Artillery survivability model

Abstract

This work investigates the use of modern simulation techniques for evaluating artillery movement doctrine. A simulation called the Artillery Survivability Model was created as a proof of principle. The simulation incorporates the most salient features relating to artillery survivability according to our small-scale survey of expert opinion on this subject. It consists of a 3D agent-based simulation that incorporates AI technology that is novel to this domain, including terrain analysis, advanced movement planning, and GPU-based particle filters to represent enemy anticipation of friendly artillery behavior. The simulation has been created with the popular game engine Unity 3D, and has two different modes. The first is the experiment mode, which is executed from command line without rendering any image, and runs up to 50 times faster than the real-time simulation. Therefore, it is a suitable platform to perform multiple runs for experimenting. The experiment mode also enables users to set their own design of experiment by manipulating an editable CSV file. The second one is a real-time mode that renders a 3D virtual environment of a restricted battlefield where the survivability movements of an artillery company are visualized. This mode provides detailed visualization of the simulation and enables future experimental uses of the simulation as a training tool.