Weapon-Target Pairing; Revising an Air Tasking Order in Real-Time
Abstract
Well-publicized lost opportunities for U.S. and coalition air forces to strike enemy leadership targets in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate the importance of Time Sensitive Targeting. How do we pair the weapon and weapons delivery platform with their target? The available platforms (aircraft, manned or unmanned) may be on the ground in an alert status, loitering airborne, or on their way to attack other targets. The problem is compounded by the facts that we actually wish to (1) create multiple strike packages simultaneously, (2) recompose existing strike packages that are disrupted by the new plans, (3) minimize such disruptions, (4) satisfy minimum kill probabilities, and (5) avoid the attrition of tasked assets. This thesis develops an automated, optimizing, heuristic decision aid, RAPTOR, that rapidly revises a current Air Tasking Order (ATO) to meet the requirements above. RAPTOR identifies, verified, near-optimal ATO revisions, on a desktop PC, in less than two seconds, for a typical scenario with 40 aircraft, 4 new targets and thousands of potential strike packages. RAPT-OR allows decision makers the ability of adjusting risk acceptance in the formulation of possible courses of action by manipulating friendly attrition importance in formulating a solution.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA457373
Entities
People
- Brian Zacherl
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School