By MC3 Brian H. Abel

NPS Department of Operations Research Associate Professor Dr. Johannes Royset is pictured in his Glasgow Hall office, Feb. 17. In partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Brown University, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Royset a $2 million grant to develop the mathematical models that will be utilized in the early design phase of a possible ultra high-speed Navy vessel.

"DARPA is thinking many decades ahead, and that really allows us to go outside of conventional designs and think about something that will bring a lot of change," said Royset. "Certainly we're looking many decades into the future."

That distant perspective means that researchers must lay a foundation for the decision-making process … This is done through intricate models that can be utilized as pre-decisional aids.

"Mathematical models are essential for developing a vessel of this type because we simply don't know how a vessel of this type will behave," said Royset. "This is so much beyond existing Navy architectural technology that we really need to simulate all different aspects of this ship, not only to simulate, but to make sure our simulations are correct."

NPS student, U.S. Marine Corps Capt. John Sabol, has joined Royset, assisting with the modeling and simulation for his NPS degree thesis.

"We're looking at how we can use existing mathematical equations and relationships to try and [limit] uncertainty in the most extreme cases," said Sabol. "It's a way to analyze the data we're collecting and estimate what the worst case could be even though we haven't seen it."