ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE APPLICATIONS FOR AUTOMATED BATTLE MANAGEMENT AIDS IN FUTURE MILITARY ENDEAVORS

This thesis seeks to study artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that can improve decision-making in complex military tactical environments. Tactical environments can become highly complex in terms of threats, the tempo of events, the element of surprise or unexpected events, the limits of battlespace awareness, and the potential deadly consequences. This type of environment translates into a highly challenging decision space for tactical warfighters. Tactical decision-making tasks quickly surpass the cognitive abilities of humans in terms of identifying decision options, weighing the relative value of numerous options, calculating the predictive success of options, and performing these tasks under extremely short timeliness. The Navy has identified the need to develop automated battle management aids (ABMA) to support human decision-makers. The concept is for ABMAs to process large amounts of data to develop battlespace knowledge and awareness and identify and prioritize warfare resource and course of action options. Recent developments in AI methods show promise as a critical enabler of ABMAs to support tactical decision-making. This thesis studies AI methods with an objective of identifying specific applications to the realm of tactical decision-making.N2/N6http://archive.org/details/artificialintell1094562722Lieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited