Thinking Quickly: Agents for Modeling Air Warfare

Within Air Operations Division of DSTO 1 intelligent agents are used to model the tactical decision making processes of pilots and ghter-controllers involved in air combat. One of the largest hurdles to be overcome by software engineers and analysts, when developing simulations of the air defence environment, is the acquisition of domain knowledge. Primarily the source of this knowledge is the pilots and other operational personnel, whose availability is limited and who have little experience with the design or development of simulation software. The adoption of agent oriented technologies has realized a number of signii-cant beneets. High amongst these is the ability for operational air force personnel to become actively involved in the modiication, design and development of these simulations. This involvement has dramatically reduced the time taken to prototype, test, and commission software and has resulted in simulations that have the conndence of the RAAF.