Science & Technology Grand Challenges
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The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has established Science and Technology Grand Challenges for the Department of the Navy that are long-term research and development efforts over a twenty to fifty year time frame. These Grand Challenges will serve as enablers of future Navy and Marine Corps capabilities required if the Navy and Marine Corps After Next are to retain and improve their present operational effectiveness. By emphasizing selected ongoing research and by introducing appropriate long-term research into our present research and development program, we can develop the capabilities that will be required for the future.

The Naval Science and Technology Grand Challenges were developed at the initiative of ONR's Executive Director-Technical Director by the ONR Chief Scientist with a panel of scientific officers, and have been approved by the Chief of Naval Research. They are being promulgated in the Navy and Marine Corps research and development community to provide long-term focus and program guidance for the Department of the Navy Science and Technology Program. ONR's Chief Scientist will review the future progress of the Science and Technology Grand Challenges and will lead in the introduction of new Grand Challenges or in the revision or termination of existing Grand Challenges every four years.

Each Grand Challenge is overseen by a technical coordinator and a managerial coordinator. The coordinators organized an initial workshop for their Grand Challenge during 1999, to which they invited researchers from many disciplines who had an interest in the challenge.

The four Naval Science and Technology Grand Challenges are:

• Naval Battlespace Awareness.
  The Challenge is to describe the current and future Naval battlespace in terms of the natural environment (space, atmosphere, ocean and the nearby land masses) and the disposition of friendly and enemy forces, with sufficient detail, accuracy, and timeliness to meet evolving Navy and Marine Corps mission requirements.
• Electric Power Sources for the Navy and Marine Corps.
  The Challenge is to develop new, safe, efficient, environmentally friendly, non-petroleum based sources of power and power generation concepts that would support portable long-lived power sources for all future Marine-carried equipment and electric power sources required for all-electric ships and other Naval warfighting platforms.
• Naval Materials by Design.
  The challenge is to develop, beginning from first principles, computational procedures that will yield the composition, synthesis, and processing recipes for required Naval materials with prespecified superior properties, within a time frame associated with system development.
• Multifunctional Electronics for Intelligent Naval Sensors.
  The challenge is to develop highly multifunctional nanoscale architecture devices to their ultimate limits of high speed (100x), small size (0.01x), and low power (0.001x), that interactively combine sensing, image processing, computation, signal processing, and communication functions, to achieve real-time adaptive response, all on-site for Navy missions.

These Grand Challenges are not programs to which proposals may be submitted. For information on specific programs please see topics listed under individual departments and divisions as described at the ONR Science & Technology homepage.