Engagement Planning Based on Proven, Advanced Techniques for Planning, Resource Selection, and Constraint Satisfaction

We propose the development of an advanced, intelligent, robust engagement planner for the Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. Ultimately the improved GMD engagement planning capability will allow better quality plans; faster planning; larger,more complex threats; additional defense system capabilities; increased planning problem space; and better accuracy, reliability, maintainability, growth potential, and adaptability of the engagement planning system.In Phase I we will investigate integration requirements, elaborate the heuristics, algorithms and techniques for improved engagement planning, analyze them as to their feasibility in several dimensions, define the metrics for planning performance, definethe process to clearly demonstrate the performance improvement, further prove the feasibility of the techniques through prototype development, and develop the Phase II system and high-level Phase III design.We are confident of our ability to improve upon the current GMD Planner and to accomplish this ambitious scope within Phase I because we will leverage our existing highly customizable intelligent planning architecture with its existing planninginfrastructure; existing, proven, superior algorithms; and capability to develop and implement new ones. Our foundation includes 15 years of advanced planning, scheduling, resource selection, constraint satisfaction, and optimization experience involvinga variety of application areas, including tactical engagement planning. Beyond use by the GMD Program, the Engagement Planner will be applicable to several other military engagement planning applications, including existing Stottler Henke customers. Combined with our existing product, Aurora, the algorithms developed herecan be marketed for commercial resource-dominated scheduling problems.