DYNAMICS: Inverse mission planning for dedicated aerial communications platforms

The Dynamic Airborne Mission Communication System (DYNAMICS) is an inverse mission planning system for dedicated airborne communications platforms such as BACN. Rather than traditional AF mission planning systems, where planning personnel input mission waypoints manually, DYNAMICS automatically creates optimized flight paths for the dedicated airborne platform based on the locations of radio subscribers, terrain, mission priorities, and other mission-specific factors. DYNAMICS is designed to integrate with existing and future DoD mission planning systems and to insulate mission planners from the complex, multi-disciplinary task of flight planning for this emerging class of dedicated airborne relay platforms. An overview of the system is provided along with details of a proof-of-concept prototype we developed and discussion of some optimized flight paths the system produced.