Optimal attack against an area defense protecting many targets

Many separated targets, of only a few differing values, are subject to a simultaneous attack. The area defenses considered have (a) impact point prediction (IPP) and full coordination, or (b) no IPP and full coordination, or (c) no IPP and partial coordination. For a given attack, the defense wishes to allocate its interceptors to maximize the expected total survival value of the targets. For a given attack size, and with knowledge of the defense’s capabilities, the offense seeks a strategy to minimize expected optimal survival value against best defense. The authors present algorithms to determine optimal attack and defense strategies and the optimal value of the min-max problem, and they show how to take computational advantage of the relatively few unique target values. Illustrative computational results are provided.