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 appoint an ad hoc committee to conduct a fast-track 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 (SoA) approaches such as artificial intelligence and deep learning be applied to U.S. Naval Forces’ “decision space” in order to ensure that the speed and flexibility of its decision-making process is better than that of its adversaries. The study will be based, in part, on two workshops that explore SoA approaches. Specifically:

(1) Workshops - - the committee will plan and host two workshops in order to explore SoA data science, data analytics, networking, and architecture approaches utilized by experts across commercial, academic, and other sectors. The workshops will be primarily intended (a) to facilitate a dialogue of candidate SoA approaches, to include any barriers for their implementation (operational and/or technical); and (b) to identify candidate SoA approaches to be used as part of the fast-track study.

(2) Fast-track Study - - the committee will (a) review the data needs and performance requirements (e.g., networking and architecture) for one operational usage case critical to CNO and the Fleet; (b) apply candidate SoA approaches (from the workshops) 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 and, more broadly, Naval Forces’ “decision space” in order to ensure that the speed and flexibility of its decision-making process is better than that of its adversaries.