Study on weapon-target assignment problem for rapid engagement with heterogeneous interceptors

Abstract

The anti-ship missile is one of the main threats to the naval fleet. Ships have limited weapons that can be mounted according to the mission due to space constraints. Only a few ships have a long-range air defense weapon to protect the naval fleet from threats. Air defense weapons mounted on ships work together to defeat threats to the naval fleet step by step from a long distance to a short distance. Anti-ship missiles approach the naval fleet simultaneously to neutralize the air defense system. In order to defend the naval fleet against these threats, it is necessary to operate heterogeneous weapons distributed on several ships efficiently. This thesis proposes rapid engagement as an efficient operation method for heterogeneous weapons under multi-layered air defense and formulating the Weapon Target Assignment (WTA) problem. The problem is defined as Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) and simplified to Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) through Piecewise Linear (PWL) approximation and McCormick relaxation. We confirm that rapid engagement is carried out by applying this problem to various engagement scenarios. Moreover, we design a greedy algorithm to solve the WTA problem for rapid engagement and validate them through simulations. It is confirmed through the re-engagement simulation that time for subsequent engagement, such as firing the naval gun and re-engagement, can be secured through rapid air defense.