impact of the work beyond the immediate customers.

CROSSCUTTING RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on the 2015 reviews whose assessment is summarized in this interim report, ARLTAB offers four recommendations.

Research Portfolio, Niche Areas, and Staff Development

Recommendation 1. For each campaign ARL should provide to the review panels during the 2016 review a description of its research portfolio that describes each program and project in the portfolio. This description should include information on the project conception and initiation, project planning and scope, project performance and control, and project life cycle and should identify the percentage of each researcher’s time allocated to the project, facilities and equipment required to support the work, and the inception date and anticipated completion milestone or termination date of the project. By referring to the portfolio description, ARL should provide to the review panels for each campaign answers to the following questions:

1. What sampling strategy has ARL applied to the selections of projects to present for review? In what ways do the selected projects provide a representative sample of the portfolio?
2. What projects represent the limited niche areas in which ARL proposes to work, in which of these areas does ARL propose to lead, and what is the rationale for its niche and leadership choices?
3. What metrics has ARL identified to define the success of a project, and what exit criteria has ARL identified to help decide when to terminate a project?

4. What rewards has ARL established to promote accomplishments by staff?
5. What is ARL’s approach to recruitment and development of its staff, including the approach to mentoring?

Integration of Research and Systems Engineering

Recommendation 2. For each campaign ARL should provide to the review panels during the 2016 review answers to the following questions:

1. How does each specific project presented fit within the overall framework of ARL’s research portfolio, and how are projects and programs integrated within and across campaigns so that their work is performed in cognizance of related work and their findings feed into one another and into common goals?
2. How are systems engineering principles and processes applied across the life cycle of projects?
3. How is face validity addressed across the design of experiments, modeling, tests, and analyses?
4. What approaches are planned to secure military-relevant subjects for human sciences tests, experiments, and field studies?

Facilities and Equipment

Recommendation 3. ARL should work to complete formulation of 5-, 10-, 15-, and 20-year strategic plans linked to the technical goals for staffing, facilities, and capital equipment, and should present the plans to the panels during the 2016 reviews. The plan should include a 2-3 year short-term tactical plan for access to necessary computing resources.

ARL Responses to Recommendations

Recommendation 4. ARL should present to the panels during the 2016 reviews responses to the recommendations contained in this interim report.