recommended that a long-range strategic plan be developed to provide (1) a framework for future ONR S&T investments, including emphasis on D&I and (2) a vision for new capabilities, including advanced concepts at affordable costs. The committee believes that this earlier recommendation remains applicable today.

Recommendation: In collaboration with other Department of the Navy elements, ONR should develop a strategic naval air and surface weapons technology plan that will achieve a balance between near- and long-term goals. This effort should include collaboration with both the Marine Corps Combat Development Command and the Navy Warfare Development Command, given their concept-based approaches, as well as the help of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Naval Air Systems Command, given their influence on naval air and surface weapons technology needs. Such collaboration might even help to stimulate, evaluate, and transition new technologies to fleet experiments and expedite their transition to operational use. Moreover, systems analysis should be used as a means for developing this strategic plan as well as throughout the overall S&T planning process at ONR. Finally, as part of this strategic plan, the committee recommends that all projects relevant to an S&T air and surface weapons capability throughout ONR and the Department of the Navy be collectively reviewed, even though they exist in several functional organizations.

The committee's first review criterion was the appropriateness of the ASWT program investment strategy within the context of Navy and Marine Corps priorities and requirements. In many thrust areas (e.g., precision strike navigation and cruise missile real-time retargeting), the ASWT program seemed to be responsive to operational requirements, while in other areas (e.g., gun weaponry and directed energy) there seemed to be a much weaker connection between the technology and the naval requirement.

An important example of a requirement is that for naval fire support. The committee was told that the projected concept of operations (CONOPS) for naval fire in support of Marine forces requires deep, accurate, high-rate, high-volume delivery of ordnance inserted as far inland as 200 nautical miles (nmi). These airborne units would not carry artillery for volume fire. Most targets will be time critical for one reason or another. Once the process time from surveillance to target detection, identification, and assignment is reduced, there are two basic ways to provide support fire and reduce the time to weapons on the target: the first is to minimize the weapon flight time from launch platform to target, the second is to loiter the launch platform or weapon close to the expected target-rich area. Almost all current Code 351 time-critical and precision-strike technology programs are focused on the second approach using cruise missiles or aircraft/uninhabited combat air vehicle (UCAV)-launched weapons. Two exceptions are the gun weaponry thrust, which is applicable to ranges of not much more than 50 nmi, and the hypersonic weapons technology project (under Propulsion and Aeromechanics), aimed at ship- and air-launched Mach 5 or 6 air-breathing cruise missiles with ranges in excess of 400 nmi.

The difficulty with the current emphasis on loitering weapon platforms or weapons for long-range TCS is limited payload capacity and limited endurance. The Navy has the ability to position platforms with very long endurance and with capacity for large volumes of sustainable fire in support of expeditionary forces deployed from the fleet.

The NSB's 1999 assessment of the ASWT program pointed out the obvious application and advantage of solid-rocket-propelled weapons at the longer ranges in lieu of trying to push gun-launched rocket-assisted projectiles or extended-range guided munitions (ERGMs) to ranges that would introduce

Front Matter (R1-R10)

Executive Summary (1-9)

1. Introduction (10-13)

2. General Observations (14-20)

3. Discovery and Invention Technology Thrusts (21-34)

4. Thrusts of The Time Critical Strike FNC Program (35-44)

Appendix A: Biographies of Committee Members and Staff (45-50)

Appendix B: Agenda for the Committee's Meeting (51-53)

Appendix C: Acronyms and Abbreviations (54-56)