Review of Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) Developments 
forecasting of solar disturbances, scintillation phenomena, and other disturbances will be modeled based 
on real-time satellite data. The Department of the Navy must support the development of this modeling 
capability. 
With respect to terrestrial weather and climate prediction, the panel presents the following 
recommendations: 
e To take advantage of the vast quantities of new environmental data from an increasing array of 
remote-sensing devices—in space, in the upper atmosphere, on land, and on and under the 
sea—the Department of the Navy should pursue the development of shipboard computational 
and data communication systems coupled to land-based high-performance computers. 
e Emphasis should be placed on developing the higher-resolution climate prediction models that 
are necessary for tactical warfare operations. 
e R&D emphasis should be placed on the high-performance hardware, algorithms, and memory 
storage required to enable real-time applications under realistic battle-space conditions. 
With respect to littoral-water modeling, the panel presents the following recommendations: 
e Greater attention should be paid to the dynamics of near-shore environments, including such 
phenomena as shallow-water acoustics, variable visibility, and strong, near-shore currents, which 
at present are not well understood. 
e Databases should be developed that sufficiently describe near-shore phenomena, including 
beach characteristics that can lead to accurate forecasting of littoral conditions. 
e To enable naval personnel to use such databases, graphical interface technologies need to be 
developed, including on-board, multidimensional, multisensorial virtual-reality systems capable of 
representing real-time and evolving underwater physical environments near shore.” 
AUVs represent one tool to deploy data gathering capabilities to address these 
recommendations. 
