Course of Action Simulation Analysis

The implications of Effects Based Operations (EBO) on Course of Action (COA) development and evaluation are significant. EBO will potentially increase both COA complexity and the number of options one must evaluate to optimize results. Further, metrics must be found that can adequately describe and quantify the “goodness” of such disparate COAs as a propaganda campaign versus a major military interdiction. The United States Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate (US AFRL/IF) continues to lead efforts to prototype a Modeling and Simulation (M&S) based methodology and toolset that allows quick and thorough exploration of this expanding tradespace. Specific thrusts within these efforts include: concurrent multi-hypothesis exploration via cluster computing; automated COA generation; automated simulation scenario generation; COA descriptive metadata representations; metrics metadata representations; and automated data reduction, comparison and visualization techniques. The Course of Action Simulation Analysis (CASA) task was created to address several facets of these thrusts, with a focus on metrics identification, data representation for comparison and visualization. This paper first presents the motivations and concepts behind CASA, and chronicles this past year’s efforts. Further, we discuss current and planned activities, and describe the final capabilities expected to result from this task. Specific areas discussed include: the use of mission level simulations to examine multiple-hypothesis; the use of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) for metadata representation; identification of COA metrics; development of tools for data reduction, comparison and visualization; adversarial modeling; and co-evolving red-blue COAs. Finally, we discuss lessons learned to date and present potential future research.