Explainable AI for Navy C2: The Jericho SBIR Phase I

Intro

Accelint was awarded the Jericho Phase I Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) to apply causal reasoning and advanced analytics to Navy command and control decision-making. The program focuses on helping operators understand why events occur during missions - not just what happened - by linking geospatial and temporal data to produce actionable, explanatory insights across operational timelines.

Challenge

Navy operators face vast amounts of geospatial and temporal data during complex missions, but traditional tools provide only "what" and "where" insights without explaining causality. Operators need to answer critical "why" questions across the Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess (F2T2EA) process - such as "why did a targeted ship change course?" or "why did we lose contact with a high-value adversary track?" Without causal explanations, operators cannot reliably distinguish hostile intent from benign changes, such as a ship altering course to avoid adverse sea states rather than to evade contact.

Solution

Accelint designed the Jericho Phase I effort to apply abductive causal reasoning to operational timelines, enabling operators to answer explanatory "why" questions during mission execution. Key elements of the Phase I effort include:

• Application of abductive causal reasoning algorithms to generate explanations for events across the F2T2EA kill chain
• Integration of geospatial and non-geospatial data sources for multi-domain causal analysis
• Visualization of causal relationships within PMW-150's Command and Control eXperimental (C2X) / Isinglass Common Operational Picture (COP), leveraging the architecture Accelint developed as the architect of C2X

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Program Impact

The Jericho Phase I SBIR successfully demonstrated the feasibility of causal reasoning for explainable decision support in Navy C2 systems. The effort validated Accelint's approach to integrating AI-driven causal analysis with operational visualization, building on years of R&D investment and the team's role as architect of the C2X/Isinglass framework. The Phase I award reflects Accelint's technical maturity and sustained contributions to Navy C2 modernization.