{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"computability_boundary_mapping__military_strategic_studies","archetype_slug":"computability_boundary_mapping","domain_slug":"military_strategic_studies","title":"Scope-Enforced Assurance Boundaries for Autonomous Mission Policies","opportunity_summary":"Evaluate whether explicit formal scope, enforceable restricted policy classes, labeled UNKNOWN outcomes, and human escalation can prevent finite or model-relative evidence from being misrepresented as universal mission-policy assurance. The candidate supports a synthetic sandbox evaluation but provides no evidence that the diagnosed scope-labeling problem is prevalent, that a useful assured subclass exists, or that the approach is distinctive from existing assurance practice.","adopter_authorizer":"Autonomy acquisition and assurance teams are the prospective adopters. The ROE owner defines the normative property, an independent assurance authority approves the scope and meaning of evidence, and the designated operational commander retains deployment authority.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"If the stated collapse of SAFE, timeout, UNKNOWN, and out-of-scope results occurs, the proposal could reduce both unsafe apparent clearances and delays caused by pursuing unavailable universal guarantees. The packet does not establish how often this problem occurs or whether it affects an actual program."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":3,"rationale":"Commanders, ROE owners, operators, and assurance teams have proposal-specific reasons to want interpretable assurance scope, but the sealed candidate contains no demand evidence, adoption inquiry, or demonstrated dissatisfaction with current safety cases."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Compared with manual safety cases and finite testing compressed into a recommendation, enforceable fragment membership, explicit UNKNOWN routing, versioned guarantees, and checked scope changes offer a clear testable improvement in claim discipline. Operational usefulness and latency remain untested."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"The candidate combines formal restriction, model checking, bounded search, abstention labels, and governance, but its prior-art status is explicitly UNSEARCHED and the packet identifies autonomous assurance, runtime assurance, and model checking as relevant research areas. Distinctiveness therefore cannot be credited beyond a plausible configuration."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A small synthetic language, bounded environment, seeded violations, and exhaustive bounded evaluation are implementable in principle. Real use depends on disputed ROE semantics, enforceable fragment membership, sound abstraction, and a faithful environment model, none of which is demonstrated."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate clearly allocates normative ownership, independent assurance approval, and deployment authority, and supplies halt and withdrawal rules. Multi-party review, accreditation, operational timing, and coalition coordination could still impede adoption."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":2,"rationale":"The evidence maturity is HYPOTHESIS, with no actual formalization, analyzer, checked reduction, pilot result, semantic-validation result, or operational acceptance threshold. The packet does provide a bounded and falsifiable first experiment."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":5,"rationale":"The proposal specifically prohibits treating UNKNOWN, timeout, or out-of-scope as SAFE; preserves human escalation; excludes live engagement; seeds analyzer failure tests; and withdraws affected guarantees when assumptions or label handling fail."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"Versioned evidence, mechanical scope checks, and standardized result labels could transfer across policies, but each ROE property, environment model, policy language, mission change, and external capability may require substantial re-formalization and independent review."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Design and execute one sandboxed pilot using a small synthetic policy language, bounded simulated environment, one formal ROE property, seeded violations, a candidate analyzer or checked reduction, exhaustive bounded cases, and baseline comparison.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["No live systems, classified operational data, or weapon interfaces are used.","The effort requires formal-methods engineering, domain-owner review, independent checking, evaluation design, and documented result-label handling.","Existing general-purpose verification and simulation software can be reused."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"1M_TO_5M","scope":"Convert the pilot into an assurance workflow for one autonomy program or mission family, including policy-language restrictions, semantic validation, tool integration, evidence records, governance procedures, security review, and staff training.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The target program provides stable policy and environment interfaces.","One mission family and a limited number of ROE properties are included.","Formal artifacts require independent assurance and defense-grade software integration.","Major platform redesign and new specialized hardware are excluded."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"5M_TO_25M","scope":"Launch a production-grade service for one operational program across relevant authoring, test, assurance, and command workflows, including accreditation, secured infrastructure, integration testing, operational exercises, and escalation capacity.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Launch includes multiple user roles and representative mission changes but not organization-wide deployment.","Classified-environment engineering, partner coordination, operational evaluation, and contingency procedures are required.","No claim is made that the assured fragment already covers operationally necessary behavior."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"1M_TO_5M","scope":"Maintain one operational program's formal models, analyzers, evidence versions, secured infrastructure, independent reviews, retraining, reclassification after changes, and human escalation process.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Policy, ROE, environment, and external capability changes trigger periodic revalidation.","A standing multidisciplinary assurance team is required.","The estimate excludes expansion to additional platforms, mission families, or coalition-wide use."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"The sealed candidate identifies an intelligible problem independent of the intervention: assurance labels and scope may be collapsed so finite or model-relative success appears universal. Whether this occurs in practice remains to be externally established."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The packet identifies acquisition and assurance teams as implementers, the ROE owner as normative authority, the independent assurance authority as evidence approver, and the operational commander as deployment authority."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal can be compared with finite simulation and pass/fail reporting on whether boundary routing and explicit UNKNOWN reduce false universal-clearance claims while yielding a useful assured subclass. Acceptance thresholds still require precommitment."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"The authorized first step is a sandboxed experiment on a small synthetic language and bounded environment, with exhaustive in-bound testing, seeded violations, explicit output categories, and no live engagement."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"Live weapon use is excluded, deployment authority remains with the commander, independent review is required, and disputed semantics, missed seeded violations, unenforceable scope, or downstream label collapse trigger halt and guarantee withdrawal."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The candidate bounds the synthetic pilot and describes operational roles, but supplies no staffing, integration, accreditation, data-access, security, or maintenance requirements from which implementation ranges could be validated. The stated cost bands are assumption-based resource equivalents."}},"blocking_evidence":["No evidence establishes that deployment-facing assurance currently collapses UNKNOWN, timeout, or out-of-scope results or overclaims coverage.","No independently reviewed ROE formalization or semantic-validation procedure has demonstrated fidelity to accountable operational intent.","No policy and environment model establishes whether the actual requirement is finite, unrestricted, or amenable to a known total verifier.","No checked constructive analyzer or property-preserving impossibility reduction exists under a shared declared contract.","No pilot shows that an enforceable assured fragment retains operationally necessary behavior.","No predeclared acceptance criteria cover false-clearance categories, scope coverage, routing outcomes, review latency, and useful-subclass thresholds.","Prior art and distinctiveness are unmeasured.","Implementation, accreditation, integration, and recurring-maintenance resource requirements are unvalidated."],"next_evidence_step":"Pre-register and run the authorized sandbox pilot, comparing the baseline finite-simulation/pass-fail workflow with scope enforcement and explicit SAFE, violation, UNKNOWN, and out-of-scope routing on the same exhaustive bounded instances and seeded violations. Falsify advancement if the analyzer misses a seeded violation, fragment membership or labels cannot be enforced, semantic review rejects the ROE predicate, or the intervention fails predeclared error, coverage, and review-latency criteria.","research_questions":["Do actual assurance reports preserve UNKNOWN, timeout, model scope, and guarantee strength through the deployment decision?","Are all deployment-relevant policies and traces already contained in a fixed, enforceable finite class with a total verifier?","Can operational owners and independent reviewers validate that the formal ROE property and environment assumptions match intended mission meaning?","Under identical formal contracts, does a total analyzer exist, or can a property-preserving computable reduction establish a genuine boundary?","What fraction of operationally necessary behavior remains inside an enforceable assured fragment, and what escape hatches would users create?","Does explicit boundary routing reduce false universal-clearance claims relative to the baseline without unacceptable review latency or alert disregard?","What prior work already addresses formal ROE verification, autonomous-system assurance cases, model checking, runtime assurance, and governed abstention interfaces?","What program-specific staffing, integration, security, accreditation, and maintenance resources are required?"] ,"recommendation":"PARTNERED_RESEARCH","uncertainty_constraints":["Closed-book assessment: no external evidence was consulted.","Problem prevalence, stakeholder demand, market size, realized impact, and organizational readiness are unmeasured.","Prior art and world novelty are unmeasured; distinctiveness must not be claimed.","The unrestricted policy class has not been shown undecidable, and the analogy to arbitrary programs remains conditional on a valid encoding.","The actual policy language, environment model, quantifiers, ROE semantics, and timeout meaning are unspecified.","Cost bands are broad resource-equivalent estimates based only on the proposed scope and stated governance burden.","Operational acceptance thresholds and the meaning of a useful assured subclass require mission-specific authority input."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"The packet labels prior art UNSEARCHED and supplies no external references. This assessment therefore makes no claim about novelty, prevalence, competing implementations, or whether a total verifier already exists for the deployment-relevant class; those questions require bounded external research."}