A Tabu Search Approach to the Weapons Assignment Model

<p>USSTRATCOM/J535 developed the Weapon Assignment Model (WAM) to analyze potential future force structures and build the Red Integrated Strategic Offensive Plan (RISOP) a hypothetical Russian war plan for attacking the West. Typical problems from WAM consider 3000 targets and 6000 warheads from about 2700 weapon systems. The Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) systems are limited to a pool of about 30000 feasible footprints. The integer linear formulation of this problem often has over 16 goals 500000 decision variables and 10000 constraints. The problem size warrants the use of heuristics to find good solutions. This research demonstrates that tabu search obtains excellent solutions to problems from WAM. The tabu search basically deletes and adds individual weapon assignments to find better solutions while forbidding (tabu) backtracking on a move for a number of iterations (tabu tenure). Very good solutions are obtained in about 30 minutes on a dual processor PC when starting with no weapons assigned. The tabu search obtains good solutions much faster if a previous solution even if currently infeasible is the starting point for the search. While significantly reducing computational time from the current solve technique the tabu search allows for either prioritized or goal programming does not limit the size of the footprint pool and is not sensitive to the order of the goals. Tabu search's ability to quickly solve these nuclear targeting problems provides better insight into force structure and policy decisions. This research lays the foundation for automating and optimizing U.S. nuclear war plans.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p>