Flight and fire control knowledge representation

The development of a conceptual framework for an operational, onboard, real-time multiprocessing computer system, capable of assisting the pilot in flight and fire control decisions, i.e. a tactical decision aiding expert system, is discussed. Air combat is considered as a game problem in which two opponent teams mutually endeavor to maximize their opportunities to destroy each other, while minimizing their own risk of loss. The authors describe their approach to generating and solving this game through semantic control theory, which is introduced to make such a problem accessible. Specifically, they introduced logic into the model to assist in breaking it down sufficiently so that the important aspects of the classical approach can be used at the low level of the solution hierarchy, while the high-level mechanism of the solution generates the minimal space of all possible missions, assuming team cooperation, and devises an efficient search procedure on this space to find the best mission. The difference between classical control and semantic control is essentially the introduction of a correlator block, which uses the system input and output to generate the classical feedback control law by symbolic manipulation