4-D COMMON OPERATIONAL PICTURE (COP) FOR MISSION ASSURANCE (4D COP) Task Order 0001: Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Autonomy Collaboration in Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), Electronic Warfare (EW)/Cyber and Combat Identification (CID)

Abstract : Dialogic Design International (DDI) presents a final report for the Autonomy Discovery project, a series of workshops and investigations held between August 2014 and March 2016 to support an autonomy research collaboration aimed at long-term R and D outcomes across AFRL directorates (RY, RH, RI) and AFIT. The project was designed to engage scientific staff from across AFRL in a series of problem finding (discovery) and problem-solving workshops, expanding stakeholder engagement to build consensus on challenges and future action. A key goal was to inspire collaborations across AFRL for future autonomy programs. The collaboration focused on the uncertainty engendered by the global adoption of advanced emerging technologies and their potential for disruption to roadmaps tied to path dependency of outdated strategies. These initial collaborative sessions resulted in the discovery of a key problem query: What bold approaches could AFRL take to address the challenges of Situation Representation used by autonomous learning systems during pick-up games in contested or degraded environments toward the goals of merging ISR, EW/Cyber, and Combat ID? A key finding is that this is critical area of inquiry that will touch on every Air Force mission function and connects across many, if not all, future AFRL R and D programs. Because there have been no strategic research collaborations engaging the long-term trajectory of human-machine teaming in autonomous functions across ISR, cyber and air combat, we maintain that there may be considerable risk to program outcomes by underrepresenting the desired future state of autonomous systems.