The U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) is set to deepen its use of artificial intelligence, not only as a research priority but also as a means of accelerating scientific discovery and improving internal operations. The plans are outlined in the newly released Science and Technology Strategy.

The strategy outlines ONR’s continued investment across a broad portfolio of technologies, including AI and autonomy, C5ISR, directed energy, advanced materials, naval engineering, aerospace, power systems and undersea capabilities.

AI and autonomy remain the organization’s top research focus, spanning machine learning, adversarial AI, intelligent agents, autonomous systems and modeling and simulation.

“Strategy, and especially strategy in innovation organizations, requires placing informed bets — and sometimes big ones. Resource allocation is much of what we do. Therefore, ensuring that we are allocating our portfolios to the highest and best uses at any given time (and adjusting as new data emerges) is the core of what we must do well to accomplish our mission,” Chief of Naval Research Dr. Rachel Riley stated in the strategy.

Beyond developing AI for naval applications, ONR plans to introduce a “research by AI” initiative that uses artificial intelligence to support basic and applied research.

According to the strategy, AI will help compress complex search problems, generate hypotheses and accelerate scientific discovery to outpace potential adversaries.

The organisation also plans to deploy specialized AI assistants to support program officers by tracking emerging technologies, identifying new research partners, synthesizing research findings and automating administrative work. Officials stressed that the objective is to augment human expertise rather than replace it.