A Co-Evolutionary Approach for Military Operational Analysis

In this paper, we describe Automated Co-Evolution (ACE), a framework that uses Competitive Co-Evolutionary Algorithm (CCEA) and High Performance Computing (HPC). to study the dynamics of competition in a military context through simulations. The overall goal is to complement the manually intensive actions-reactions process in developing (automatically) a Blue plan that performs well and is relatively robust even in the face of an adaptive Red adversary. The design of key components and techniques that are required to develop the ACE framework are described and discussed. An academic study using a military scenario - Maritime Anchorage Protection, was conducted and the results analyzed to demonstrate the capability of the ACE framework. It also illustrated how the ACE process could be used to complement Operational Analysis (OA).