Research on air combat decision-making for cooperative multiple target attack using heuristic ant colony algorithm

The air combat Decision-Making (DM) for Cooperative Multiple Target Attack (CMTA) is one of the key techniques for modern fighters performing cooperative air combat under the Beyond Visual Range (BVR) condition. It is to find a proper assignment of the friendly fighters to the hostile fighters to achieve the optimal attack effect. In this paper, based on the deep analysis of the CMTA tactics, a Heuristic Ant Colony Algorithm (HACA) is proposed to solve the DM problem. The HACA obtains the DM solution by searching for the optimal assignment of the missiles of the friendly fighters to the hostile fighters. Simulation results show that the search efficiency of the proposed algorithm is obviously superior to that of basic Ant Colony Algorithm (ACA). It is an effective algorithm to deal with the DM problem for CMTA in air combat.