SHATTER: Searching Heterogeneous Combat Network Attack Sequences Through Network Embedding and Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

A distributed combat system consists of various types of combat units interconnected through the network, which can be abstracted as a complex heterogeneous combat network (HCN). It is of great military value to study the disintegration of the operational capability of HCNs for operational mission planning and improving the survivability of operational networks. Heterogeneous networks can effectively fuse more information than homogeneous networks can. The function implementation of heterogeneous networks is also more complex. Finding the key nodes and obtaining an efficient attack sequence is our focus. Most current research on network disintegration has difficulty achieving efficiency and timeliness. In this article, we specifically propose searching heterogeneous combat network attack sequences through network embedding and reinforcement learning (SHATTER) model, which uses the induction algorithm combined with the graph neural network and reinforcement learning to solve the network disintegration sequence problem. Through experiments with synthetic heterogeneous network datasets and real heterogeneous networks, we determined that SHATTER significantly outperformed existing technologies.