Operational Adaptation

What Is It?

Operational Adaptation, OA, is a science and technology concept being developed to probe, shape and dominate threats in an irregular, hybrid warfare environment. OA creates the capability to develop and sustain a decision/action tempo that surpasses a terrorist adversary’s ability to maintain.

 

How Does It Work?

OA seeks integrated multidomain dominance to:

  • Forewarn: Tactical, operational and strategic forewarning is achieved through the detection of operationally relevant physical, cultural and informational anomalies.
  • Stimulate: Threat activity and adaptation mechanisms/patterns are observed, recorded and analyzed after using proactive and synchronized stimulation actions.
  • Predict: Threat patterns and adaptation mechanisms are analyzed to enhance friendly force anticipatory understanding of the threat and to facilitate the prediction of future threat actions and adaptations.

 

What Will It Accomplish?

OA will help the warfighter gain the situational awareness in order to shape and predict future enemy actions in an irregular warfare environment.

 

The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review stated that “irregular warfare has emerged as the dominant form of warfare confronting the United States.” The Secretary of Defense has asked for more parity in developmental efforts that support operations in an irregular warfare environment. To address technology shortfalls, the chief of naval research has initiated an operational adaption (OA) program and strategic study that will feed into the OA integrated technology demonstrations and experimentation with five demonstrations scheduled through 2015.

Operational adaptation is the development and sustainment of a tempo or rhythm of adaptation and decision superiority that is beyond an adversary’s ability to achieve or sustain. Specific capabilities needed to enable OA include: affordable, scalable and persistent surveillance; equipment to conduct near real-time forensics; tools to tag, track and locate; tools to find and map human networks, and; information operation tools that respond to the cognitive physical domain.

OA will provide nearly perfect situational awareness, allowing U.S. forces to probe, shape and finally manipulate and dominate the enemy. It will predict enemy actions at the tactical, operational and strategic levels. These capabilities will allow friendly forces to proactively engage and defeat enemy networks, cells and entities.

The Office of Naval Research Operational Adaptation Program seeks to facilitate dominance across multiple domains—physical, virtual and human—to gain forewarning and forecasting of irregular threat actions.

Research Opportunities:

  • Multidimension sensing: Developing sensors to detect and evaluate anomalies in human-centric (vice platform-centric) dimensions
  • Understanding human terrain: Developing the understanding to effectively and quickly evaluate human anomalies and our own actions on locals
  • Rapid turn processing: Developing the capacity to turn “gigabytes of data into kilobytes of knowledge,” and make it available to the warfighter in time = actionable knowledge
  • Tactical leader training: Developing training systems to enable warriors to make better decisions and implement them effectively in complex battlespaces

Jim McMains
(703) 696-1357
james.mcmains@navy.mil

 

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