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 (SoA) 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 study will be conducted in two phases. Phase 1, completed in 2019, involved two workshops and a consensus study report prepared by a committee that explored SoA approaches in the context of U.S. Naval Forces' broader "decision space" needs. Phase 2 will involve a different committee that will prepare a follow-on consensus study report in the context of an operational usage case. Specifically:

Phase (1) - a committee planned and hosted 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 were 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 study. The committee prepared a consensus study report in 2019 that, in general, recommended specific data science, data analytics, networking, and architecture approaches (from the workshops) that could be potentially applied to broader Naval Forces' "decision space" needs.

Phase (2) - this 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 phase 1 report and elsewhere) 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.