Hunting mobile targets: probabilistic models of mission success and its implications for command and control investment

The development of a military capability requires the development of a system of systems (SoS) comprising of command/control, surveillance and shooter elements. This SoS may be described with an architectural approach, specifying the C2, sensor or shooter nodes, command relationships, information exchanges and an activity model of the sequence of realised events during a conflict situation. In this paper we describe a process to assess different architectures for a particular military capability, that for eliminating time sensitive surface targets through aerial attack platforms. Our assessment method is based on constructing a probabilistic metric, the joint probability that all the events of our activity model occur. This metric will be dependent on a number of performance parameters of our component systems, such as expected C2 decision time, number of available shooters, target-tracking time amongst others. As a result, we generate an effectiveness surface dependent on our system performance parameters. Analysis of this surface yields information as to where next to direct expenditure to maximise overall effectiveness in light of the non-linearities intrinsic to our SoS. We look at trade-offs between decreasing command decision times, increasing the number of shooters and increasing target-tracking time. 1