Assignment scheduling capability for unmanned aerial vehicles: a discrete event simulation with optimization in the loop approach to solving a scheduling problem

Many military planning problems are difficult to solve using pure mathematical programming techniques. One such problem is scheduling unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in military operations subject to dynamic movement and control constraints. This problem is instead formulated as a dynamic programming problem whose approximate solution is obtained via the Assignment Scheduling Capability for UAVs (ASC-U) model using concepts from both simulation and optimization. Optimization is very effective at identifying the best decision for static problems, but is weaker in identifying the best decision in dynamic systems. Simulation is very effective in modeling and capturing dynamic effects, but is weak in optimizing from alternatives. ASC-U exploits the relative strengths of both methodologies by periodically re-optimizing UAV assignments and then having the simulation transition the states according to state dynamics. ASC-U thus exploits the strengths of simulation and optimization to construct good, timely solutions that neither optimization nor simulation could achieve alone.