Bi-objective Multi-stage Weapon Target Assignment Problem with Limited Ammunition

This study proposes a bi-objective multi-stage weapon target assignment problem with limited ammunition. The tradeoff is made between minimizing the cost of weapon usage and maximizing the strike benefit when a mmunition is insufficient to destroy targets in all stages. A mixed-integer nonlinear programming model is developed, which is processed by linearization methods to obtain an improved model that can be solved by commercial software, CPLEX. This methodology applies the ϵ-constraint approach to gain the optimal solution for a maximum of 5 phases, 40 weapon categories, and 400 targets. Through simulation experiments, we conclude that different weapon combination strategies should be used for different scenarios of ammunition supply, providing theoretical and practical support for future research on weapon target allocation problems with multiple phases and objectives.