Rule-based structural design in C
AI Expert
Automating Knowledge Acquisition for Expert Systems
Automating Knowledge Acquisition for Expert Systems
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In the past, the clear dominance of U.S. strategic nuclear forces permitted the deployment of tactical nuclear and conventional forces at a relatively high but acceptable level of risk with respect to survivability. Today, however, the U.S. strategic nuclear posture no longer provides the same dominance. Should deterrence fail, the United States must be prepared to engage in combat across the full spectrum of possible conflicts, including conventional operations in a nuclear environment. Thus, early in the 1980s, the Department of Defense (DOD) (1983) issued a directive that required weapon systems be able to survive the effects of nuclear weapons. This directive attempted to assure that meaningful survivability programs would become integral parts of the total defense weapon acquisition system. For the first time in U.S. history, this effort explicitly included the mandate that funding for nuclear survivability and hardening be included in investment planning for U.S. forces. (Although in some cases, techniques other than hardening to nuclear effects might be feasible, nuclear hardening continues to be the centerpiece for the survivability of weapon systems. The phrase nuclear hardening refers to the art of designing weapon systems and their components so that they are less susceptible to the effects of nuclear weapon detonation than if left unprotected.)Many of the program managers, technical directors, scientists, and engineers within the U.S. government agencies responsible for carrying out the directive recognized that it would be difficult to implement. This realization stemmed from the fact that nuclear hardening of weapon systems is not an established engineering discipline, and much remains to be known about nuclear weapon effects environments, simulation testing, and system hardness validation. The Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) responded to this challenge with several innovative practices. One was the support of technology transfer activities that showed promise for expanding the nuclear hardening expertise to military program offices through the development of expert systems that help users evaluate the hardness of their weapon system to nuclear effects. The development of these expert systems and the development of the automated knowledge-acquisition tool Knack, which is used to generate the expert systems, is the topic of this chapter. It is through these software tools that technology transfer in the domain of nuclear effects hardening is being extended to the larger number of program managers and their staff members who must be involved.