An agent-based modeling approach to creating more resilient littoral combat architectures

摘要

Littoral combat is a critical component of naval warfare that has gained importance since the late 20th century due to a shift from matched blue-water combat to agile, asymmetric warfare near the coast. With the increased relevance of this type of naval combat, the ability of a networked naval warfare System-of-Systems (SoS) to operate effectively given the challenges of operations in the littoral zone becomes imperative. Resilience in an SoS in the face of a variety of threats is vital. These threats may take various forms: traditional warfare, cyber attacks, or communications breakdowns. The challenge for any SoS practitioner is identifying such architectures from a vast design space. We define an architecture as the constituent systems in the SoS and the connections among these systems. We seek to apply an agent-based modeling approach to create an architecture evaluation tool that leverages the modular nature of an SoS to quickly conduct trade studies and analyses to identify architectures that are resilient to a variety of threats. The simulation tool is built on the principles of the Open Systems Architecture put forth by the Department of Defense (DoD). We present an analysis that seeks to find a suitable SoS architecture configuration that maintains operability and performance during the loss of command authorities. This loss can be attributed to battle casualties or other forms of threats including communications failures. We demonstrate that distributing managerial control in the architecture improves, to some extent, SoS performance in terms of time to threat elimination. This single analysis demonstrates how SoS practitioners can use agent-based models to quickly construct and evaluate potential architectures against a variety of threats and disruptions, ultimately building resilient SoS architectures that perform to prescribed levels even in the face of network failures and attacks.