BALLISTIC MISSILE PAYLOAD ALLOCATION

Abstract

Each element of a ballistic missile's payload--warhead, guidance and penetration aids--will increase in effectiveness with an increase of weight allocated to the element. For a missile that is to be employed against a defended 'point' target, the paper presents a method for determining the optimum division of the missile's payload between the three competing (for weight) elements, when their individual weight-effectiveness relationships are known. For the case of a single missile per target, using a most basic application of the stepwise optimization philosophy of dynamic programming, the problem is formulated as a two stage weight allocation process. The first stage determines the optimum tradeoff between warhead (lethal radius) and guidance (CEP); the second stage determines the optimum division between penetration aids and an optimum mix of warhead and guidance. The simple arithmetical method that results is demonstrated by an example. The same optimization process is useful for the cases of sequential and simultaneous multiple missile employment per target.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 12, 1959
Accession Number
AD0616405

Entities

People

  • Sidney I. Firstman

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Accuracy
  • Ballistic Missiles
  • Corporations
  • Dynamic Programming
  • Errors
  • Firing Rate
  • Guidance
  • Hard Copy
  • Hardness
  • Optimization
  • Penetration Aids
  • Philosophy
  • Probability
  • Reliability
  • Sequences
  • Specialty Uses Of Chemicals

Readers

  • Operations Research
  • Systems Analysis and Design
  • ballistics.