volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

This study addresses an issue with high-energy laser directed energy weapon performance assessment when applied to the problem of countering swarms of uncrewed aerial systems (UAS). Queueing theory provides a suitable modelling framework for the performance assessment of such systems, as a single server queue can process only one threat at a time, based on the order in which threats arrive at the theatre of operation. Consequently, this introduces delays into the processing of sequences of threats. Delays in such queues typically have time-dependent service times, due to the target's movement. This results in considerable complexity in terms of producing performance predictions through stochastic models. In recent applications of queueing theory to directed energy systems an ad hoc approximation has been used to estimate the delays that threats experience while waiting for service. This approach involves approximating the processing delay of a given threat by a constant value. In particular, it has been estimated by measuring the delay as a product of the expected service time and the number of threats present less one. Such an approximation can result in severely reduced and inaccurate performance predictions. In the current study, the mean delay will be used instead, and improvement on the aforementioned approximation will be demonstrated through explicit examples of swarm UAS defeat.

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Dr. Graham V. Weinberg