Threat assessment for missions in hostile territory - From the aircraft perspective

A fighter pilot flying an air mission within hostile territory is exposed to the risk of getting hit be enemy weapons. This paper presents a survivability model that can be used for calculating this risk and assessing the threat to the mission. The model consists of two components; a tracking model and a fire model. The tracking model calculates the probabilities that the enemy is tracking the aircraft and has identified it as hostile. The enemy's decision to fire a weapon depends on this probability but also on the enemy's intentions to hit the aircraft. The fire model estimates the aircraft's threat value, which describes how much threat the aircraft poses to the enemy's assets and influences the probability that a weapon is fired. Furthermore, the weapons' opportunities to hit the aircraft depend on the relative geometry between the aircraft velocity vector and the weapon launch positions. A reconnaissance mission is used for illustrating the model and the simulations show that the model enables a deeper analysis of the mission than previous approaches.