Modeling the Detectability of Small Targets at Sea

Search and target acquisition models are essential tools for designing imaging sensors and systems such as small sea craft. They also form the core of modern, system level, force-on-force simulations, commonly called "wargames." Where engineering models seek to calculate target detectability to a high degree of certainty, wargaming models are much more centered on the search process. In a process known as Simulation Based Acquisition, wargames provide quantitative measures of the military utility of a future system. However, the target acquisition models within wargames are inaccurate when considering modern imaging sensors and targets with reduced signature, due to the lack of detail in describing the sensor, the target, the background and the environment, and to the relatively simplistic algorithms typical of these simulations. This effort proposes an approach for greatly increasing the accuracy of the target acquisition module applied to force-on-force simulations. We will expand the data fidelity of all aspects of target acquisition and update the algorithms to make best use of these new data. The principle challenges are defining datasets that may be reasonably available and designing and ensuring that the algorithms remain sufficiently fast for real-time wargame operations.