Team optimal signaling strategies in air combat

Modern fighter aircraft are equipped with a data link system for relaying encrypted messages containing information on the states of friendly or hostile aircraft within a team of friendly aircraft. During a many-versus-many air combat, only the most important and essential information must be transmitted in order to achieve the best possible situation awareness of pilots. In this paper, we introduce a prioritization approach for solving the team optimal signaling strategy referring to the best sequence of relayed information with respect to the overall goals of the friendly pilots. The approach is based on a value function that captures the preferences of the pilots and prioritizes the existing information. Uncertainty about the states of the aircraft as well as about incomplete preference statements is incorporated into the prioritization by utilizing interval analysis. We also describe a software that is designed for simulating the evolution of team members' information and trajectories in an air-combat game. The prioritization approach is illustrated by numerical examples