UAV Swarm Operational Risk Assessment system

Abstract

This paper examines the need for a UAV Swarm Risk Assessment Tool and how it can assist the Navy’s decision makers in assessing risk of UAV swarm threats in littoral environments, near potentially hostile countries, based on the latest intelligence. Human-centered design principles help determine the needs of experienced battle commanders. These needs form the basis of requirements and functional analysis. The system design concept consists of several parts: discrete-event simulation of UAV swarm attacks using ExtendSim, statistical analysis of the simulation data using Minitab, and a graphical user interface (GUI) that evolved as a web-app prototype written in MATLAB. Data from the simulation is analyzed and used to generate equations that calculate the effect of critical factors: physical environment, number of UAVs, distance from land, and the ship’s defensive weapons. The GUI uses these equations to provide users with the capability to vary those critical factors and analyze different courses of action and risk. The physical GUI web-app can be used as-is, tailored or expanded. The paper concludes with an analysis of the actual GUI prototype built for UAV swarm risk assessment and how it meets user needs.