(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-07-01)
Poole, Benjamin Hancock
After surveying the state-of-the-art in evaluation of alternatives in the defense acquisition process, a methodology for the evaluation of the robustness of systems-of-systems alternatives was proposed. In the methodology, robustness is defined as the integral of the alternative s regret over the likelihood-weighted plausible scenario space. Surrogate modeling techniques were used to overcome shortcomings associated with conventional regret analysis, including the discrete nature of scenario cases and static results. The new methodology, called Global Regret Analysis, was tested using an example problem based on the air campaign over Iraq in Operation Desert Storm. The results of the testing indicate that the methodology can provide a measure of the robustness of different system-of-systems alternatives against a wide range of possible scenarios. The methodology was then demonstrated on the US Air Force s persistent, precision strike mission. The demonstration showed the ability of Global Regret Analysis to overcome issues associated with using a single or other small number of scenarios to evaluate systems-of-systems alternatives. The methodology was then compared to a variety of existing methods and found to have strength for a wide range of evaluation applications. The possibility of applying Global Regret Analysis for military mission planning and opportunities for future work were also discussed.