A hybrid expert system that combines technologies to address the problem of military terrain analysis

摘要

Terrain analysis in support of planned military training or combat operations is a task which requires considerable training, skill and experience. Military planners must synthesize knowledge of both their own and their expected adversary's tactics, weapons systems and probable courses of action with descriptions of the physical battlefield area to identify key terrain, those features in the environment which have the greatest potential to influence the outcome of military operations.Terrain analysis is the cornerstone activity during the “intelligence preparation of the battlefield”, an analytic process designed to reduce uncertainty, identify likely enemy courses of action, and help select the most favorable friendly course of action. Automated tools to assist in this process are now being constructed to support a variety of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) programs. The tools rely on the combination of several concepts and techniques that have been developed within the artificial intelligence field. These include knowledge representation schemes, spatial reasoning techniques, autonomous agent planning methods, rule-based paradigms, and heuristic search strategies. While no single technique in isolation can fully solve the broad problems of military operations planning, their combination provides a synergy that results in a useful end product.