Terms of Reference (Phase 2)

At the request of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine—under the auspices of the Naval Studies Board—will conduct a study that examines U.S. Naval Forces’ capabilities to maintain operational effectiveness in the face of an adversary’s efforts to deny and degrade mission-critical data; and, to what extent, can state-of-the-art approaches such as artificial intelligence and deep learning be applied to ensure that the speed and flexibility of its decision-making process is better than that of its adversaries.

The committee will:

(a) Review the data needs and performance requirements (e.g., networking and architecture) for one operational usage case critical to the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and the Fleet;

(b) Apply candidate state-of-the-art approaches to the operational usage case; and

(c) Recommend specific data science, data analytics, networking, and architecture approaches that could be applied to the operational usage case in order to ensure that U.S. Naval Forces’ capabilities maintain operational effectiveness in the face of an adversary’s efforts to deny and degrade mission-critical data and that the speed and flexibility of its decision-making process is better than that of its adversaries.