Reinforcement Learning for Modeling Large-Scale Cognitive Reasoning

Accurate, relevant, and timely combat identification (CID) enables warfighters to locate and identify critical airborne targets with high precision. The current CID processes included a wide combination of platforms, sensors, networks, and decision makers. There are diversified doctrines, rules of engagements, knowledge databases, and expert systems used in the current process to make the decision making very complex. Furthermore, the CID decision process is still very manual. Decision makers are constantly overwhelmed with the cognitive reasoning required. Soar is a cognitive architecture that can be used to model complex reasoning, cognitive functions, and decision making for warfighting processes like the ones in a kill chain. In this paper, we present a feasibility study of Soar, and in particular the reinforcement learning (RL) module, for optimal decision making using existing expert systems and smart data. The system has the potential to scale up and automate CID decision-making to reduce the cognitive load of human operators.