A Knowledge‐Base System for the Threat Evaluation and Weapon Assignment Process

The threat evaluation and weapon assignment process is an important air defence function of the command and control system of a frigate or destroyer. It ranks the radar air tracks coming from the ship's automatic detection and tracking unit according to specific criteria. These criteria include the position of the closest point of approach (CPA) with respect to the ship, the time for the target to reach the CPA, and other ship and target characteristics. As soon as the target tracks have been ranked, the ship must assign its hardkill and/or softkill weapons to these targets so that they will be destroyed or decoyed from the ship. The important problems arising from the weapon assignment process are the order and choice of hardkill/softkill weapons to be assigned against a specific attack of anti-ship missiles. A knowledge-base approach to the threat evaluation and weapon assignment process for a single warship attacked by anti-ship missiles has been explored using SMALLTALK 80/HUMBLE. This paper describes the design of the knowledge-base system, the design of the testing environment for it, the evaluation of the performance of the knowledge-base system in the environment and it finally presents the results that were obtained.