Date of Award

Spring 2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering

Committee Director

Ghaith Rabadi

Committee Member

Shannon Bowling

Committee Member

Resit Unal

Committee Member

Sean Deller

Abstract

Network Centric Operations (NCO) has been dubbed the most significant revolution in military affairs (RMA) in the past 200 years. The promise of NCO is based on the notion that information sharing and connectivity is fundamental to the effectiveness of a combat force. This due to the ability of a properly networked force to self-synchronize itself as it engages enemy forces. The purposeful arrangement of assets in a combat force is what makes it 'properly networked'. What is a purposeful arrangement of combat assets? How should a force organize to enhance information sharing and connectivity? And how does connectivity within a networked force impact its combat effectiveness? This research builds a discrete-event simulation of the information age combat model, which is a representation of NCO, in an attempt to understand the impact of information sharing and connectivity among the elements of a military force on its combat effectiveness. Unbalanced combat configurations doing symmetric engagements were selected as the prime focus. They were studied and simulated to gain insights into the dynamics of networked operations. The proposed discrete event combat model displayed significant increases in efficiency and speed of running compared to previous modeling work that utilized agent-directed simulations. Linear and nonlinear regression analyses were conducted to highlight the performance metrics that wield significant predictive power over the probability of winning a combat engagement.

DOI

10.25777/9dzr-2422

ISBN

9781267668134

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