Undersea Logistics: Routing Optimization in Gray Zone Environments
Abstract
Unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) are being built to meet the growing demand for undersea operational awareness and payload delivery, but there are no tools for operational planners to handlelogistics regarding UUVs, such as routing logistic vessels to UUVs of differing capabilities, unique requirements, and time constraints. The feasibility of UUV employment in this manner would result in lower risk and broaden the scope of mission sets for our limited arsenal of manned submarines. Current models seek to optimize a single logistic vessels pathing to a group of surface vessels. However, there are no models that seek to provide a global solution with multiple logistic vessels to multi-echelon UUVs. We generalize a prior model for medical evacuation with multiple types of unmanned vehicles using time-synchronized systems via a multiple-path orienteering problem. We extend that model to an undersea logistics problem in a contested environment, with heuristics to approximate global solutions. A successful model provides feasible solutions to a simple scenario for proof of concept and possible real-life scenarios.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2023
- Accession Number
- AD1224613
Entities
People
- Thuan D Chu
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School