Quantifying decision complexity in IADS operations

Decision Advantage is a goal in current and future military operations. Achieving such an advantage can be done by degrading adversaries’ decision-making ability through imposition of complexity into the decision problems they have to make. This paper describes mathematical techniques for quantifying decision complexity in Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS). The methods are based on graph properties derived from the defender’s IADS’ System of Systems description and the attacker’s Course of Action (COA) plans. Multiple plans can be compared quantitatively with respect to the decision complexity they impose on the defender. using metrics that are semantically meaningful to planners. The metrics developed are able to expose subtle ways that COAs impose complexity on an adversary, that may not be obvious to an operational planner at first glance.