Tactical Air Route Planning

Abstract

Automatic route planning for tactical ingress of combat aircraft is addressed. We assume that digital terrain data and locations of enemy resources such as radars, missiles along with their performance models are available. The air route planning problem is to find a 3-D route (latitude, longitude and altitude) from a start position to a designated target position so as to minimize vulnerability of the aircraft to enemy action. Additional penalty constraints on fight time etc can also be included.

This paper describes the route planning problem, discusses its solutions and their limitations and presents examples of the route planning problem solved currently.

Indexing terms:

• Automatic route planning
• Digital terrain