OS4655 Introduction to Joint Combat Modeling

This course covers the basic tools, concepts, and enduring fundamentals of combat modeling with an emphasis on applications. Topics include the roles of combat models in the Department of Defense decision-making process, a review of some important community combat models, aggregate force-on-force models (including Lanchester’s equations and Hughes’ salvo equations as well as some extensions of them), firing theory, sensing algorithms, simulation entity decision making, simulating C4ISR processes, terrain and movement algorithms, verification, validation, & accreditation (VV&A), stochastic versus deterministic representations, agent-based simulations, design and analysis of computer experiments, and utilizing the Map Aware Nonuniform Automata (MANA) environment. You will learn by doing—that is, through combat modeling projects requiring you to design, implement, analyze, and report your findings.

OS4655 is designed with a single prerequisite for accessibility to Distance Learning students with varied backgrounds.

Prerequisite

A course in probability and statistics or permission of the instructor.

Lecture Hours

4

Lab Hours

0

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:

• Credibly use models in support of decision making.
• Have some familiarity with important community models.
• Understand (warfare) modeling vocabulary.
• Describe and discuss design trade-offs for modeling various aspects of combat (e.g., attrition, detection, movement, decision making, etc.).
• Implement and use Lanchester’s and Hughes’ models, and extensions thereof, to model aggregate level combat. This will include initial battle conditions, determining the winner of the battle, the length of the battle, and the number of survivors.
• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of, and be able to implement, a variety of methods for modeling detection, attrition, movement, decision making, etc.
• Define measures of effectiveness (MOEs) and be able to discern “good” MOEs from poor ones.
• Discuss current issues in combat modeling, including deterministic and stochastic approaches, chaos and combat models, agent-based models, and distributed simulation.
• Build and analyze an entity-level combat simulation in MANA.
• Critique real-world examples of the application of combat models for military analyses.