Aircraft Level Evaluation and SoS Assessment for an Air Interdiction Mission under Operational Constraints

Abstract

Modern combat vehicles are becoming increasingly expensive due to extensive requirements of multirole warfighting capability. The multirole capability requires several weapons, sensors, communication systems and avoidance subsystems. That leads to non-stealthy, inefficient, and heavier platforms. Thus, there is need to understand the effect of individual platform design and technologies on a multi-vehicle battlespace. Multi-level system dependencies impact performance and effectiveness. This necessitates a holistic System of Systems (SoS) design and assessment methodology. With an SoS battlespace simulation we can evaluate the impact of individual platforms or weapons on an individual mission scenario level. This paper presents an extension to further use cases of a simulation embedded SoS framework, developed at the DLR Institute of Systems Architectures in Aeronautics. The framework spans along equipment, weapons, sensors, subsystems, systems, SoS, mission thread. and mission scenarios/operations. This paper focuses on the evaluation of a counterland Air Interdiction (AI) mission with suppression of enemy air defense aspects including the following: - Obtain a set of aircraft requirements under operational constraints by analyzing the outcome on the battlefield - Study the impact of different strike group sizes and weapon numbers on the mission outcome in a AI scenario - Evaluate impact of the individual vehicle performance mapped to a multi vehicle capability - Demonstrate robustness of the framework across various mission types A Design of Experiment is conducted over system (aircraft), weapon and concept of operations level, evaluating influence of aircraft specific excess power, weapon carriage, radar cross section and strike group size. The results are evaluated via SoS-level measures of effectiveness such as survivability and weapon usage.