Unifying Strategic Military Force Design and Operational Warfighting: A Stochastic Game Approach

Military strategic investment and operational warfighting are necessarily intertwined, yet it is quite challenging to integrate these two levels analytically. In this thesis, we provide a framework to unify these levels through stochastic games and a force design model. We start with the operational level, where we exploit the structure of military games to construct a tractable representation of the large-scale problem. We develop the campaign stochastic game (CSG), a two-player, discounted, zero-sum stochastic game model for dynamic operational planning in military campaigns. Then, at the strategic level, we use this representation to evaluate force designs directly in the operational contexts where they may be employed in a future global landscape. Together, the thesis represents an original methodology to integrate military strategic and operational decision making.

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Industrial and Systems Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Georgia Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• McCarthy, Joseph

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Dahan, Mathieu
• White, Chelsea C., III

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Goldsman, David
• Muthukumar, Vidya
• Steimle, Lauren
• Wade, Brian

• Military operations
• campaign analysis, stochastic game
• value iteration
• military force design

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1853/75297

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.gatech.edu:1853/75297