CONTRIBUTED BY DR. ANTHONY C. HEARN THE RAND CORPORATION, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA REDUCE is a computer program for algebraic computation that IS III world-wide use by thousands of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. Although it traces its beginnings to 1963, until recently it has only been available on main-frame computers because of its relatively large resource requirements. In 1980 I predicted (1) that by the mid-1980's it would be possible to obtain personal computers in the $10,000 $20,000 range capable of running REDUCE. I am therefore delighted to see that machines of the power of the IBM PC can now run this system, even though these computers are more modestly priced than my 1980 vision of the personal algebra machine. In addition to the need for the more widespread access that personal computers can now provide, there has been a longstanding need for a textbook to help the beginning user become better acquainted with the system. I am therefore very glad that Dr. Rayna has undertaken to write such a book, just as the era of the REDUCE personal algebra machine is beginning. In order to understand the nature of REDUCE, a little history is in order. In 1963 I met Dr. John McCarthy, the inventor of LISP.

In recent years, a RAND-developed "The Day After..." exercise methodology has been used to explore strategic planning options, both for nuclear proliferation and counter-proliferation, and for questions involving "security in cyberspace" and "information warfare" (IW). On March 23, 1996, a "The Day After...in Cyberspace" exercise with approximately 60 participants was conducted at RAND's Washington D.C. offices, under the sponsorship of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The purpose was to generate suggestions and options regarding research and development initiatives to enhance the security of the U.S. information infrastructure. The scenario in the exercise involved a Mideast crisis situation, with Iran as an aggressor. Exercise participants discussed both short-term technical fixes to counter IW attacks that were hypothesized to occur in the year 2000 and longer-term research strategies that could be initiated now to avoid significant vulnerabilities in the future.

This study identifies key potential users of high-performance computing within the Army science and technology community and develops a strategy to build an initiative that will help the Army compete effectively for Department of Defense computing resources. Particular attention was given to applications of HPC in biotechnology and biomedicine and modeling and simulation of complex battlefield wireless network communication systems.