Multitrajectory simulation performance for varying scenario sizes [combat simulation]

Multitrajectory simulation allows random events in a simulation to generate multiple trajectories, a technique called "splitting", with explicit management of the set of trajectories. The goal is to gain a better understanding of the possible outcome set of the simulation and scenario. This has been applied to a prototype combat simulation, called "Eaglet", which was designed to have similar, but simpler, representations of the features of the "Eagle" simulation used for Army analyses. The study compared the number of multitrajectory simulation trajectories with numbers of stochastic replications in order to experimentally determining the rate of convergence to a definitive outcome set. The definitive set was determined using very large numbers of replications to develop a plot of loss-exchange ratio vs. the losses of one side. This was repeated with scenarios of from 40 to 320 units. While the multitrajectory technique gave superior results in general, as expected, there were some anomalies, particularly in the smallest scenario, that illustrate limitations of the technique and the assessment method used.