Analysis of Cooperative Behavior for Autonomous Wide Area Search Munitions

This research investigates the effectiveness of autonomous wide area search munitions using cooperative and non-cooperative behavior algorithms under various scenarios. The scenarios involve multiple autonomous munitions searching for an unknown number of targets with different priorities at unknown locations. For the cooperative cases, communications are allowed between the munitions to help locate, identify, and decide to pursue an attack on a target or to continue searching the rest of the battlefield. For non cooperative cases, munitions independently search, detect, identify and decide to attack an identified target or continue to search. Performance of the cooperative munitions depends on numerous parameters such as target types, number, mobility, battlefield characteristics, warhead lethality, decision objectives, and variability in the battlefield. The results were examined under characteristics of warhead lethality, ATR capability, false target attack rate, number of munitions deployed in the simulation, and search weight. Cooperative munitions demonstrated significant decrease in the number of killed targets. Cooperative behavior reduced the number of false target attacks significantly.