Escape Regions of the Active Target Defense Differential Game

The active target defense differential game is addressed in this paper. In this differential game an Attacker missile pursues a Target aircraft. The aircraft is however aided by a Defender missile launched by, say, the wingman, to intercept the Attacker before it reaches the Target aircraft. Thus, a team is formed by the Target and the Defender which cooperate to maximize the separation between the Target aircraft and the point where the Attacker missile is intercepted by the Defender missile, while the Attacker simultaneously tries to minimize said distance. This paper focuses on characterizing the set of coordinates such that if the Target's initial position belong to this set then its survival is guaranteed if both the Target and the Defender follow their optimal strategies. Such optimal strategies are presented in this paper as well.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1502.0274

Active Target Defense Differential Game with a Fast Defender

This paper addresses the active target defense differential game where an Attacker missile pursues a Target aircraft. A Defender missile is fired by the Target's wingman in order to intercept the Attacker before it reaches the aircraft. Thus, a team is formed by the Target and the Defender which cooperate to maximize the distance between the Target aircraft and the point where the Attacker missile is intercepted by the Defender missile, while the Attacker tries to minimize said distance. The results shown here extend previous work. We consider here the case where the Defender is faster than the Attacker. The solution to this differential game provides optimal heading angles for the Target and the Defender team to maximize the terminal separation between Target and Attacker and it also provides the optimal heading angle for the Attacker to minimize the said distance.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures. A shorter version of this paper will be presented at the 2015 American Control Conferenc

Considering a war with Iran

The paper is a strategic studies analyis of the war-fronts, weapon systems and political-military tactics of a U.S.-Iranian war, including the U.S. use of nuclear weapons

Ballistic missile defence: how soon, how significant, and what should Australia's policy be?

Summary: The issue of ballistic missile defence (BMD) was a controversial one when US President Reagan first advocated a strategic-level system in the early 1980s. It remains so today. What’s Australia’s interest? We live a long way away from most current ballistic missile arsenals. But the ADF frequently deploys within range of ballistic missile systems, especially in Northeast Asia or the Middle East, and those systems might proliferate more widely in the future. The paper considers the two questions we need to decide. The first is the priority for enhancing the ADF’s own BMD capabilities. The second is whether it makes sense for us to participate in a cooperative arrangement with the US or other partners

The Development of Vietnam’s Sea-Denial Strategy

In the past two decades, Vietnam’s military investment has manifested a strategic shift of national interest from land to the maritime sphere, especially since 2000. This evolution reflects the country’s altered external environment and its economic transformation. During the Cold War, Hanoi focused on land warfare. Despite the existence of a small navy since the 1960s, land warfare represented the main security issue for Vietnamese decision makers, whether it concerned the Vietnam War against the United States and its allies, military intervention in Cambodia, or border defense against China

Schelling, von Neumann, and the Event that Didn’t Occur

Thomas Schelling was recognized by the Nobel Prize committee as a pioneer in the application of game theory and rational choice analysis to problems of politics and international relations. However, although he makes frequent references in his writings to this approach, his main explorations and insights depend upon and require acknowledgment of its limitations. One of his principal concerns was how a country could engage in successful deterrence. If the behavioral assumptions that commonly underpin game theory are taken seriously and applied consistently, however, nuclear adversaries are almost certain to engage in devastating conflict, as John von Neumann forcefully asserted. The history of the last half century falsified von Neumann’s prediction, and the “event that didn’t occur” formed the subject of Schelling’s Nobel lecture. The answer to the question “why?” is the central concern of this paper