ACTOR: Automated Collateral Tactics for OPFOR Responses

A key challenge for battlefield mission rehearsal and training systems is the estimation of enemy courses of action (COAs). Currently, adversarial COA development is a manual time-consuming process prone to errors due to limited knowledge about the adversary and its ability to adapt. Development of battlefield simulations with embedded technology that can predict its adversary’s intent and range of behaviors would greatly enhance the efficacy of training and mission rehearsal solutions. In this phase II we propose to develop the Automated Collateral Tactics for OPFOR Responses (ACTOR) module, implemented in DARPA’s RealWorld but architected to be easily adaptable to other environments (e.g., OneSAF). ACTOR will automate control of OPFOR’s simulated units while requiring minimal input from the operators based on the mission environment and commander’s rehearsal or training objectives. ACTOR will embed into wargaming simulators a more intelligent enemy that will react/adapt to what BLUE is doing (it will learn the behavior patterns of BLUE forces and generate adaptive OPFOR plans aimed at achieving the highest degree of deception and system-wide effects on the BLUE C2 team). The ultimate goal of the ACTOR framework is to enable the design of advanced collaborative planning tools to support development of BLUE COA.