FOX-GA: an intelligent planning and decision support tool

Describes FOX-GA, an intelligent planning decision support tool for assisting military intelligence and maneuver battlestaff in rapidly generating and assessing battlefield courses of action (COAs). The motivations behind FOX stem from the need to plan and replan rapidly in such a way as to allow users flexibility and control over planning objectives and options. The environment in which plans are executed (the battlefield) is one that is inherently uncertain and rapidly changing, demanding frequent re-planning during execution. To help meet these rapid replanning needs, we designed FOX to rapidly generate and evaluate a broader variety of variety of high quality COAs faster than they could do so themselves. FOX then evaluates the COAs and presents only the best few to users, and allows them to reassess those options according to their own judgment, and to either edit or select the ones they feel are best. Early evaluations indicate that users explore a wider variety of COAs with FOX then without.