Graphical Requirements for Force Level Planning. Volume 2

Abstract : This report presents novel interactive graphical techniques for performing Air Force planning tasks such as deploying aircraft and weapons against desired targets, determining the availability of resources, performing a cost benefit analysis to improve resource use, coordinating interdependent missions, and assessing the strategic value of a set of mission plans in a theater of operations. The most fundamental aspect of force-level planning is that it is an interactive process, during each cycle of which it is important to be able to visualize the interdependence among the decision variables, and to be able to gauge the impact of modifying specific decisions. Traditional text-based techniques deny the planner the power of the interactive graphical medium for visualizing these dependencies, and for gauging the impact of proposed changes. In contrast, out techniques help the planner to understand arbitrary fragments of the current state of the mission's plans, and incrementally improve them to achieve tactical objectives.