GENERALIZED ANALYSIS OF AERIAL CAMPAIGNS AGAINST STRATEGIC TARGETS

Abstract

An analytic technique is described for direct determination of the outcome of optimal aerial bombing or reconnaissance campaigns against strategic targets, without the customary laborious exploration of variations in attack strategy. The scope of this analysis permits wide latitude in the nature of the strategic campaign and its environment, including the following: the criterion defining an optimum campaign may be that of minimum cost, or minimum air crew loss for a fixed level of target destruction, with or without additional constraints such as specified maximum campaign duration; aircraft losses may be due to enemy area and local defenses, non-combat causes, or due to destruction while on their own base. Several examples are used to illustrate how the analytic method presented here leads to a better understanding of the significant features of strategic campaigns, and their sensitivity to variations in assumptions, than can be gleaned from an essentially empirical study of many individual campaigns.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 09, 1957
Accession Number
AD0606265

Entities

People

  • R. Schamberg

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aerial Reconnaissance
  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Area Defense
  • Attrition
  • Cell Size
  • Equations
  • Graphs
  • Losses
  • Operations Research
  • Probability
  • Reconnaissance
  • Reconnaissance Aircraft
  • Sensitivity
  • Survival
  • Vehicles
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Irregular Warfare and Special Operations Cyberspace Operations against Adversarial Threats.
  • Systems Analysis and Design