Author Description

Determining weapon platforms and munitions inventories is of great interest to senior military decision-makers. Because of the increasing cost of weapon systems, and the vital importance of future procurement decisions, senior decision-makers need to select the right balance of systems given limited budgets. The overall scope of this research is to develop a mathematical model, which aids the decision-makers of a moderately-sized NATO country to develop their future force structure composition. The problem was handled by using some ideas from existing models and by adding some new approaches. The proposed algorithm determines the optimal force-structure for campaign goals by using linear program to allocate the optimal number of weapon systems and munitions against each target. The algorithm incorporates the procurement decisions of weapon platforms while aggregating many of the details of the campaign theater. By varying the cost of an aircraft and the conditions of hypothetical conflict situations, the decision-makers are provided with a decision support tool for deciding the right mix of weapon systems and munitions. With the solution of a hypothetical conflict scenario, sensitivity analysis is conducted to further analyze the results.