• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.381-388
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• 2020

Weapon target assignment problem is an essential technology for automating the operator's rapid decision-making support in a battlefield situation. Weapon target assignment problem is a kind of the optimization problem that can build up an objective function by maximizing the number of threat target destructed or maximizing the survival rate of the protected assets. Weapon target assignment problem is known as the NP-Complete, and various studies have been conducted on it. Among them, a greedy heuristic algorithm which guarantees (1-1/e) approximation has been considered a very practical method in order to enhance the applicability of the real weapon system. In this paper, we formulated the weapon target assignment problem for supporting decision-making at the level of artillery. The lazy strategy based on hierarchical structure is proposed to accelerate the greedy algorithm. By experimental results, we show that our algorithm is more efficient in processing time and support the same level of the objective function value with the basic greedy algorithm.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.539-544
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• 2003

The weapon-target assignment problem is solved using a genetic algorithm in this paper. The weapon-target assignment is an optimization problem which minimizes damages from enemy s attack or maximizes the kill probability of targets. Genetic algorithm is applied in this paper since it usually converges to a near global optimal solution. A specific structure of genetic algorithm which is suitable for the weapon-target assignment problem is proposed. A guideline selecting associated parameters is investigated through simulations. Comparition of the proposed method with several traditional optimization techniques for the weapon-target assignment problem shows the validity of the proposed method.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.108-116
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• 2015

A missile defense system is composed of radars detecting incoming missiles aiming at defense assets, command control units making the decisions on weapon target assignment, and artillery batteries firing of defensive weapons to the incoming missiles. Although, the technology behind the development of radars and weapons is very important, effective assignment of the weapons against missile threats is much more crucial. When incoming missile targets toward valuable assets in the defense area are detected, the asset-based weapon target assignment model addresses the issue of weapon assignment to these missiles so as to maximize the total value of surviving assets threatened by them. In this paper, we present a model for an asset-based weapon assignment problem with shoot-look-shoot engagement policy and fixed set-up time between each anti-missile launch from each defense unit. Then, we show detailed linear approximation process for nonlinear portions of the model and propose final linear approximation model. After that, the proposed model is applied to several ballistic missile defense scenarios. In each defense scenario, the number of incoming missiles, the speed and the position of each missile, the number of defense artillery battery, the number of anti-missile in each artillery battery, single shot kill probability of each weapon to each target, value of assets, the air defense coverage are given. After running lpSolveAPI package of R language with the given data in each scenario in a personal computer, we summarize its weapon target assignment results specified with launch order time for each artillery battery. We also show computer processing time to get the result for each scenario.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.441-453
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• 2017

In this paper, a new type of weapon-target assignment(WTA) problem has been suggested that reflects realistic constraints for sharing target with other weapons and shooting double rapid fire. To utilize in rapidly changing actual battle field, the computation time is of great importance. Several metaheuristic methods such as Simulated Annealing, Tabu Search, Genetic Algorithm, Ant Colony Optimization, and Particle Swarm Optimization have been applied to the real-time WTA in order to find a near optimal solution. A case study with a large number of targets in consideration of the practical cases has been analyzed by the objective value of each algorithm.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.47 no.12
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• pp.856-864
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• 2019

The weapon-target assignment (WTA) problem is a matter of effectively allocating weapons to a number of threats. The WTA in a rapidly changing dynamic environment of engagement must take into account both of properties of the threat and the weapon and the effect of the previous decision. We propose a method of applying the Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP) algorithm, a kind of meta-heuristic method, to derive optimal solution for a dynamic WTA problem. Firstly, we define a dynamic WTA problem and formulate a mathematical model for applying the algorithm. For the purpose of the assignment strategy, the objective function is defined and time-varying constraints are considered. The dynamic WTA problem is then solved by applying the GRASP algorithm. The optimal solution characteristics of the formalized dynamic WTA problem are analyzed through the simulation, and the algorithm performance is verified via the Monte-Carlo simulation.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.337-345
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• 2020

The Weapon-Target Assignment(WTA) problem can be formulated as an optimization problem that minimize the threat of targets. Existing methods consider the trade-off between optimality and execution time to meet the various mission objectives. We propose a multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm for WTA based on mean field game to solve the problem in real-time with nearly optimal accuracy. Mean field game is a recent method introduced to relieve the curse of dimensionality in multi-agent learning algorithm. In addition, previous reinforcement learning models for WTA generally do not consider weapon interference, which may be critical in real world operations. Therefore, we modify the reward function to discourage the crossing of weapon trajectories. The feasibility of the proposed method was verified through simulation of a WTA problem with multiple targets in realtime and the proposed algorithm can assign the weapons to all targets without crossing trajectories of weapons.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.143-150
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• 2019

We focus on the weapon target assignment and fire scheduling problem (WTAFSP) with the objective of minimizing the makespan, i.e., the latest completion time of a given set of firing operations. In this study, we assume that there are m available weapons to fire at n targets (> m). The artillery attack operation consists of two steps of sequential procedure : assignment of weapons to the targets; and scheduling firing operations against the targets that are assigned to each weapon. This problem is a combination of weapon target assignment problem (WTAP) and fire scheduling problem (FSP). To solve this problem, we define the problem with a mixed integer programming model. Then, we develop exact algorithms based on a dynamic programming technique. Also, we suggest how to find lower bounds and upper bounds to a given problem. To evaluate the performance of developed exact algorithms, computational experiments are performed on randomly generated problems. From the results, we can see suggested exact algorithm solves problems of a medium size within a reasonable amount of computation time. Also, the results show that the computation time required for suggested exact algorithm can be seen to increase rapidly as the problem size grows. We report the result with analysis and give directions for future research for this study. This study is meaningful in that it suggests an exact algorithm for a more realistic problem than existing researches. Also, this study can provide a basis for developing algorithms that can solve larger size problems.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.221-227
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• 2019

It has long been known that weapon target assignment (WTA) problem is NP-hard. Nonetheless, an exact solution can be found using Brute-Force or branch-and bound method which utilize approximation. Many heuristic algorithms, genetic algorithm particle swarm optimization, etc., have been proposed which provide near-optimal solutions in polynomial time. This paper suggests polynomial time algorithm that can be obtain the optimal solution of WTA problem for the number of total weapons k, the number of weapon types m, and the number of targets n. This algorithm performs k times for O(mn) so the algorithm complexity is O(kmn). The proposed algorithm can be minimize the number of trials than brute-force method and can be obtain the optimal solution.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.47 no.11
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• pp.787-794
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• 2019

In this paper, a Mixed Integer Linear Programming(MILP) approach for solving optimal Weapon-Target Assignment(WTA) problem of multiple dissimilar Closed-In Weapon Systems (CIWS) is proposed. Generally, WTA problems are formulated in nonlinear mixed integer optimization form, which often requires impractical exhaustive search to optimize. However, transforming the problem into a structured MILP problem enables global optimization with an acceptable computational load. The problem of interest considers defense against several threats approaching the asset from various directions, with different time of arrival. Moreover, we consider multiple dissimilar CIWSs defending the asset. We derive a MILP form of the given nonlinear WTA problem. The formulated MILP problem is implemented with a commercial optimizer, and the optimization result is proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.23-36
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• 2016

We consider a model that minimizes the total cost incurred by assigning available weapons to existing targets in order to reduce enemy threats, which is called the weapon target assignment problem (WTAP). This study addresses the stochastic versions of WTAP, in which data, such as the probability of destroying a target, are given randomly (i.e., data are identified with certain probability distributions). For each type of random data or parameter, we provide a stochastic optimization model on the basis of the expected value or scenario enumeration. In particular, when the probabilities of destroying targets depending on weapons are stochastic, we present a stochastic programming formulation with a simple recourse. We show that the stochastic model can be transformed into a deterministic equivalent mixed integer programming model under a certain discrete probability distribution of randomness. We solve the stochastic model to obtain an optimal solution via the mixed integer programming model and compare this solution with that of the deterministic model.