A Coordination Policy for the NATO SEASPARROW Missile and the Rolling Airframe Missile Using Dynamic Programming.

This thesis develops a dynamic program, the SEASPARROW Coordinated Assignment Model SCAM, that determines the optimal coordinated assignment policy for the SEASPARROW missile in a shipboard self defense weapon configuration consisting of the NATO SEASPARROW Missile System, the Rolling Airframe Missile and the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System. Threat scenarios are described by the type of anti-ship cruise missile, the number of threat missiles, the total duration of the arrival window and the relative spacing of targets within the threat stream. SCAM reveals that under various threat configurations it is often advantageous to fire the SEASPARROW at groups of threats in the target stream, rather than always the nearest threat, and fuflher that this policy is robust for a large set of threat scenarios.