Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics ›› 2020, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (6): 1216-1229.doi: 10.23919/JSEE.2020.000094

• SYSTEMS ENGINEERING • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Weapon system portfolio selection based on structural robustness

Jiuyao JIANG(), Jichao LI*(), Kewei YANG()   

  1. 1 College of Systems Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
  • Received:2020-03-08 Online:2020-12-18 Published:2020-12-29
  • Contact: Jichao LI E-mail:jiangjy9@163.com;ljcnudt@hotmail.com;kayyan927@nudt.edu.cn
  • About author:|JIANG Jiuyao was born in 1998. She is a postgraduate student at National University of Defense Technology. Her research interest is modeling and evaluating equipment systems using the theory of complex systems. E-mail: jiangjy9@163.com||LI Jichao was born in 1990. He received his B.E. degree in management science M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in management science and engineering from National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan, China, in 2013, 2015, and 2019, respectively. He is currently a lecturer of management science and engineering at the National University of Defense Technology. Form 2017 to 2019, he was a visiting predoctoral fellow at the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) and Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, USA. His research interests focus on studying complex systems with a combination of theoretical tool and data analysis, including mathematical modeling of heterogeneous information networks, applying network methodologies to analyze the development of complex system-of-systems, and data-driven studying of the collective behavior of humans. E-mail: ljcnudt@hotmail.com||YANG Kewei was born in 1977. He received his B.E. and Ph.D. degrees in systems engineering, and management science and engineering from National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan, China, in 1999 and 2004, respectively. He is currently a professor of management science and engineering and the director of Department of Management, in the College of Information System and Management at National University of Defense Technology. He was a visiting scholar with the Department of Computer Science at the University of York in the United Kingdom, and with the Science and Technology on Complex Systems Simulation Laboratory, Beijing, China. His research interests focus on intelligent agent simulation, defense acquisition and system-of-systems requirement modeling. E-mail: kayyang27@nudt.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71690233; 71971213; 71571185) and Scientific Research Foundation of National University of Defense Technology (ZK19-16)

Abstract:

The system portfolio selection is a fundamental frontier issue in the development planning and demonstration of weapon equipment. The scientific and reasonable development of the weapon system portfolio is of great significance for optimizing the design of equipment architecture, realizing effective resource allocation, and increasing the campaign effectiveness of integrated joint operations. From the perspective of system-of-systems, this paper proposes a unified framework called structure-oriented weapon system portfolio selection (SWSPS) to solve the weapon system portfolio selection problem based on structural invulnerability. First, the types of equipment and the relationship between the equipment are sorted out based on the operation loop theory, and a heterogeneous combat network model of the weapon equipment system is established by abstracting the equipment and their relationships into different types of nodes and edges respectively. Then, based on the combat network model, the operation loop comprehensive evaluation index (OLCEI) is introduced to quantitatively describe the structural robustness of the combat network. Next, a weapon system combination selection model is established with the goal of maximizing the operation loop comprehensive evaluation index within the constraints of capability requirements and budget limitations. Finally, our proposed SWSPS is demonstrated through a case study of an armored infantry battalion. The results show that our proposed SWSPS can achieve excellent performance in solving the weapon system portfolio selection problem, which yields many meaningful insights and guidance to the future equipment development planning.

Key words: heterogeneous combat network, structural robustness, weapon system portfolio selection, equipment development planning