Course of Action Scoring and Analysis
Abstract
The impacts of implementing effects-based operations (EBO) on course of action (COA) development and evaluation will be significant. Because EBO focuses on producing effects from military activities, as opposed to the direct result of attacking targets, there is an opportunity to develop a significantly higher number of COAs that achieve the desired effects. Consequently, EBO planning will significantly increase the number of evaluated COAs and the depth of evaluation. In order to evaluate these numerous COAs, which may achieve the same desired effects by substantially different methods, metrics must be found to adequately quantify their relative merits. Desired effects may be achieved through disparate COAs, such as propaganda campaigns versus major interdictions. The Course of Action Simulation Analysis (CASA) task was created to research metrics identification, data representation and scoring approaches. This paper introduces concepts behind CASA, chronicles task results to date, and finishes with a discussion of the scoring methodologies and capabilities developed during the CASA prototyping effort. Specific areas discussed include: mission-level simulations usage to examine multiple-hypothesis solutions; ontologies and extensible mark-up language (XML) metadata representations; COA metrics identification; development of tools for data reduction, comparison and visualization; and scoring approaches. Finally, lessons learned to date are discussed.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA482342
Entities
People
- Christopher Egan
- Jerry Reaper
Organizations
- Leidos