Preventive Strike vs. False Targets in Defense Strategy

Abstract: A defender allocates its resource between defending an object passively by deploying false targets, and striking preventively against an attacker seeking to destroy the object. With no preventive strike the defender allocates its entire resource to deploying false targets, which the attacker cannot distinguish from the genuine object. If the defender strikes preventively, the attacker’s vulnerability depends on its protection and on the defender's resource allocated to the strike. If the attacker survives, the object’s vulnerability depends on the attacker’s revenge attack resource allocated to the attacked object. An optimization model is presented for making a decision about the efficiency of the preventive strike based on the estimated attack probability, dependent on a variety of model parameters. The optimal number of false targets to deploy and the optimal subset of targets to attack are determined.