Ground Based Anti-Ship Missile Effectiveness Study

NPS NRP Executive SummaryIn his planning guidance documents, the Commandant of the Marine Corps states that his highest priority is future force design with a particular emphasis on improving integration with the U.S. Navy. Part of this integration envisions a key role for expeditionary forces to employ Ground-Based Anti-Ship Missiles (GBASM). We develop a scenario of a confrontation in the South China Sea between U.S. Marine forces and the People’s Republic of China. We implement that scenario in Modeling And Simulation Toolkit (MAST), an agent-based modeling platform, and employ efficient experimental design to analyze its output. We find strong evidence that a trade-off exists between missile range and launcher capacity employed in our scenario. In addition, we find that the Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) substantially improves Blue survivability and operational success. Our modeling effort is likely sensitive to the tactical situation, such as the number of ships, GSABM launchers, and geography of the scenario, but the approach holds promise to similarly evaluate real-world missiles in future research. This work was greatly aided by the substantial contributions of Mary McDonald and Stephen Upton of the Simulation Experiments and Efficient Designs (SEED) Center at NPS.HQMC Programs & Resources (P&R)This research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.