Cost-Effective Mission Planning for Persistent Surveillance of the Littoral Physical Environment Navy SBIR FY2005.1 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2005.1 Topic No.: N05-076 Topic Title: Cost-Effective Mission Planning for Persistent Surveillance of the Littoral Physical Environment Proposal No.: N051-076-1186 Firm: Ocean Acoustical Services and Instrumentation Syst 5 Militia Drive Lexington, Massachusetts 02421 Contact: Kevin Heaney Phone: (703) 532-2599 Web Site: None Abstract: Effective antisubmarine warfare (ASW) requires knowledge of all aspects of the complicated undersea environment. Variability of the oceanographic temperature field affects the sound speed structure and, therefore, acoustic propagation. With the development of dynamic ocean models and long-life Autonomous Undersea Vehicles for ocean sampling, the navy has a need for an adaptive environmental measurement mission planner (EMMP). Using knowledge of shallow water oceanography, ocean modeling and acoustic propagation for ASW operations, a non-linear global optimization (Genetic Algorithm) approach will be used to determine the optimal sensor suite and sampling scheme for cost-effective ocean characterization. The goal of the measurement system is to determine the mean state of the ocean (for sonar performance prediction and ASW mission planning) and to compute the associated environmental uncertainty due to ocean variability and to sub-optimal sampling. The final modules of the EMMP will include a pre-mission planner, an automatic controller with adaptive updates for during mission optimization, and a post-mission evaluation approach to estimate the resolution of the measurements and the associated uncertainty. The model ocean, with assimilated measurements, from the Autonomous Ocean Sampling Network experiment in Monterey Bay will be used as the "true ocean" for algorithm development, application and verification. Benefits: The ability to characterize uncertainty and variability of the ocean sound speed structure will be a valuable tool in the Navy community. The widespread nature of this problem leads to significant interest in a Phase III transition from the Naval Oceanographers Office (NAVO) via OAML, the Submarine Community (APB Program), the surveillance community (ADS, FDS, SURTASS), the air ASW community (NAVAIR), to the surface ship active community (LFA, 53-C). Success in this research could lead to development of applications to address the oceanographic effects of uncertainty in the oil exploration business and in other areas of data fusion using statistical analysis. Return