A Compromise Decision Framework for Military Target Engagement

A number of decisions are needed for military target engagement in both defensive and offensive situations. These decisions are to be made during target search, detection, acquisition and identification, and typically require the integration of multiple disciplines and the resolution of multiple, conflicting objectives. A departure from the conventional one-time-shot optimization is necessary for effective modeling and optimization of a multidisciplinary, multiobjective complex military target engagement. In this paper, we study a number of independent variables pertinent to a weapon system, including firing pattern, firing rate, hitting accuracy, and cost of firing. These independent variables will be used to determine the best target aiming point, expected number of enemy forces’ missiles destroyed, and feasible defense pattern in order to maximize the probability of hitting the target and in order to minimize the number of missiles launched by friendly forces in the engagement. We then show how to formulate this multiobjective problem as compromise programming with priorities assigned to the multiple conflicting objectives.