Simulation-based planning for theater air warfare

Douglas A. Popken; Louis A. Cox Jr.

doi:10.1117/12.541137

13 August 2004 Simulation-based planning for theater air warfare

Douglas A. Popken, Louis A. Cox Jr.

Proceedings Volume 5423, Enabling Technologies for Simulation Science VIII; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.541137
Event: Defense and Security, 2004, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

Planning for Theatre Air Warfare can be represented as a hierarchy of decisions. At the top level, surviving airframes must be assigned to roles (e.g., Air Defense, Counter Air, Close Air Support, and AAF Suppression) in each time period in response to changing enemy air defense capabilities, remaining targets, and roles of opposing aircraft. At the middle level, aircraft are allocated to specific targets to support their assigned roles. At the lowest level, routing and engagement decisions are made for individual missions. The decisions at each level form a set of time-sequenced Courses of Action taken by opposing forces. This paper introduces a set of simulation-based optimization heuristics operating within this planning hierarchy to optimize allocations of aircraft. The algorithms estimate distributions for stochastic outcomes of the pairs of Red/Blue decisions. Rather than using traditional stochastic dynamic programming to determine optimal strategies, we use an innovative combination of heuristics, simulation-optimization, and mathematical programming. Blue decisions are guided by a stochastic hill-climbing search algorithm while Red decisions are found by optimizing over a continuous representation of the decision space. Stochastic outcomes are then provided by fast, Lanchester-type attrition simulations. This paper summarizes preliminary results from top and middle level models.

Citation Download Citation

Douglas A. Popken and Louis A. Cox Jr. "Simulation-based planning for theater air warfare", Proc. SPIE 5423, Enabling Technologies for Simulation Science VIII, (13 August 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.541137

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