Modeling Air Combat with Influence Diagrams

Abstract: Air combat is a complex situation, training for it and analysis of possible tactics are time consuming and expensive. In order to circumvent those problems, mathematical models of air combat can be used. This thesis presents air combat as a one-on-one influence diagram game where the influence diagram allows the dynamics of the aircraft, the preferences of the pilots and the uncertainty of decision making in a structural and transparent way to be taken into account. To obtain the players’ game optimal control sequence with respect to their preferences, the influence diagram has to be solved. This is done by truncating the diagram with a moving horizon technique and determining and implementing the optimal controls for a dynamic game which only lasts a few time steps. The result is a working air combat model, where a player estimates the probability that it resides in any of four possible states. The pilot’s preferences are modeled by utility functions, one for each possible state. In each time step, the players are maximizing the cumulative sum of the utilities for each state which each possible action gives. These are weighted with the corresponding probabilities. The model is demonstrated and evaluated in a few interesting aspects. The presented model offers a way of analyzing air combat tactics and maneuvering as well as a way of making autonomous decisions in for example air combat simulators.