Merging Sensor and Stored Terrain Database Data for Rotorcraft Poor Visibility Weather Operations

Navy operational mission planning teams plan offensive strike operations using antiquated, manual processes. Current Navy developments include automated mission planning at the platform level (E-2D, F/A-18, EA-6B) and at the Joint Forces Air Component Commander – JFACC level. Automated planning tools for offensive strike planning at the Airwing level do not exist. Monterey Technologies, Inc. (MTI) and Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. (SHAI), as a joint venture, propose to design and develop the prototype of a modern Offensive Air Planning System (OAPS) to fill this gap. This proposal is for the work of Spiral one for a period of fifteen months of a two spiral project. Discussion of Spiral two provides a context of the complete project. OAPS will fill the need for automated mission planning between the tactical platform level and the JFACC level and will be compatible with the Joint Mission Planning System (JMPS) architecture. OAPS will be an application of artificial-intelligence symbolic knowledge representation and reasoning approaches that encode data and expertise about weapon systems, adversary system models, and configurable plan templates. Symbolic representations will enable powerful and extensible encoding of the system's knowledge base and heuristic knowledge from human planners will empower OAPS to find near-optimal solutions quickly.