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Statement of Task
The Air Force Studies Board at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will establish an ad hoc committee to investigate energy challenges and opportunities for future data-driven operations in the U.S. Air Force (USAF).
The committee will develop a report that will:
- Investigate the current state of Air Force planning, research and development, and expectations related to energy usage for military operations in the 2030 time frame.
- Investigate potential threats to energy assurance and access based on recent events and assumptions of future energy dependencies that should inform Air Force/government planning for energy generation, storage, and use.
- Investigate and describe current research and state of the art in energy efficient computation including hardware, software, and big data.
- Investigate and describe the energy needs for advanced weapons platforms including static infrastructure that provides support to machine learning, artificial intelligence, and integrated operations.
- Recommend manpower, research, and expertise requirements needed for the future energy environment.
The committee will also plan and convene a multiday workshop to inform its deliberations about what steps and plans the USAF is taking and/or should be considering now to successfully develop, deploy, and sustain the weapons systems
needed to compete in an emerging information-rich environment. The workshop will investigate energy demands for weapons systems from the airbase to the battle space, including information requirements and needs associated with capture, curation, storage, exploitation, and transmission of energy to enable the deployment and operation of data-reliant systems.
