Using the MANA agent-based simulation tool to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of ground-based and airborne communications jammers in countering the IED threat to ground convoys

ABSTRACT

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are proving to be significant threats in modern asymmetric warfare. The United States is investigating and pressing into service numerous techniques to counter this threat. One approach is employment of jammer equipment to disrupt signals used to detonate the devices from some stand-off position. The purpose of this paper is investigate the use of agent-based models to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of ground vehicle-based and airborne communications jammers in protecting a ground convoy against IED attacks. The agent-based simulation tool, MANA, is used to simulate the scenarios. Simulation outcomes are data farmed across relevant ranges of input values pertaining to tactical factors such as jamming effectiveness, length of time IEDs are suppressed, and convoy speed. The average number of convoy vehicles killed by IEDs is the measure of effectiveness (MOE) used to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of the two types of jamming systems in countering the threat. Tactical factors having significant impact on the MOE are also identified. The importance of the work is not the quantitative outcomes per se, but the modeling, experimental design, and data analysis approaches used that can possibly serve as guidance to future studies of this nature.

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INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
Counter-IED, IED, MANA, communications jammers, nearly orthogonal Latin hypercube