Operations Research, V. 60, No. 1, pp 48-63.http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.1110.1002A military arms race is characterized by an iterative development of measures and countermeasures. An attacker attempts to introduce new weapons in order to gain some advantage. whereas a defender attempts to develop countermeasures that can mitigate or even eliminate the effects of the weapons. This paper addresses the defender's decision problem: given limited resources, which countermeasures should be developed and how much should be invested in their development to minimize the damge caused by the attacker's weapos over a certain time horizon. We formulate several optimization models, corresponding to different operational settings, as sonstrained shortest-path problems and variants thereof. We then demonstrate the potential applicability and robusteness of this apporach with respect to various scenarios
