SYSTEMS ANALYSIS OF SENSE AND STRIKE CAPABILITIES WITHIN AN ARMORED COMBAT UNIT IN AN OFFENSIVE URBAN OPERATION

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the impact of deploying loitering munitions and tactical drones with a company-level armored combat team in an offensive urban operation, using Map Aware Non-Uniform Automata (MANA) as the simulation tool. An armored combat team of the Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) was modelled as part of an offensive urban operation, as a baseline to understand the impacts of Raven RQ-11 and M109A6 Howitzer, subsequently replacing them with the loitering munitions and tactical drones. The design of experiment incorporates a total of seven performance parameters of loitering munitions and tactical drones, and utilized the Nearly Orthogonal and Balanced (NOB) method to generate a total of 256 design points with 350 replications each. JMP Pro 16 software was utilized to analyze the operational effectiveness of the loitering munitions and tactical drones, and assess the key performance parameters of the loitering munitions and tactical drones. It was observed that the significant factors in order of significance were loitering munition’s force structure, loitering munition’s classification range and tactical drone’s endurance, and indicated that the employment of loitering munitions and tactical drones enhanced the operational effectiveness of the armored company. This analysis would aid capability analysts in considering the procurement and deployment of sense and strike capabilities, with respect to potential inter-system interaction and key performance parameters.