Optimal Methods for Interceptor Allocation in a Weapon-Target Assignment Framework

摘要

The weapon-target assignment (WTA) problem is a classic resource allocation formulation in the field of military operations research. While many solution techniques are presented in the literature, few provide optimal techniques even under limiting assumptions. In many cases, transitioning the WTA formulation from static (deterministic) to dynamic (stochastic) substantially increases computational complexity. As such, faster techniques are necessary for determining optimal (or near optimal) solutions in near-real time. A concise discussion of current solution techniques found in the literature is developed. Next, we consider a dynamic two stage formulation where the first stage targets are known and the second stage targets are known according to a probability distribution with finite variance. Using approximate dynamic programming techniques, an optimal algorithm is shown and numeric results are presented.