Considerations in the development of a survivability/lethality tradeoff submodel for advanced tactical aircraft conceptual design

Abstract

System dynamics is based on principles borrowed from engineering—especially feedback concepts. It makes possible a representation of decision policies and information flow. The systems approach is a mixture of scientific approaches to conceptualizing problems and solving them through research, design and analysis. In system dynamics, differential equations are represented in the form of difference equations. There is no limit to the number that can be employed to represent the complex details of any system. The models developed here help in determining the superiority or inferiority of the Advanced Tactical Aircraft (ATA) over the baseline aircraft. The advanced tactical aircraft is a proposed replacement aircraft that can undertake any of the three missions—air superiority, fleet defense and attack/interdiction. The baseline aircraft for air superiority and fleet defense is the Tomcat Fighter, F-14 and for attack/interdiction it is Intruder, A-6. Several measures of effectiveness are presented to evaluate the superiority or inferiority of the replacement aircraft over the baseline aircraft.