Complex Adaptive Systems-based Toolkit (CAST) for Dynamic Plan Assessment

The Air Force requires C2 systems that support full spectrum of operations. This is specifically relevant to the air campaign mission planning and analysis community where there have been several recent concept changes, advancements in information technology, sensors, and weapons, and expansion in the diversity and capabilities of potential adversaries. To fully support campaign plan development and analysis in this new environment, there is a need for systems and tools that enhance understanding of the behavior of battlespace entities, assess potential threat capabilities and vulnerabilities, perform C2 system trades, and provide methods to identify macro-level novel or emergent combat tactics and behavior derived from simpler micro-level rules. Such systems must also be interactive, collaborative, and semi-autonomous, providing the planning analyst with the means for exploration and potential exploitation of novel combatant behavior patterns. To address these issues, we propose to design and prototype a Complex Adaptive Systems-based Toolkit (CAST) for Dynamic Plan Assessment to support Air Force air campaign operations. Our proposed CAST integrates: a graphical environment for the development and specification of combat agent behavior models, a scenario generation component, a simulation engine, and an agent adaptation mechanism employing a genetic algorithm based optimizer.