Fast and Simple Method for Weapon Target Assignment in Air Defense Command and Control System

The assignment problem is a fundamental optimization problem which can be applied in many real-life automation tasks including weapon target assignment (WTA) as a basic functional module of automated command and control centers. The WTA problem is a class of optimization problems in the field of optimization and operation research. It consists of finding an optimal assignment of a set of weapons of various types to a set of targets in order to maximize the total expected damage to the opponent. In this paper, we propose an optimal air target distribution method in a mixed air defense cluster scenario. Our mathematical formulation is built with both weapons units and targets which are diverse in types in the practical complex anti-aircraft combat conditions. Then, we proposed a method based on Kuhn-Munkres assignment algorithm which has low computational cost and complexity, allowing quick estimation of the optimal distribution plan based on the criterion “efficiency: maximum hostile target destruction, minimum cost of weapon consumed and surface target damage”. The experimental results have clarified that the proposed method has a great efficiency in real-time and optimal requirements. © 2021, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.