Suchergebnisse

This is a brief, technical review of the Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) part of ITEM, a widely used theater combat model. Several apparent deficiencies are pointed out. The recommendation is that ITEM's documentation be improved, and that a more extensive verification be carried out. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

There is a crisis approaching for military OR, centered on the role of information on the battlefield. It is clear to military professionals that information is becoming increasingly important, but the OR profession's ability to measure the contribution of information is still primitive. We are not good at deciding whether information is cost/effective or whether information is more important than firepower, and yet precisely these questions will be asked more and more frequently as budgets shrink. We are not even sure how information should be measured - is it measured in bits, or what? The word "crisis" is not too strong for our approaching predicament.

AbstractA simple formula is found to be just as accurate as a complicated one for estimating the probability of detection achievable by an ingenious searcher patrolling a channel or barrier. The difference between "detection" and "closure" is emphasized in an extension.

AbstractThis paper includes two simple analytic formulas for kill probability that are applicable in circumstances where shots should be fired in a pattern. The two formulas bracket the maximum kill probability achievable with an optimal pattern. The upper bound corresponds to an optimal nonfeasible pattern, and the lower bound to a nonoptimal feasible pattern.

This report examines two forms of decoy that may arise in warfare involving improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The first is a fake IED, which costs less than a real IED and wastes the time of route-clearing patrols that investigate it. The second is an understaffed surveillance tower, which may provide some deterrence to insurgent activities, as from the outside the tower appears to be fully operational. For each form of decoy, we formulate mathematical models to study the optimal strategies for both the insurgents and the government forces. We use numerical examples to demonstrate our models, and to point out the situations when these decoys may play a significant role in IED warfare. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

A seminar was held to review some of the models used by the armed services for planning weapon procurement. Most of the effort was spent on the Navy's NNOR and the Air Force's Sabre Mix Methodologies. Even in an emergency situation, it is difficult to speed up the production rate of sophisticated, modern weapons. The time constant for increasing production rate for many weapons seems to be on the order of a year, whereas major wars are sometimes imagined to last for only several months. Given these supposed facts, the following question would seem to be crucial for the yearly POM process: How should a fixed budget be spent augmenting the current stockpile of weapons so as to maximize the effectiveness of the resulting stockpile? Operations Research techniques could play an important role in answering the question, since several favorable preconditions exist: The question must be asked repetitively, Combat modelling must inevitably be involved in assessing effectiveness, Lots of data are available that must be taken into account, and The problem of determining the best stockpile can be interpreted as one of mathematical optimization. For example, shows for a typical weapon the comparison between inventory and the Navy's 'programming objective profile' as determined by the NNOR (Non-Nuclear Ordnance Requirements). There is clearly a large difference between the two, particularly if the gap is compared to the yearly stockpile increment. One way of resolving the discrepancy between budgets and requirements would be to reassess requirements (possibly also budgets) until feasibility is finally achieved ; Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. ; http://archive.org/details/notesfromstockpi00boge

Interfaces, 37, pp. 342-352. (Awarded U.S. Patent 8,050,849 B1 ; The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.1070.0286 ; This is a sea story about using a simple classroom example to save a great deal of money, as well as to convince beginning Postgraduate Naval School operations research students—experienced, skeptical military officers—that mathematical analysis can yield immediate results. The application is planning a ship's transit from one point to another in a fixed amount of time, given that the ship can operate with one or more of its propulsion plants idled to save fuel. Simple analysis yields nonintuitive results that US Navy shipboard energy-conservation guides overlook. One of the authors (Kline) solved this homework problem as a student and subsequently applied this example when he took command of USS AQUILA, a patrol hydrofoil missile ship. AQUILA achieved results so striking in comparison to her sister ships that the squadron material officer inspected her engineering plant to ensure that no safety settings were being overridden to achieve this record. Kline's spreadsheet decision-support tool was provided to other hydrofoil commanders. A more general version has been conveyed to the US Navy. Considering that our navy spends about a billion dollars per year on fuel for surface-combatant ships alone, this development promises substantial, long-term returns.