Airborne and Air-Deployed Multi-Sensor Search Optimization

Since the Second World War, increased performance has been acquired by investing heavily in expensive new sensor hardware, at the near exclusion of developing new algorithms and tactics to optimize use of sensors in complex environments. The shift toward threats in just such hostile areas demands a more synergistic approach wherein new sensors breed new tactics, and possibly vice versa. The optimization strategies to date either provide precise answers to sensor usage, but too slowly to be tactically useful, or quick answers that are at best suggestive of the proper strategy. SCOUT (Sensor Coordination for Optimal Utilization and Tactics) is a novel approach which combines the best aspects of the most promising methods, and approaches the solution process in a sufficiently general way that its capabilities will be useful for land-based, sea-based, air-based sensors, platforms, and searches, and the much more difficult problem of mixed-environment missions (such as a beachhead invasion). SCOUT adapts previous work with genetic and Bayesian solutions to solve the specific problem of optimally choosing aircraft sensors and flight paths to maximize overall mission performance, while minimizing vulnerability.