Special Program Announcement for 2018 Office of Naval Research Basic Research Opportunity: “Advancing Artificial Intelligence for the Naval Domain” | N00014 18 R SN05

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The Department of Defense Office of Naval Research (ONR) released this Special Program Announcement in February 2018 as a basic research opportunity under its FY18 Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology (N00014-18-S-B001). The thrust is titled "Advancing Artificial Intelligence for the Naval Domain" and it is meant to pull together and accelerate AI-related basic research that can matter to naval missions and operating environments. In practical terms, ONR is using this announcement to signal the specific AI problem areas it wants the research community to focus on, to prompt early conversations with ONR program staff, and to lay out timing for submitting white papers and then full proposals. The funding instrument is a grant, the opportunity is discretionary, and ONR indicated it expected to make around seven awards. The listing does not specify an award ceiling (shown as 0), which typically means applicants should look to the attached instructions and the broader BAA for realistic project sizing and limits rather than assuming there is no constraint.

Scientifically, the announcement frames AI as a cross-cutting capability that touches decision support, autonomy, human factors, and C4ISR. It points proposers to multiple sections of the BAA Appendix 1 (Program Description), making it clear ONR is interested in foundational advances as well as naval-relevant demonstrations or validations. One major anchor is Code 30 (Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combating Terrorism), specifically the ONR 30 Decision Support, AI, Machine Learning, and Graph Analysis program area. This emphasizes modeling, machine learning, AI, and graph-based methods that can help with decision advantage in complex, adversarial, and time-sensitive scenarios typical of expeditionary operations. That framing generally aligns with research such as learning under uncertainty, reasoning over heterogeneous data sources, resilient analytics, and decision support methods that can be trusted when information is incomplete or contested.

A second anchor is Code 31 (C4ISR), under Mathematics, Computers and Information Sciences. Here, ONR highlights two tightly related technical areas: computational methods for decision making, and machine learning, reasoning, and intelligence. This combination signals interest not only in pattern recognition or predictive models, but also in the broader pipeline of decision-centric AI: how to fuse data, represent beliefs, reason about options, adapt plans, and recommend actions in realistic command-and-control settings. It also implies attention to the constraints that dominate naval applications, such as limited communications, noisy sensors, rapidly changing operational pictures, and the need to deliver understandable outputs to human operators and commanders.

The announcement also explicitly ties AI progress to Warfighter Performance (Code 34), particularly in Human and Bioengineered Systems. The specific focus areas called out include perception, metacognition, and cognitive control, along with representing and reasoning about uncertainty. Read together, this points toward research that improves how humans and AI systems work together: AI that can support human situational awareness, help manage cognitive workload, and make uncertainty visible and actionable rather than hiding it behind point estimates. It also leaves room for work on human-AI teaming, calibration of trust, and methods that can model or account for human intent, attention, and decision biases in high-stakes naval contexts.

Finally, the announcement connects strongly to Naval Air Warfare and Weapons (Code 35), with an emphasis on autonomy. It highlights intelligent autonomy for safe, reliable, and scalable control of heterogeneous unmanned air systems based on high-level mission tasking, and it references the "Science of Autonomy" focus areas. The specific autonomy clauses emphasize autonomous learning, reasoning, and decision-making in unstructured, dynamic, and uncertain environments; human interaction and collaboration (including understanding the intent and actions of human teammates, adversaries, and bystanders); and organic perception and understanding to support decisions and actions in a complex world. In other words, ONR is not just looking for autonomy in clean lab settings. The stated interests are aligned with real operational challenges like changing weather and terrain, cluttered airspace, unexpected events, adversarial behavior, and the need for unmanned systems to interpret mission intent from higher-level guidance while remaining safe and dependable.

From an applicant standpoint, the opportunity is organized around a white paper to proposal pipeline, with due dates provided in an attached document and a main closing date listed as May 11, 2018 (with the note to consult the PDF for white paper timing). The eligible applicant category is listed broadly as "Others" with additional eligibility details in the full text, which usually indicates ONR is open to a wide range of performers typical of BAAs (for example, universities, nonprofit research organizations, for-profit companies, and teams/consortia), but applicants would need to confirm exact eligibility rules and any restrictions in the full solicitation package.

Overall, this announcement is best read as a targeted call for basic research that advances core AI methods while staying grounded in naval needs: decision making under uncertainty, learning and reasoning in contested and dynamic environments, human-AI collaboration and cognitive considerations, and robust autonomy for heterogeneous unmanned systems. It is intentionally cross-referenced across multiple ONR codes to encourage proposals that either push fundamentals with clear naval relevance or integrate several AI components (perception, learning, reasoning, uncertainty, and human interaction) into coherent approaches that can transition into future Navy and Marine Corps capabilities.

• The Department of Defense, Office of Naval Research in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Special Program Announcement for 2018 Office of Naval Research Basic Research Opportunity: “Advancing Artificial Intelligence for the Naval Domain”" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.300.
• This funding opportunity was created on Feb 08, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by May 11, 2018 Refer to attached PDF for white paper due dates.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 7 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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