Coordinated Target Assignment and Route Planning for Air Team Mission Planning

Planning air missions for a team flying in hostile environments is a complex task, since multiple interrelated goals need to be considered, e.g., performing the mission tasks and avoiding enemy fire. The target assignment and route planning for the team should therefore be performed in a coordinated way. The mission planner suggested in this work combines genetic algorithms and particle swarm optimization in order to solve these two problems in an interconnected manner. Simulations are used for testing and analyzing the approach. It is concluded that the mission planner is able to suggest suitable plans in complex scenarios with three interrelated objectives: low risk exposure, high mission effectiveness and short route length.