WCSE

A Variable Neighborhood Search Algorithm for the Multi-stage Weapon Target Assignment Problem

Abstract— The weapon target assignment (WTA) problem is an important research topic in military operations research and is known to be NP-complete. As a new variant of WTA, the multi-stage weapon target assignment (MS-WTA) problem is proposed for large scale military operations and is more complex. In this paper, the mathematical model of MS-WTA is developed, where the objective is to minimize the expected enemy residual value and the constraints of weapon and target in different stages are included. Based on the framework of variable neighborhood search algorithm, specific neighborhood search structures and shaking methods are designed and two decoding strategies are proposed. Furthermore, we compared the two strategies in MS-WTA though instances of different sizes. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is effective in solving small and medium-sized problems.
Index Terms— WTA, variable neighborhood search algorithm, multi-stage.

Xuening Chang
School of Systems Engineering, National University of Defense Technology
Jianmai Shi
School of Systems Engineering, National University of Defense Technology
Chao Chen
School of Systems Engineering, National University of Defense Technology

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Cite: Xuening Chang, Jianmai shi, Mengjie Li, Xiaojie Jin, Yan Li, Xuanyi Li, Junbo Fei, Hao Wang, "A Variable Neighborhood Search Algorithm for the Multi-stage Weapon Target Assignment Problem," WCSE 2022 Spring Event: 2022 9th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Applications, pp. 158-165, Sanya, China, April 15-18, 2022.