Liquid Fuel Atomizer

Increased demands on the surface Navy coupled with force downsizing and other factors have made maintaining readiness a key issue. The goal of this project is to develop methods and supporting technologies for measuring readiness in the surface Navy. InPhase I, we will first determine a set of mission areas and functions that we will use for developing and demonstrating our readiness assessment and diagnosis methods and tools. We will also define constraints on the technology as a function of shipfeatures and other practical issues that may limit our options. Finally, we will follow a process described in this proposal on the sample set of ship and crew functions to demonstrate how the methods and technologies assess crew readiness. This processincludes the determination of tasks critical to function success, the identification of a smaller set of performance indicator tasks, task analysis and the development of measures of effectiveness on the performance indicator tasks, the development ofautomated and manual supporting technologies for assessment, and the development of a summary readiness assessment tool. At the end of Phase I, we will have tested this process and determined its practicality and utility in assessing crew and shipreadiness.By being able to assess readiness objectively and efficiency, the Navy will be able determine deficiencies in readiness before a ship and crew goes on a mission for which they are unprepared. This could save lives and avoid internationalembarrassments. Additionally, the tools we propose to develop will provide diagnostic information that will help the ship and crew determine the best path to achieving better readiness as well as providing ways to measure progress along that path.