The Army has established a vigorous research program covering a wide range of disciplines to capture and exploit the new opportunities presented by research advances and discoveries. This program is executed primarily by university contractors and in–house laboratory and RDEC personnel, and maximizes the use of the initiatives noted in Section V–B above.

Within a wide spectrum of research, several primary areas emerge that are of particular importance to tomorrow’s Army. These efforts in the following research areas are described in the sections that follow:

Mathematics plays an essential role in modeling, analysis, and control of complex phenomena and systems of critical interest to the Army. Mathematical modeling is increasingly being identified as critical for progress in many areas of Army interest. The mathematical and scientific tasks in these areas of interest are frequently of significant complexity. As a result, researchers from two or more areas of mathematics must often collaborate together and with experts from other areas of science and engineering to achieve Army goals. Some examples of cross–cutting areas of research include the breakup of liquid droplets in high–speed air flow (for determination of the dispersion of chemical or biological agents spilled from intercepted theater–range missiles), computational methods for penetration mechanics, and automatic target recognition. For example, promising approaches to computer vision for automatic target recognition require research in a wide range of areas including constructive geometry, numerical methods, stochastic analysis, Bayesian statistics, probabilistic algorithms, and distributed parallel computing. To achieve Army goals, research in several areas is important:

An investment strategy meeting with participants from ARO, ARL, RDECs, Corps of Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (WES), Concepts Analysis Agency (CAA), Deputy Under Secretary of the Army (Operations Research) (DUSA(OR)), and academia identified several exciting research areas that will have significant impact on future Army technologies. Based on these recommendations, research priorities inside these areas are listed below.

Physical modeling and mathematical analysis for nonlinear ordinary and partial differential, difference, and integral equations for:

With the change from a predictable large threat to numerous and often unpredictable regional threats, the need for more flexibility in Army systems and more rapid development of these systems increases. As the cost of physical experimentation increases, the role of mathematical modeling becomes more important. Mathematical modeling is a major factor in ensuring that a system is well designed and that it will work once built. In all of the following areas, mathematics is a fundamental tool required by the Army of the present and the future:

The computer and information sciences address fundamental issues in understanding, formalizing, acquiring, representing, manipulating, and using information. The advanced systems, including the software engineering environments and new computational architectures facilitated by this research will often be interactive, adaptive, sometimes distributed and/or autonomous, and frequently characterized as intelligent. Computer–based systems that process information and transfer data and analysis among various Army commanders and units are essential for military success.

The computer science and software issues that arise in this context often require input from a number of subdisciplines of computer science, as well as from other disciplines. Multisensor fusion, multi–image fusion, image understanding, language processing, distributed interactive simulation, multivariable and multiresolution methods for terrain modeling, scalable parallel algorithms and algorithms for processing large–scale data are but a few of these areas. In these areas, computer and information sciences research is organized in a cross–cutting fashion to provide the expertise needed to accomplish the Army goal (rather than remain within traditional disciplinary boundaries). Based on the recommendations from an investment strategy meeting among senior scientists from ARO, ARL, RDECs, TRADOC, DUSA(OR), CAA, COE, and academia, research in the following areas was determined to be important to the Army:

The contributions of the computer and information sciences to a well–equipped strategic force capable of decisive victory in conflicts in the Information Age are important in the following areas: