A mission planning costing surface is formed from digital terrain elevation data of a given geographical region and is for use in routing covert flight paths. To form the costing surface, a hideability map is generated from the digital terrain elevation data by assigning line of sight area values to points within the digital terrain elevation data. The hideability map is indicative of hideable areas within the geographical region. The hideability map is then quantized by assigning each of the line of sight area values to one of a set number of quantization levels. A flyability map is formed from the digital terrain elevation data by determining slopeness values for points within the digital terrain elevation data. The flyability map is indicative of flyable areas of the geographical region. The flyability map is quantized by assigning each of the slopeness values to one of the quantization levels. The costing surface is formed from a weighted combination of the quantized hideability map and the quantized flyability map.
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