Multiobjective decision analysis of theater missile defense architectures

The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization manages the design, development, and acquisition of theater missile defense (TMD) systems to provide an integrated TMD architecture. They face the challenging decision of selecting the architecture that best meets mission performance objectives and life cycle budgetary constraints. To provide a TMD analysis tool, we have developed an architecture analysis methodology to maximize the value of the TMD architecture subject to life cycle budget constraints. We used the Joint Doctrine, the Mission Need Statement, and the Operational Requirements Document to qualitatively define TMD architecture value. We then used multiobjective decision analysis to quantitatively define the value of each potential TMD architecture. We used decision trees to determine the best TMD targeting strategies. Finally, we used optimization to determine optimal architectures and missile procurement levels for given life cycle (R&D and procurement) budget constraints. We developed a demonstration model to illustrate the methodology to Theater Missile Defense architecture decision‐makers. The demonstration model can be expanded to add additional objectives, systems, and programmatic constraints. Although our demonstration model has focused on TMD architectures, we believe that the methodology can be applied to national missile defense and many other complex government and private industry architectures. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Syst Eng 4: 24–34, 2001