A Five States Survivability Model for Missions with Ground-to-Air Threats

Fighter pilots are exposed to the risk of getting hit by enemy fire when flying missions with ground-to-air threats. A tactical support system including a survivability model could aid the pilot to assess and handle this risk. The survivability model presented here is a Markov model with five states; Undetected, Detected, Tracked, Engaged and Hit. The output from the model is the probabilities that the aircraft is in these states during the mission. The enemy's threat systems are represented with sensor and weapon areas and the transitions between the states depend on whether or not the aircraft is within any of these areas. Contrary to previous work, the model can capture the behaviors that the enemy's sensor systems communicate and that the risk of getting hit depends on the enemy's knowledge regarding the aircraft's kinematics. The paper includes a discussion regarding the interpretation of the states and the factors that influence the transitions between the states. Further developments are also identified for using the model to aid fighter pilots and operators of unmanned aerial vehicles with planning and evaluating missions as well as analyzing the situation during flight.