An exploratory analysis of village search operations

Abstract

Following the cold war a new kind of threat emerged; terrorism became the most important threat used by individuals, organizations and countries to reach their goals. Turkey has suffered from terrorism for years. In Turkey, the main logistic resource for the terrorist is the villages located in remote areas. A search operation is one of the techniques used to capture the terrorists. Five village search operations scenarios are developed based on a previous study done for the New Zealand Army and the author's personal experiences. For this study, the agent-based model MANA (Map Aware Non-uniform Automata) is used. To investigate the effects of 16 variables state-of-the-art Near Orthogonal Latin Hypercube Designs are used. With a personal computer and the computational capabilities of supercomputers run by Mitre for the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL) approximately 15000 runs are completed. In comparing the five scenarios, the significant effects on the outcome of a possible skirmish in search operations are the proficiency level of the soldiers, the employment of village guards and the support of the local people to the terrorists. The results of the analysis suggest that the most important factor affecting the Blue casualties is the initial speed and synchronization of the Blue search unit entering the village and the most important factor affecting the Red casualties is the Red Stealth.