<p>Submarine designs have traditionally been evolutionary, with each new design being more capable than the last. Issues like speed, depth, and combat/weapons systems have dominated the design process because of concerns with the increasing capability of Soviet submarines. Only cursory attention has been paid to affordability. As a result, the SEAWOLF submarine is estimated to cost approximately twice as much as an improved-LOS ANGELES Class submarine (its predecessor).</p> <p> The combination of a reduced Defense Department budget and increased unit costs is projected to result in an Attack Submarine force level of less than 40 ships over time as opposed to current force levels of 90-100 ships. The Navy has on occasion stated that 60 submarines is the minimum needed to meet its mission requirements, which have changed with the decrease in the Soviet threat. Accordingly, the current Navy focus is to explore ways to reduce unit submarine costs to less than half of SEA WOLF.</p> <p> This project will examine the submarine from a Life Cycle Cost perspective starting with the definition of need, mission definition and requirements, trade-off analysis and cost allocation all resulting in a conceptual submarine design that meets the cost target of 50 percent for acquisition and 75 percent for operations and maintenance relative to the SEA WOLF submarine program.</p> / Master of Science

Master of Science

<p>The major objective of this project is to estimate the resource requirements of a real-time program developed in the actor-based system ACT++. This report describes the design and implementation of instrumentation primitives. Using these primitives, a real-time system can be simulated and an estimate of processor and memory requirements can be obtained.</p> / Master of Science

<p>This report presents the design of a ground station for performing satellite communications using amateur radio satellites. The resulting design integrates commercially available hardware and software to provide effective communications using all current amateur satellite analog and digital operating modes. The station is capable of growth to support message forwarding, gateway, and satellite monitoring and control functions. The acquisition plan spreads the station's acquisition over several years to keep costs within an individual's budget, and maintains flexibility to adapt to changes in satellites and communications modes available over the station's life. The station's major design drivers are sufficient link budget for reliable communications, the station's life cycle cost, ensuring radio frequency energy fields are at safe levels, placement of antennas and supports to comply with local architectural restrictions, and selection of a 435 MHz transceiver for the station.</p> <p>This project illustrates the ability of individuals or small groups to economically acquire effective satellite communications capability by integrating largely off-the-shelf hardware and software. In conjunction with small, relatively low-cost satellites, this ability places space communications and related research within reach of groups otherwise excluded from participating in satellite programs.</p> / Master of Science

It was discovered during the Gulf war that the current time required to plan a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) mission was too long and that the current mission planning system design was limited in its capabilities. The possibility of incorporating object-oriented technology into the TLAM Planning System (TPS) was invest i gated ; n order to reduce the time required to plan a particular mission and to increase the capabilities of mission planning. The current time to plan a Tomahawk mission is approximately over three hours. Ut i 1 i zing Object-Oriented Technology (DOT) within the TPS will reduce this time significantly. DOT also allows for the use of complex data transactions and data types such as voice, video, graphics, image and text. Utilizing complex data types in mission planning will increase mission capabilities and performance. / Master of Science

see document / Master of Science in Education

The purpose of this project is to forecast the incidence of failures to be encountered by a software package for C3I systems over and throughout its life cycle. It will be assumed that a data base of software previously developed for C3I systems will be used to forecast the software integrity of a software package under initial development. "Software integrity" is defined as a projection of the stream of failures that will be experienced by the new software. The failure history of the mature C3I systems software will be statistically quantified parametrically and by experimental design techniques (ANOVA) to gather information which will be used to forecast what C3I software with similar characteristics--length, language, debugging effort, etc.--will experience. <p>Then, as the new C3I system software matures, statistical techniques for software systems engineering will be addressed for testing appropriateness of the initial projections; and eventually the new software will be parametrically modeled on its own merits to forecast the failures to be encountered over the remainder of its life cycle. <p>Lastly, the data base history of software for mature C3I systems software will be updated and amended as needed to facilitate reliable forecasting of software integrity for a new round of C3I systems software. <p>The attention to C3I implied by the title of the project will reflect itself in the classes of software considered and development conditions, schedules and complexities of the software. / Master of Science

This project involves a telephone-based information retrieval system. Users interact with the computer by pressing buttons on a telephone keypad and listening to the computer respond by way of a speech synthesizer. The purpose of this project is to redesign and revise an existing information retrieval system. The goals of this project include simplifying the job of the menu designer and providing a way so experience can aid users to perform a given task faster than previously possible. Key objectives of this project are adding a keyword command interface to the existing menu driven interface and developing a flexible menu representation scheme for the menu designers. The original system is part of a National Science Foundation funded project entitled "Integrated Research Paradigm For Information Technology," The system works by speaking lists of keywords using a synthesizer and allowing the user to choose the most appropriate keyword from each list. After selecting a keyword the user is given another list of more specific keywords. By repeating this process the user should eventually reach some desired information. Whenever a user selects a particular keyword the system will present him with a message pertaining to that keyword. Tasks accomplished include implementing a menu driven system together with a keyword command system and allowing use of a simplified menu representation scheme. Testing might evaluate the effectiveness of these changes. One comparison involves single keying versus double keying versus menu driven user interfaces. Another comparison concerns the effects of command completion and various methods of handling user errors. Keying issues, such as the association of function to the keys, and the effects of feedback messages could also be studied. / Master of Science

Master of Science

Master of Science