Robust static planning tool for military village search missions: model and heuristics

Abstract

In the contemporary military environment, making decisions on how to best utilize resources to accomplish a mission with a set of specified constraints is difficult. A Cordon and Search of a village (a.k.a. village search) is an example of such a mission. Leaders must plan the mission, assigning assets (e.g. soldiers, robots, unmanned aerial vehicles, military working dogs) to accomplish the given task in accordance with orders from higher headquarters. Computer tools can assist these leaders in making decisions, and do so in a manner that will ensure the chosen solution is within mission constraints and is robust against uncertainty in environmental parameters. Currently, no such tools exist at the tactical or operational level to assist decision makers in their planning process and, as a result, individual experience and simplistic data tables are the only tools available. Using robustness concepts, this paper proposes a methodology, a mathematical model, and resource allocation heuristics for static planning of village searches that result in a decision-making tool for military leaders.