34 THE FIVB-YEAR OUTLOOK 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



A State-of-the-art survey of the field of artificial intel- 

 ligence appears in the accompanying Source Volumes 

 (NRC-17). Coupled with work on automation and robot- 

 ics, advances in the field are expected to play an in- 

 creasingly important role in solving future military prob- 

 lems of engineering, management, logistics, reliability 

 and maintainability, remote sensing, surveillance, and 

 vehicle and weapons control. 



A major Department of Defense research effort, sched- 

 uled to begin in fiscal year 1982, will investigate new 

 techniques for automated systems that make use of state- 

 of-the-art knowledge of artificial intelligence. The re- 

 search will focus on methods for representing knowledge 

 and for reasoning with knowledge in computer systems. 

 Studies in systems automation will establish the founda- 

 tion for a new generation of intelligent military systems, 

 ranging from "expert consultants"" to autonomous sys- 

 tems, that will provide new capabilities and ease man- 

 power needs . The " 'expert consultant" " systems will assist 

 users in such tasks as planning and scheduling operations 

 and diagnosing and repairing complex mechanical sys- 

 tems. Autonomous systems will be capable of command- 

 ing, controlling, and conducting military operations and 

 will possess a capability to sense, think, and act. 



The Department of Defense's work in robotics is close- 

 ly associated with that research. Not only must the De- 

 partment of Defense manufacture systems, it must sup- 

 port and maintain those systems across a farflung theater 

 of operations, frequently in hostile operating environ- 

 ments, using a largely unskilled labor force with a high 

 turnover rate. Thus, the demand for intelligent, flexible 

 automation (robots) is obvious. 



In the near future, the use of robots in Department of 

 Defense systems manufacturing will increase in parallel 

 with industry. Maintenance and repair activities at inter- 

 mediate- and depot-levels will begin to use robots as the 

 technology matures to the point where robot systems can 

 deal with the complications and variations associated with 

 such work. In the longer term, robots will be developed 

 for field uses to assist combat and support forces: those 

 applications will place still greater requirements on robots 

 to be flexible and intelligent and to have sensory ca- 

 pabilities. It has been suggested, for example, that much 

 onboard ship maintenance could be done more efficiently 

 if each ship used a work cell operated by intelligent robots 

 to manufacture parts needed rather than carrying vast 

 numbers of seldom-used spares. 



COMMAND, CONTROL, AND COMMUNICATIONS 



Rapid advances in the converging fields of computer and 

 communications technologies provide the potential to de- 

 velop systems to improve the Nation's ability to coordi- 

 nate its fightmg forces around the world. Strategic com- 



mand, control, and communications systems must be able 

 to survive in combat and be highly dependable as the link 

 between the command structure, strategic reserve forces. 

 and troops in the field. Communications response time is 

 also a critical factor. In pursuing the development and 

 demonstration of computer/communications technology 

 in a broad strategic and tactical systems context, experts 

 are exploring computer communications technologies for 

 application to both individual networks and internetwork 

 systems. Advanced packet communications techniques 

 and a powerful experimental internetwork are under de- 

 velopment to provide local . regional , and long-band com- 

 puter communications via ground radio transmission, ter- 

 restrial circuits, and satellites. Several experimental 

 testbeds are being used to evaluate new information- 

 processing technologies in realistic military 

 environments. 



The Department of Defense is also developing the 

 technology for securing classified information processed 

 or stored in computer and communications networks. 

 Basic research in distributed computer systems is address- 

 ing the military need for geographically dispersed multi- 

 computer command and control systems. In fiscal year 

 1981, new initiatives were begun on the design of secure 

 distributed transition systems in which several security 

 levels must be handled concurrently. 



NEW MATERIALS TECHNOLOGIES 



The availability of stronger, lighter, and more heat resist- 

 ant materials that can be fabricated from domestically 

 available raw materials is critical to the future develop- 

 ment of military aircraft, spacecraft, and ballistic mis- 

 siles. Over the years, pioneering developments in ad- 

 vanced materials that have emerged from Department of 

 Defense programs have led to vastly improved military 

 capabilities as well as the creation of new U.S. industries. 

 Fiberglass-reinforced plastics, for example, are now fa- 

 miliar almost everywhere. The Department of Defense, 

 through early developments in its science and technology 

 program, has created the rapidly growing, new. world- 

 wide industry of fiber-reinforced plastic composite mate- 

 rials. Commercial and private aircraft now in develop- 

 ment will use increasing amounts of those materials to 

 improve efficiency and reduce fuel consumption. 



Although the achievements have been fomiidable. the 

 pace of advances in military technology has imposed even 

 more rigorous demands on systems performance, and the 

 quest for materials with still greater performance ca- 

 pabilities must be pursued vigorously in the years ahead. 

 Priority areas for research and development include im- 

 provements in carbon/carbon composites, in metal-matrix 

 composites, and in rapid solidification technology. 



The development of carbon fiber-reinforced carbon 

 composite materials has led an increasing number of 



