An application of game theory to special weapons evaluation

Abstract

A metbed was introduced for combining the techniues of classical Lanchester theory of combat with those of game theory toward the end of selecting optimal strategies in combat with special weapons. In the application of this method to the example in which only the defender had atomic weapons,. it was showm that the attacker always chose either to disperse his troops the maximum amount or not to disperse his troops at all. The defender always chose to employ a mixed strategy consisting of the weapon systems of either two intermediate weapons or four small weapons. If both the defender amd attacker hnd access to atomic weapons, then the opticmal strategy for the attacker was to employ the weapon system consisting of four small weapons and to use a mixed stratregy for the dispersion of his troops. On the other hand, the defender never dispersed his troops amd always used a mixed strategy for tee - weapon systems. In the example where the defender has a fixed weapon system and chooses to optimize his aiming procedure, it was shown that the optimal aiming procedure does not involve only the aimimg procedures which are optimal against each of the fixed dispersion patternsmore » for the attacker. The model discussed in this paper is far from realistic, but the authors feel that certain interesting trends may be obtained by such elementary discussions. Two ways in which to approach more reslism are to introduce into the combat the time at which the different groups become engaged amd to obtain a more realistic model for the basic group. (auth)« less