Real-time Decision Aid for Enhancing Ship’s Self-defense

Providing tactical cueing information to support accelerated situational understanding as an aid for the platform watch team, is the objective of this Phase II SBIR. With the greater availability of information from advanced sensors, third party information, and autonomous vehicles, the watch team can become overloaded and either miss or not properly assimilate the data available at any given point in time. Using a mission driven and decision centered design process, our research and associated innovative experimentation will temporally identify and properly characterize the watch team information needs. This provides the foundation for applying predictive analytics through machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), significantly increasing a watch team’s ability to handle greater complexity and uncertainty. Utilizing and properly combining the appropriate tactical information, environmental variables, and historical data can also serve to measure and track evolving tactical risks. This information, when compared with risks perceived by the watch team, can lead to alternative considerations otherwise potentially missed. In addition, providing timely tactical cues can and should increase the platform’s safety as well as effectiveness for successfully completing routine and non-routine evolutions. Capturing and incorporating fleet expertise as tactical cues will also serve to provide continuous watch team training.