OPTIMIZING VLS FIRING POLICY: AN ENUMERATION OF HETEROGENEOUS SEQUENCES TO INFORM EXPENDITURE

Abstract

The U.S. Navy (USN) utilizes the Vertical Launch System (VLS) to store and launch both their offensive and defensive missiles. Since the number of VLS silos on a given ship is fixed, to maximize offensive capability the USN needs to minimize the number of interceptors required to combat incoming anti-surface missiles. Current firing policies may be overly conservative and expend too many interceptors per incoming threat, which results in a substantial fraction of VLS silos dedicated to defensive missiles. Decision makers need an analysis tool to explore the trade-off between missile consumption and probability of raid annihilation (PRA) for various firing policies and would also benefit from a prescriptive algorithm to help inform missile expenditure. This thesis provides a model to optimize VLS firing policy using a set of multiple interceptor types while accounting for range limitations, travel time, multi-interceptor salvos, battle damage assessment, and range dependent probability of kill. Additionally, the thesis derives analytical results for the optimal, lowest-cost allocation of interceptors in the single interceptor case, which, in turn, generates insight into how to structure sequential salvos.