SBIR-STTR Award

ALPHATECH proposes to develop a tool addressing the unique planning needs of the tactical Tomahawk weapon system. Using an innovative combination of optimization techniques, this tool will generate cruise missile strike plans missile trajectories and target coverage schedules and generate new plans in response to in-flight retargeting needs. We will accomplish this by formulating the flight path construction problem as an approximate dynamic program, incrementally building missile trajectories. The use of a single, global optimization will produce synchronized strike plans which provide maximal target coverage coverage which is shared across the set of missiles. This initial strike plan will include (1) missile routes, and (2) target feasibility schedules which describe (for each missile) those targets to which a missile may be diverted, and the associated timing constraints. From this plan foundation, we will develop weapon assignment algorithms that optimize the allocation of missiles to targets following a time-critical call for fire, or other retargeting event. Upon the solution of this weapon-target pairing sub-problem, we will re-optimize remaining missile trajectories to reallocate our coverage of any outstanding targets. Implementation of this methodology will provide strike planners with a robust planning and re-planning tool for the tactical Tomahawk weapon system. Benefit The tactical Tomahawk weapon system’s in-flight communications capabilities provide the ability to retarget cruise missile strikes on-the-fly, but also suggest the need for planning tools that are responsive to a changing tactical environment. The vehicle routing and resource scheduling concepts described in this proposal to address this problem are applicable to a wide range of industrial and commercial settings, as well as other military uses. Many commercial processes require precise coordination and synchronization of tasks and activities for geographically distributed resources. A hallmark of these processes is the need for rapid decision making under dynamically evolving conditions. Examples include transportation and logistics planning, air traffic control, the management of airborne surveillance assets for law enforcement, and search and rescue operations or other crisis response planning. ALPHATECH’s development of methods to address the tactical Tomahawk planning problem will have the potential to be extended to these and other applications. Keywords Approximate dynamic programming, Weapon-target pairing, Cruise missile planning, Tactical Tomahawk, Loitering weapon optimization, Aircraft routing, time-critical targeting

ALPHATECH has developed a prototype planning tool, dubbed RATTLER, for Robust Automated Tactical Tomahawk Loitering and Engagement Router, in Phase I of this SBIR effort. RATTLER uses a variety of optimization techniques to construct missile trajectories that maximize target 'coverage': the ability of the collective salvo of missiles to be redirected to a new set of aim-points. A RATTLER-generated strike plan is robust against uncertain retargeting events: once a strike plan is generated and put into execution, the same optimization techniques will be applied to the problem of dynamic retargeting. When a missile is diverted from its nominal flight path, RATTLER simultaneously perturbs the other flight paths, such that the remaining missiles maintain maximal coverage of the outstanding potential targets. In Phase I we have demonstrated the feasibility of our algorithmic concepts for tactical Tomahawk loiter and engagement planning. Our goal in Phase II will be to build upon this success: develop and rigorously evaluate a software tool based on these algorithmic concepts. The objectives of the software tool will be to optimize planning for near real-time employment of loitering weapons in support of critical user decisions. Benefit The tactical Tomahawk weapon system’s in-flight communications capabilities provide the ability to retarget cruise missile strikes on-the-fly, but also suggest the need for planning tools that are responsive to a changing tactical environment. The vehicle routing and resource scheduling concepts described in this proposal to address this problem are applicable to a wide range of industrial and commercial settings, as well as other military uses. Many commercial processes require precise coordination and synchronization of tasks and activities for geographically distributed resources. A hallmark of these processes is the need for rapid decision making under dynamically evolving conditions. Examples include transportation and logistics planning, air traffic control, the management of airborne surveillance assets for law enforcement, and search and rescue operations or other crisis response planning. ALPHATECH’s development of methods to address the tactical Tomahawk planning problem will have the potential to be extended to these and other applications. The primary emphasis of our commercialization efforts for the RATTLER technology will be on the Navy’s Tactical Tomahawk Weapon Control System (TTWCS). In particular, our initial transition target will be TTWCS version 7. The timing of Phase II puts us in good position for TTWCS version 7, in which tactical decision aids are a major component, and version 8, in which mobile targets are an emphasis and a RATTLER-like capability will be critical. Keywords Aircraft routing , Weapon-target pairing , Loitering weapon optimization , Time-critical targeting , Approximate dynamic programming , Tactical Tomahawk, Cruise missile planning