A Stochastic Game-Based Approach for Multiple Beyond-Visual-Range Air Combat

Abstract

This paper addresses tactical decisions in beyond-visual-range (BVR) air combat between two adversarial teams of multiple (autonomous) aircraft. A BVR combat is formalized as a two-player stochastic game consisting of a sequence of normal-form games that determines on the number of missiles to be allocated to each adversary aircraft; within this normal-form game a continuous sub-game is embedded to determine the missile shooting times. The formulation reduces the size of decision space by taking advantage of the underlying symmetry of the combat scenario, and also facilitates incorporation of the effect of cooperative missile maneuvers and transition into within-visual-range (WVR) combat. The Nash equilibrium strategies and the associate value functions of the game are computed through linear-programming-based dynamic programming procedure. Numerical case studies on combat between airplanes with heterogeneous capabilities and cooperation effects demonstrate the validity of the proposed formulation and the effectiveness of the proposed solution scheme.