A formulation of the allocation of attack aircraft to fixed location targets

Abstract

Allocation of resources has become a classical problem in optimization by mathematical programming. In the field of military applications attack aircraft assignment has been treated widely by deterministic and/or linear models. However, destruction of a target is no certainty nor is damage inflicted on a target linear with respect to the number of weapons delivered on it. Recent extensions In the field of nonlinear programming in conjunction with the widespread use of electronic digital computers permit a more realistic approach to this problem. this paper formulates a stochastic nonlinear model for assigning a force of attack aircraft on a single sortie against fixed location targets. The number of aircraft alive at weapons release on ant pass of a series against a given target is treated as a random variable. The total number of damage to all targets is taken as the measure of effectiveness and a particular form of the objective function derived. The parameters of the model and the form of the constraint equations are also discussed.