War Game between Two Matched Fleets with Goal Options and Tactical Optimization

Abstract

A war game between two matched fleets of equal size and capability is designed and simulated in this work. Each fleet is composed of a carrier vessel (CV), a guided missile cruiser (CG), and two guided-missile destroyers (DDGs). Each vessel is equipped with specific weapons, including fighters, missiles, and close-in weapon system (CIWS), to carry out tactical operations. The maneuverability, maximum flying distance, and kill probability of different weapons are specified. Three goal options, a defense option and two more aggressive ones, are available to each fleet. A particle-pair swarm optimization (P2SO) algorithm is proposed to optimize the tactical parameters of both fleets concurrently according to their chosen options. The parameters to be optimized include take-off time delay of fighters, launch time delay of anti-ship missiles (ASHMs), and initial flying directions of fighters and ASHMs, respectively. All six possible contests between options are simulated and analyzed in terms of payoff, impact scores on CV, CG, DDG, and the number of lost fighters. Some interesting outlier cases are inspected to gain some insights on this game.