Fire scheduling for planned artillery attack operations under time-dependent destruction probabilities

• Published in: Omega (Oxford) Vol. 38; no. 5; pp. 383 - 392
• Main Authors: Cha, Young-Ho, Kim, Yeong-Dae
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2010; Elsevier; Pergamon Press Inc
• Series: Omega
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Artillery; Branch & bound algorithms; Branch and bound algorithm; Exact sciences and technology; Military; Military Scheduling Branch and bound algorithm; Military strategy; Operational research and scientific management; Operational research. Management science; Scheduling; Scheduling, sequencing; Studies; Branch and bound algorithm; Scheduling; Military; Military application; Time dependence; Computation time; Probabilistic approach; Branch and bound method; Fires; Weapon
• ISSN: 0305-0483; 1873-5274
• DOI: 10.1016/j.omega.2009.10.003

In this paper, we consider the fire scheduling problem (FSP) for field artillery, which is the problem of scheduling operations of firing at given targets with a given set of weapons. We consider a situation in which the number of available weapons is smaller than the number of targets, the targets are assigned to the weapons already, and targets may move and hence the probability that a target is destroyed by a firing attack decreases as time passes. We present a branch and bound algorithm for the FSP with the objective of minimizing total threat of the targets, which is expressed as a function of the destruction probabilities of the targets. Results of computational tests show that the suggested algorithm solves problems of a medium size in a reasonable amount of computation time.