Fiscal Year	2010
Division	Graduate School of Operational & Information Sciences
Department	Information Sciences
Investigator(s)	Boger, Dan C.
Sponsor	Marine Corps Systems Command (Marine Corps)
Summary	The Marines need ever-improving systems to find, fix and target enemies. They have adopted a rapid prototyping approach with 5 key elements: (1) an architecture for composing capabilities; (2) a set of evolving components; (3) an environment for testing and employing candidate systems; (4) a fitness function that assesses how well the candidates perform in the environment and that guides feedback; and (5) a feedback function that assures investment flows into successful components and promising new candidates. The fitness function must shape successive systems to utilize highvalue information and reduce low-productivity activities that produce or consume low-value bits. This is what our VIRT techniques address: how to assure that significant bits flow to and affect decision-makers while they have time and processing resources to exploit them. VIRT is a key aspect of the fitness function that will make the evolutionary approach converge on superior systems. This proposal aims to support MCSC Intell to implement these key elements and attain a best of breed solution to the intelligence problem that continuously evolves and improves.
Keywords	Persistent ISR Battlespace Awareness Information Superiority VIRT
Publications	Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data	Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal