Counter insurgency operations a mathematical modelling approach

Security Forces are often faced with the arduous task of conducting a search for active terrorists or insurgents. The decision maker is faced with the difficult task of deploying limited effort for search in various sectors. The paper presents a stochastic model which assigns target presence probabilities, optimises search effort and then revises the target presence probability based on likely movement of the insurgents and the search effort expended. The search effort is reassigned in an iterative process till the insurgents are captured/eliminated. The paper also discusses the factors that would affect target presence probabilities and suggests how these data could be used for making such searches more efficient and effective.