Battle Experiments of Naval Air Defense with Discrete Event System-based Mission-level Modeling and Simulations

The modern naval air defense of a fleet is a critical task dictating the equipment, the operation, and the management of the fleet. Military modelers consider that an improved weapon system in naval air defense (i.e. the AEGIS system) is the most critical enabler of defense at the engagement level. However, at the mission execution level, naval air defense is a cooperative endeavor of humans and weapon systems. The weapon system and the command and control (C2) structure of a fleet engage in the situation through human reporting-in and commands, as well as weapon deployments. Hence, this paper models the combination of the human and the weapon systems in naval air defense by covering the C2 hierarchy of the fleet, as well as the weapon systems of warships. After developing this mission-level model, we perform battle experiments with varying parameters in the human and weapon aspects. These battle experiments inform us of the impact of the changes in the human and the weapon systems. For example, the speed of incoming missiles is a critical parameter for a fleet’s survival; yet the decision-making speed is another outstanding parameter, which illustrates that there is more to improve than the weapon system when considering the mission level. This modeling and these experiments provide an example, suggesting a method of combining the human C2 and the weapon systems at the mission level in the military domain.