Threat assessment for missions in hostile territory - From the aircraft perspective

A fighter pilot flying an air mission within hostile territory is exposed to the risk of getting hit be enemy weapons. This paper presents a survivability model that can be used for calculating this risk and assessing the threat to the mission. The model consists of two components; a tracking model and a fire model. The tracking model calculates the probabilities that the enemy is tracking the aircraft and has identified it as hostile. The enemy´s decision to fire a weapon depends on this probability but also on the enemy´s intentions to hit the aircraft. The fire model estimates the aircraft´s threat value, which describes how much threat the aircraft poses to the enemy´s assets and influences the probability that a weapon is fired. Furthermore, the weapons´ opportunities to hit the aircraft depend on the relative geometry between the aircraft velocity vector and the weapon launch positions. A reconnaissance mission is used for illustrating the model and the simulations show that the model enables a deeper analysis of the mission than previous approaches.