OPTIMIZING THE NAVY MISSION PLANNER

Abstract

The Navy Mission Planner (NMP) is an optimization-based operational planning tool for decision makers at all levels of designing naval deployments, from theater-level planning to individual Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) or Destroyer Squadrons (DESRONs). Schedulers are tasked with too many missions and not enough ships to fulfill those missions. This decision aid takes multimission-capable ships and assigns them to missions across a given planning horizon with the goal of maximizing the total value of mission accomplishment, taking into consideration the geographical locations of mission sets and ship capabilities and limitations. Previous versions used licensed commercial software and solvers for optimization, as well as a limited enumeration of alternative ship deployments. This thesis focuses on making the Navy Mission Planner available to all naval personnel by using open-source software and solvers. In addition, it offers persistence within the optimization, allowing schedulers to reconfigure schedules in the middle of the planning horizon with minimum changes to previously promulgated schedules. We also develop two approaches to deployment planning, a random path enumeration and a network flow formulation, both of which increase the mission accomplishment levels in the Navy Mission Planner. Additionally, we create a “force ratio escort” parameter that allows for non-combatant ships to be escorted by multiple defense-capable ships through hazardous regions.