APPLICATION OF DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING TO SELECT TACTICS FOR AIR-TO-GROUND ATTACK UNDER UNCERTAINTY

The work applies dynamic programming and some notions from decision theory to the problem of making a rational selection of tactics for air-to- ground attack. A single aircraft attack on a target is treated as a multistage decision process with successive aircraft passes corresponding to stages. The basic factors to be considered at each stage are the weapon effectiveness, aircraft survival, and target acquisition and weapon delivery. An optimal policy is determined that indicates the number of weapons to be delivered and the mode of attack to be used at each pass depending on what state of affairs develops as the attack progresses. The single aircraft attack models produce a return-versus-attrition function that is used in multiple aircraft raid models to determine the optimum raid size and the best policy for each aircraft. A multiple aircraft raid on multiple targets is considered where the problem is to allocate a given number of aircraft among targets and specify the policy for each aircraft to maximize the total utility to the attackers subject to suitable constraints. Uncertainty as to the true parameter values is approached by assuming complete ignorance of the value that each parameters might take within a specified range of uncertainty. A systematic method is developed that aids the decision maker to make a rational tactic selection considering that the parameter values might fall anywhere within their ranges of uncertainty.