NUCLEAR VS CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS EFFECTIVENESS COMPARISON

A METHODOLOGY/MODEL FOR THE CALCULATION OF LETHALITY EFFECTIVENESS EQUIVALENCY RELATIONSHIPS FOR AN EVALUATION SET OF SPECIFIC TACTICAL NUCLEAR, CONVENTIONAL UNITARY, AND ICM WEAPONS WILL BE DEVELOPED. THE APPROACH WILL CONSIST OF SPECIFIC MODIFICATIONS TO AN EXISTING COMPUTER SIMULATION MODEL, THE NICHOLS RESEARCH CORPORATION WEAPONS EFFECTIVENESS SIMULATION (WES) MODEL, WHICH WILL UTILIZE INPUTS OF CHARACTERISTIC FUNCTION PARAMETERS DERIVED FROM DATA ON THE AVAILABLE PERTINENT PHYSICAL DAMAGE CHARACTERISTICS FOR THE ELEMENTS OF THE EVALUATION SET. MODIFICATIONS TO THE EXISTING MODEL WILL ALLOW EFFECTIVENESS CALCULATIONS FOR SELECTED TEST CASES WHICH INCLUDE VARIABLE TARGET COMPLEX GEOMETRIES AND NON-UNIFORM TARGET VALUE DENSITIES. FOR THESE SELECTED TEST CASES, THE NEW SIMULATION MODEL WILL BE USED TO PRODUCE AN EFFECTIVENESS ANALYSIS FOR BOTH TARGET AND COLLATERIAL DAMAGE. THE RESULTS OF THIS ANALYSIS WILL INCLUDE A DIRECT COMPARISON OF THE NUCLEAR AND CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS IN THE EVALUATION SET ON THE BASIS OF DAMAGE AND TARGET CHARACTERISTICS VERSUS LETHALITY EFFECTIVENESS.