The Application of Design of Experiments and Modeling to Complex Weapons Systems

This paper presents the conceptual and experimental aspects involved in the construction of a mathematical model to describe and predict the behavior and output of a complex weapons system for a given class of inputs consisting of raid configurations. The weapon system is functionally divided into such activities as detection, weapon-target assignment, tracking, acquisition, firing, and ultimate kill. Time delays, measures of the time intervals corresponding to these functional activities, are given as mathematical functions of input parameters, such as range, radar cross section, velocity, height, etc. The over-all function of the weapon system was partitioned into subfunctions in consonance with the concept of a weapon-complex as a time-response system. The model is to show how the various functions or activities of the weapon system are interrelated and interconnected and how they affect one another. The modeling approach is based upon the conceptual scheme input (rightarrow) system (rightarrow) output. The ultimate aim of the model is to find explicit expressions of the output response in terms of specific raid inputs and to obtain regression equations of kill probabilities in terms of height, velocity, range, concentration of targets, etc. The model contains a flow chart of a computer program that can be coded for any computing machine so that, given the characteristics of a given raid and an assignment procedure, the corresponding system response, in terms of kill probability, can be computed. The techniques used here may be found equally useful in other fields of system research, development, and evaluation.