Defending a Logistics System under Mining Attack,

A fundamental problem in mine warfare defense is to deploy mine countermeasure resources and to route supplies so that shipping losses are minimized. The shipping losses at a port are a function of the mining attack, the quantity and duration of countermeasure efforts, and the amount shipped from the port. Models and solution algorithms are developed in this paper to optimally apportion scarce countermeasure resources when the quantity of supplies shipped out of each port is not subject to control and for the case when one can control both flow routing and countermeasures deployment. When the shipping schedule is fixed, the models are special cases of minimum cost network flow problems. For the more general problem, an enumeration algorithm is developed and computational results presented. Author