Military aircraft mission planning: a generalized vehicle routing model with synchronization and precedence

Abstract

We introduce a military aircraft mission planning problem where a given fleet of aircraft should attack a number of ground targets. Due to the nature of the attack, two aircraft need to rendezvous at the target, that is, they need to be synchronized in both space and time. At the attack, one aircraft is launching a guided weapon, while the other is illuminating the target. Each target is associated with multiple attack and illumination options. Further, there may be precedence constraints between targets, limiting the order of the attacks. The objective is to maximize the outcome of the entire attack, while also minimizing the mission timespan. We give a linear mixed-integer programming model of the problem, which can be characterized as a generalized vehicle routing problem with synchronization and precedence side constraints. Numerical results are presented for problem instances of realistic size.