Hybrid modeling and simulation of tactical maneuvers in computer generated force

Defense modeling and simulation (DM&S) offers insights into the efficient operations of combat entities, e.g., soldiers and weapon systems. Most DM&S aim at exact description of military doctrines, but often the doctrines fails to provide detail action procedures about how the combat entities conduct military operations. Such unspecified descriptions are filled with the rational behaviors of the combat entities in a battlefield, and thereby the combat effectiveness from these combat entities would differ. Also, by incorporating such rational factors, this could provide the insights that cannot be captured from the traditional works. To examine this postulation, this paper developed a computer generated force where the tactical maneuver of combat entities are realized by the combination of descriptive and prescriptive modeling. Specifically, the descriptive models describe the explicit action rules in military doctrines, and they are modeled using discrete event system specification (DEVS) formalism; the predictive models denoted the rational behavior of the combat entities under the military doctrines, and they are modeled using partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). The provided results illustrated that the proposed approach helps to maintain a team formation effectively, and this formation maintenance lead to the better combat efficiency.