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Comparative Analysis of Commercial Off-the-shelf Naval Simulations and Classic Operations Research Models
"No longer does Naval Surface Warfare merely entail battle between symmetric naval fleets conducted in large open water engagements. Today's Surface Warriors must have the training and capability to also fight asymmetric threats in congested locations of strategic value. Operations conducted within straits, choke points, and island cluttered littorals pose considerable risk and numerous challenges for today's Navy. Shore based anti-ship missiles, torpedo and missile carrying small fast patrol boats, and mines present capable threats across naval warfare areas such as Anti-Surface Warfare and Mine Warfare. In addition, conventional and midget submarines present an ever-growing threat within strategic littorals. Previous studies have generated high-end simulations to determine composition of blue force fleets, and suggested tactics for addressing various modern threats. This thesis compares how well off-the-shelf simulation software in the form of Larry Bond's HARPOON3 Advanced Naval Warfare (H3 ANW) emulates high-end simulations validated through modified Hughes' Salvo Equations. The results demonstrate the complexities involved in comparing the output of two completely different analytical tools. The mathematical nature of Hughes' Salvo Equations provides a focused deterministic aspect; while the dynamic interaction of platforms, environments, and tactics designed into H3 ANW provide a completely different aspect with potential use as a learning tool for Surface Warrior."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Field, Peter A.
2009-09
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Validating a Model of Team Collaboration at the North American Aerospace Defense Command Using Selected Transcripts from September 11, 2001
"On September 11, 2001, during an exercise at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), air traffic controllers in New York, Boston, Washington and Cleveland discovered that four American commercial airliners had been hijacked. Initially, the officials at NORAD's North East Air Defense Sector (NEADS) were confused as to whether the hijackings were real world or part of an exercise. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the teamwork and collaboration that occurred between NEADS, their counterparts at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and various air traffic control centers in order to provide military air support and ground civilian air traffic over the United States. Transcripts of recorded audio from the command and control center at NEADS were coded and analyzed in an effort to use a real world example to empirically validate the structural model of team collaboration, developed by the Office of Naval Research. The model focuses on individual and team cognitive processes used during collaboration with the goal of understanding how individuals and teams work together under stress to make decisions."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Johnson, David; Donaldson, Catherine
2008-06
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Blog Fingerprinting: Identifying Anonymous Posts Written by an Author of Interest Using Word and Character Frequency Analysis
"Internet blogs are an easily accessible means of global communications. Monitoring blogs for criminal and terrorist activity is a serious challenge, due to blogs' anonymous nature and the sheer volume of data. The intelligence community is often faced with more information than it can process. The need exists to develop methods for processing the massive amounts of data this media presents, without a significant increase in manpower. An automated tool capable of indentifying posts written by an individual, given a sample of his writing, would allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to gather evidence that would otherwise be overlooked due to manpower and time constraints. This research focuses on identifying blog posts written by a particular author, when we do not have a model of every potential author. Previous research either builds a distinct model for every possible author, or limits itself to large documents. Neither approach is appropriate for processing blog posts. Blog posts tend to be short documents, and building a distinct model of each author is unreasonable if you are looking for one author among millions. We address this problem by combining sample posts by other authors to create a model of an 'average author.'"
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Dreier, David J.
2009-09
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Reliability of Iris Recognition as a Means of Identity Verification and Future Impact on Transportation Worker Identification Credential
"The Department of Homeland Security is deploying the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) to U.S. ports to help ensure only authorized individuals having undergone background checks have access to secure areas. Congress mandated the TWIC have a biometric authenticator; DHS chose fingerprints. This thesis argues iris scanning is a better choice because of the nature of the maritime environment and because iris scanning is a more accurate biometric. This thesis also argues there are social factors affecting a biometric--enabled identification card which must be considered for the program to be successful. To investigate the issue of biometrics and the TWIC, this thesis performed a field study of an iris scanner; a survey of biometric attitudes, and interviews with members of the PMA and the ILWU. The iris study operated the scanner in an identification mode, experiencing no false acceptances and few false rejects; however it found the scanner sensitive to sun position with respect to the subject. The pilot study of attitudes found subjects supportive of biometrics in scenarios currently requiring positive identification, but opposing them when it would create new requirements for identification. Both pilot studies were impacted by an inability to provide an incentive to study subjects."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
McLaren, Simon
2008-03
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Assessment, Survey, and Systems Engineering Design of Information Sharing and Discovery Systems in a Network-Centric Environment
"Information, and the knowledge gained from it, has been the key component to strategic planning since the earliest combat operations. Success in the Information Age is defined by the military's ability to communicate effectively in a dynamic environment and share relevant information seamlessly. Sharing information is a critical element to understanding missions that employ the operational concept of Network-Centric Operations and Warfare (NCOW). Discovering valuable information is vital towards our capacity to predict and/or prevent circumstances in our current war against terrorist organizations. This thesis describes fundamental concepts of information sharing and information discovery. Through the use of a systems engineering approach, this thesis created a common vision of an information sharing and discovery (ISD) system, evaluates the role of ISD in network-centric systems (NCS), and discusses the relationship of NCS to NCOW. This study also employs the system architecture method to establish the operational concept of ISD systems; derive requirements for future acquisitions of ISD systems; analyze the interactions that ISD systems have with external systems; and establish a functional architecture for the ISD system. This research approach provides guidance for the development and integration of future ISD systems in order to meet the needs of future DoD NCS."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
De Soto, Kristine M.
2009-12
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Effectiveness and Efficiencies of Private Military Corporations
"This study investigates private military corporations (PMCs) to examine their effectiveness and efficiency as a substitute for traditional military forces. The PMC consists of a for profit firm that provides military services that range from combat operations to training, security and logistics support. While the PMCs represent a solution to issues such as insufficient military resources to provide direct support to other nations, there remain a number of political and structural barriers to their widespread use."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Burge, Robert A.
2008-06
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Distributed Password Cracking
"Password cracking requires significant processing power which in today's world is located at a workstation or home in the form of a desktop computer. Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is the conduit to this significant source of processing power and John the Ripper is the key. BOINC is a distributed data processing system that incorporates client-server relationships to generically process data. The BOINC structure supports any system that requires large amounts of data to be processed without changing significant portions of the structure. John the Ripper is a password cracking program that takes a password file and attempts to determine the password by a guess and check method. The merger of these two programs enables companies and diverse groups to verify the strength of their password security policy. This thesis goes into detail on the inner workings of BOINC, John the Ripper, and the merger of the two programs. It also details the work required to test the system to its full capability."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Crumpacker, John R.
2009-12
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Islam in America: Why U.S. Muslims Are Less Likely to Radicalize than Their European Counterparts
"Islam is the world's largest religion, and the second largest religion in the West. Conflicts over the past 30 years have brought Islam to the forefront of politics and Islamophobia to the western world. Islamic radicalism is on the rise, with the home home-grown terrorist quickly becoming a new emerging threat. Although western states of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, all share common beliefs, values, cultures and religious makeup; how they integrate their minority Muslim populations varies significantly. While there are numerous explanations for this difference, this thesis looks at three specific areas where that difference may influence the population to radicalize: the history of immigration, government policies, and the ability to integrate within western society."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Mayer, Tamara M.
2009-12
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Deterring Terrorism: A Framework for Making Retaliatory Threats Credible
"To deter terrorism, U.S. deterrence strategy must threaten retaliatory responses that are appropriate to the actions by non-state actors the United States wishes to prevent. The effectiveness of those threats depends on the perceived credibility that America possesses the capability and willingness to execute them. Although U.S. policy focuses on preventive and preemptive counterterrorism strategies, this thesis argues that it contains relevant targets for retaliation but lacks credibility because its threats do not distinguish between types of attack. Instead of correlating threats to undesirable actions, it declares the same punishment for all terrorism, which is unrealistic ex post. On the contrary, the level of response should be proportionally related to the type and destructive effects of an attack and in tune with the level of public outrage the attack would generate. This thesis first provides theoretical support for the claim that recent U.S. policy documents contain valid threats for influencing non-state actors. Then, credibility is evaluated by comparing those threats to the expected U.S. response for two dissimilar scenarios: cyber and nuclear terrorism. The analysis suggests that policy threats lack credibility because the signaled response for terrorism holds constant across varying degrees of attack severity. Because the likely responses to these attacks differ in practice, the undifferentiated signals sent by recent policy weaken deterrence. As a result, the thesis recommends establishing a retaliation framework based on type of attack."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Tippet, Douglas F.
2009-12
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Computational Algebraic Attacks on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
"This thesis examines the vulnerability of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to algebraic attacks. It will explore how strong the Rijndael algorithm must be in order to secure important federal information. There are several algebraic methods of attack that can be used to break a specific cipher, such as Buchburger's and Faugere's F4 and F5 methods. The method to be used and evaluated in this thesis is the Multiple Right Hand Sides (MRHS) Linear Equations. MRHS is a new method that allows computations to be more efficient and the equations to be more compact in comparison with the previously referred methods. Because of the high complexity of the Rijndael algorithm, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the results of an MRHS attack in a small-scale variant of the AES, since it is impossible to break the actual algorithm by using only the existent knowledge. Instead of the original ten rounds of AES algorithm, variants of up to four rounds were used. Simple examples of deciphering some ciphertexts are presented for different variants of the AES, and the new attack method of MRHS linear equations is compared with the other older methods."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Panteleimon, Mantzouris
2009-09
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Socially Embedded Insurgencies
"This thesis investigates 'social embedding,' a condition where the local population and the insurgency share the same goals and methods in securing political control of their environment. Social embedding is an important phenomenon to understand because, once insurgents and the population share the same goals, separating the two becomes exponentially more difficult; in essence, the insurgents have 'won' the population. The paper uses social movement theory (SMT) and its three variables (political opportunity, resource mobilization, and ideological framing) to explain the dynamic between the regime, the insurgency, and the population, and how it may lead to social embedding with the population or social rejection."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Simmons, Alexander V.
2009-12
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Energy Harvesting for Self-Powered, Ultra-Low Power Microsystems with a Focus on Vibration-Based Electromechanical Conversion
"Wireless distributed microsensor systems offer reliable monitoring and control of a myriad of applications ranging from machine state and perimeter security to nuclear/chemical/biological and other military applications. Historically, batteries have supplied power to mobile, embedded, and ultra-low power microsensors. While there are many obvious short-term advantages of using batteries, they do have a long-term negative environmental impact. An alternative to batteries exists in harnessing the ambient energy surrounding the system and subsequently converting it into electrical energy. Once a long-established concept, energy harvesting offers an inexhaustible replacement for batteries. Energy-harvesting systems scavenge power from optical, acoustic, thermal, and mechanical energy sources. The proliferation of and advances in wireless technology, particularly wireless sensor nodes and mobile electronic devices, has increased the volume of energy harvesting research as of late. This thesis reviews the principles of the state of the art in energy harvesting systems. We focus on generating electrical power from mechanical energy in a vibrating environment due to its dominant scalability. We explore microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), including electromagnetic, electrostatic, and piezoelectric transduction. Further, power management, trends, suitable applications, and possible future developments are discussed."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Forester, Sean M.
2009-09
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Economic Analysis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)
"This thesis addresses the trend analysis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) prevalence across the different branches of armed services in the U.S military between FY2001 and FY2006, as well as the effects of deployment characteristics on the probability of being diagnosed with PTSD among the active duty service personnel in the different branches. On top of these, this study will also highlight the patterns of the comorbidity and treatment costs of PTSD across the different branches of armed services. The data used in the thesis will be provided by TRICARE, the Department of Defense's (DOD) health care system and DMDC, to obtain the demographics, deployment characteristics (deployment location, deployment frequencies, deployment duration) and the inpatient and outpatient medical information and services rendered by physicians for all active duty service personnel whom were diagnosed with PTSD between FY2001 and FY2006."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Boon Wah, Kwan; Lai Yee Irene, Tan
2008-12
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Wasted Resources: Volunteers and Disasters
"In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, a reported 12,000 volunteers arrived to help. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, an estimated 30,000 volunteers converged on ground zero and the Pentagon. As the weather cleared following Hurricane Katrina, over 60,000 volunteers descended upon Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi to offer assistance. These well-intentioned citizens were both a blessing and a curse. While offering assistance, they also snarled key roads, distracted first responders who were worried about their safety, and created massive accountability and administrative headaches. To address the problem of volunteer convergence at disaster sites, some locales have developed their own unique volunteer in-processing systems, commonly referred to as volunteer reception or volunteer mobilization centers. These systems are developed independently, do not always tie into disaster plans, and are not standardized across the nation. America lacks a national plan for integrating these volunteers and currently has no mechanism for ensuring their credentials across the nation. A national volunteer certification card and database system are needed to better utilize America's most valuable asset, her people, during times of crisis. Empowering and documenting the skills average citizens already possess are the keys to proactively managing volunteers and assigning them where needed."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Souza, Andrew A.
2009-12
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Special Forces Recruiting: The Operational Need for Targeted Recruitment of First and Second Generation Americans
"The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the operational impact of recruiting first generation Americans directly into Special Forces. Much as the draft inadvertently did during World War II, the Army could take much greater advantage than it has of first generation immigrants and naturalized citizens. Special Forces (SF) could, in turn, target recruits from within this pool. That is one proposal this thesis makes. A second aim of this thesis is to explain why this makes sense in the 21st century. This thesis reviews the use of non-citizens from WWII to the present, while also highlighting certain features of doctrinal Special Forces (SF) missions. The aim is to draw on the past in order to preview the relevant usefulness of non-citizens today. The arguments to be presented here are conceptual in nature. They draw on the author's experiences as an SF recruiter and on extensive conversations with other recruiters currently serving in the Special Operations Recruiting Battalion (SORB). This thesis is not designed to criticize current recruitment methods. Instead, it explores ways to enhance what Special Forces already does in order to target the kinds of candidates whom the author believes will prove crucial to 21st century operations."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Robichaux, Trevor O.
2008-12
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Evaluation of Maritime Operational Threat Response Forces for the Pacific Coast Theater
"Maritime Intercept Operations in defense of the Pacific Coast Ports are resource intensive. A maritime threat scenario, analytical models, and simulations are used to measure risk to a port given various levels of resource and intelligence. The scenario starts with intelligence that a large commercial ship arriving to a Pacific Coast Port within a 96-hour window poses a security risk. Intelligence further limits the set of threat ships to a subset of all traffic entering a specific port. A limited number of Maritime Operational Threat Response (MOTR) forces are available to detect, classify, and intercept the threat ship before it reaches port. In the first scenario, all ships are boarded before entering port, and impact is measured by delay of ships into port. In the other scenarios, intercept ships are routed to suspect ships and risk measured by the fraction of suspect ships that proceed to port unboarded because of lack of MOTR and surveillance assets. The results show current Coast Guard force structure is not sufficient to protect the Pacific Coast Ports against unspecific security threats without additional assets from the MOTR stakeholders or increased intelligence to limit the target set."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
LeFever, Brett Christopher
2009-03
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Exploring the Lack of Interoperability of Databases within Department of Homeland Security Interagency Environment Concerning Maritime Port Security
"Federal agencies that are within The Department of Homeland Security have many missions to support the security of the United States. One mission concurrent with this thesis topic is Maritime Interdiction Operations, which protects America's maritime borders from all intrusions by halting the flow of illegal drugs, aliens, and contraband into the United States through maritime routes. All government agencies within The Department of Homeland Security are continuing to focus their effort in sharing critical data to improve their situational awareness (SA) of command and control (C2), to make quicker decisions, and to collaborate with remote experts in support of another possible terrorist attack. Unfortunately this effort is being accomplished without the foresight of interoperability of existing databases throughout the interagency within The Department of Homeland Security. The lack of interoperability of these databases between the interagency continues to be a major issue in the security and safety to our nation's maritime ports. This thesis will discuss the lack of interoperability of databases between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. The need and urgency to collaborate these vital databases into one unified decentralized network--to store and retrieve critical information to protect our maritime ports of entry, when needed, to protect our nation from any possible future threats that may harm our nation--is also stressed."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Olk, Jeffrey S.
2009-03
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Simulating Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean with Real Bathymetry by using a High- Order Triangular Discontinuous Galerkin Oceanic Shallow Water Model
"The discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method has been accepted in the last decade by the geosciences community as an important component of geophysical fluid dynamics. The high-order accuracy, geometric flexibility to use unstructured grids, local conservation, and monotonicity properties of the DG method make it a prime candidate for the construction of future ocean and shallow water models. This study focuses on formatting real bathymetry data of the Indian Ocean in order to simulate the propagation stage of the Indian Ocean tsunami that occurred on December 26, 2004, by using a DG model. In order to validate this simulation the study uses real measurements. The model results are compared to tide gauge data from several stations around the Indian Ocean, satellite altimetry, and field measurements. These results show that the model gives accurate estimates of arrival times in distant locations."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Alevras, Dimitrios
2009-03
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U.S. Army Chemical Corps and a Future Within AFRICOM
"The United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) was established in October 2007 to encompass all U.S. operations on the African continent under one unified command. Several African nations have a history of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear operations, while most countries have a history of use as dumping grounds for hazardous materials and toxic industrial materials. Africa has also suffered extreme environmental degradation due to these and other causes. The US Army Chemical Corps has increased its capabilities to include not only chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear operations, but all hazardous material, toxic industrial material, and environmental operations for the US Army. The Chemical Corps has also increased capabilities for disaster and crisis response and management since September 11th, 2001, and utilized some of those capabilities during Hurricane Katrina. One of AFRICOM's primary goals is to build partner capacity so that African governments can provide security and respond in times of need. The Chemical Corps can assist with the realization of these goals."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Graf, Kirsten S.
2009-03
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Analysis of the Effect of the Global War on Terror on the Retention of Graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy
"This thesis aims to analyze the effect of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) on the retention behavior of the United States Naval Academy (USNA) graduate Navy and Marine Corps junior officers one year after their minimum service obligation (MSO). The data used for the analyses covers cohorts from 1990 to 2007. Three logistic regression models were constructed to estimate the impact of increasing operational tempo due to the GWOT. Three separate models were created for the Marine Corps to measure the effect of hostile deployments. The models included demographic, service, and deployment variables, as well as a difference-in-difference estimator to capture the effect of the GWOT. Deployments either before or after the GWOT had a positive effect on the retention behavior for both the Navy and the Marine Corps. However, hostile deployment decreased the likelihood to retain for the Marine Corps."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Alankaya, Murat; Kilic, Hizir
2009-03
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Modeling the Effects of a Transportation Security Incident Upon the Marine Transportation System
"We introduce a simulation model to evaluate the disruptions, delays, and incremental costs inflicted on the U.S. West Coast container shipping industry by a Transportation Security Incident (TSI). Each year, more than 6,000 container ships call upon West Coast seaports handling in excess of 18.3 million containers. Current national directives do not specify uniform standards for measuring the amount of seaport cargo-handling capacity, nor decision rules to divert cargo to alternate facilities when a primary destination is degraded or unusable. Through analysis, we identify infrastructure components that are potential bottlenecks and/or vulnerable to a TSI that can potentially threaten the U.S. maritime shipping capacity. For example, we demonstrate a 10-day labor union dispute and longshoremen work stoppage that paralyzes the entire U.S. West Coast. The incident induces significant port congestion from Puget Sound to San Pedro Bay, reducing the annual West Coast vessel and import container throughput by 3 percent (174 vessels and 237,088 containers), and increases the incremental costs suffered by ocean carriers by $400 million. Additional analysis identifies opportunities for commercial and government investment in additional seaport infrastructure to alleviate West Coast port congestion, while ensuring the unimpeded continuity of operations of West Coast shipping subsequent to a TSI."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Pidgeon, Edward D.
2008-06
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Enhancing Maritime Domain Awareness
"A complex mosaic of forces will affect maritime security through 2020. These include economic forces such as illegal international migration-fueled by tremendous population increases in developing countries, drug smuggling, and weapons proliferation, as well as military threats posed by hostile states, failed states, and transnational organizations engaged in intelligence gathering or terrorist activities. The President's National Security Strategy indicates that diverse threats such as these must be countered through an integrated approach: Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). MDA will engage and shape this dynamic and expansive environment by detecting anomalies and deviations from established trends and patterns in commercial and military traffic, and enabling commanders to take appropriate action before security is compromised or crises erupt. In line with the theme for this year's symposium, C2 for complex endeavors, MDA encompasses a diverse set of organizations, complex processes, and a variety of analytic and collaborative tools. This research reported here will advance organizational structures, procedures and C2 technologies to enhance global MDA. Our approach is to document current MDA capabilities, compare them with the next phase of expected capabilities based on integrating new technologies, and document the gains."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Hutchins, Susan G.; Gallup, Shelley; MacKinnon, Douglas J.
2008-06
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Collaborative Unmanned Systems for Maritime and Port Security Operations
"This paper deals with some recent work ongoing at [the Naval Postgraduate School], which attempts to show the utility of networked distributed vehicles for Maritime Interdiction, Riverine Operations, and related missions. We believe that these systems will be essential for dealing with the challenges in confronting these important National future needs. [...]. Maritime Domain Awareness requires new tools including the use of Autonomous Systems with Coordinated Autonomy for situational awareness, maritime interdiction, tracking and inspection. The use of aerial UAVs to provide video tracking support and subsequent target information to USV ships has been studied. Both in simulation and in experiment, our results are showing that this type of networked autonomous system of systems is both appropriate and possible. Many questions are still to be resolved including network performance for field trials, automation of assets that are proprietary where primary controllers cannot be modified, and integration of video tracking and control capabilities across platforms, and the network."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Healey, Anthony J.; Horner, D.P.; Kragelund, S.P.
2007
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NATO's Out-of-Area Dilemma
"NATO has a legitimate right to project force beyond the geographical boundaries of the NATO alliance. That NATO has been unwilling or unable to do so since 1949 results from a combination of factors relating to disagreements between the members over the geographical scope of the alliance, shifts in allied foreign policies and inter-allied tensions brought on by the Cold War. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait moved NATO's out-of-area problem from a subordinate position to the primarily threat facing the alliance. Historically, the Alliance felt that responses to out-of-area security threats should be dealt with on a unilateral basis, even when the Alliance has agreed that their collective vital interests are threatened. The dilemma for NATO is the lack of a unified approach to the out-of-area problem. NATO's boundaries are boundaries of obligation and not boundaries of confinement. Through a review of the language of the treaty and problems inherent in alliance relationships, this thesis will explore the differing perceptions of alliance members regarding the scope of the alliance and why NATO has survived for 40 years yet been unable to deal with the out-of-area problem."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Theodorelos, Susan Lynn
1990-12
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Tactical Network Topology (TNT) Marine Interdiction Operation (MIO) TNT MIO 09-2: Environmental Effects Research
This presentation by Dr. Peter Guest provides an overview of the Naval Postgraduate School's Tactical Network Topology and Marine Interdiction Operation with a special emphasis on weather, sea, and environmental effects on operations, target detection, and communications.
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Guest, Peter
2009-06-10
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Optimal Randomized Surveillance Patterns to Detect Intruders Approaching a Military Installation
"This thesis addresses a two-person zero-sum game between an intruder and a defender of a military installation. The intruder attempts to penetrate the military installation by choosing one of its many entry points, each of which is monitored by a surveillance camera and may require a different amount of time to transit. Although the real-time video of each surveillance camera is fed to a surveillance room simultaneously, the defender has only one surveillance monitor and can monitor only one entry point at a time. We consider a discrete-time model such that the intruder will be detected if, during his travel time, the defender spends one time unit monitoring the entry point chosen by the intruder. The problem facing the defender is how to switch among entry points to monitor from one time unit to the next, in order to maximize the detection probability of the intruder. The intruder's goal is, of course, to infiltrate without being detected, and so he wishes to minimize this probability. We formulate the problem as a two-person zero-sum game, and develop a linear program to solve it. Numerical experiments provide insights into the design of such surveillance systems."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Mclemore, Trevor D.
2007-06
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Team Collaboration of the Northeast Air Defense Sector and Federal Aviation Administration During the September 11, 2001 Attacks
"The tragic events of September 11, 2001, brought about changes in the procedures for interagency collaboration. That day air traffic controllers in New York, Boston, Washington, and Cleveland were scrambling due to the hijacking of four American commercial airliners. In their efforts to bring order to chaos the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in communication with Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) scrambled fighter aircraft to escort the airliners. The collaborative teamwork that occurred during this response is recorded in the radio transcripts between NEADS and FAA air traffic controllers. The goal of this thesis is to use the September 11, 2001, NEADS/FAA channel 4 transcripts to provide a real-world example of a team collaborating on a unique, one of a kind problem, to contribute to the effort to validate the structural model of team collaboration, developed under the Collaboration and Knowledge Integration Program, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. The focus of the model is on individual cognitive processes used during agency or team collaboration with the goal of understanding how individuals and different agencies work together towards reaching a decision."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Socias, Luis F.
2008-09
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Probabilistic Approach to Tropical Cyclone Conditions of Readiness (TCCOR)
"Tropical Cyclone Conditions of Readiness (TCCOR) are set at DoD installations in the Western Pacific to convey the risk associated with the onset of destructive winds from approaching tropical cyclones. In this thesis, the methods by which TCCOR are set were analyzed to determine if objective and/or probabilistic guidance could improve the process. The Tropical Prediction Utility (TPU) was developed by forecasters at Yokosuka, JA and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center as a means of standardizing TCCOR forecasts using elements from JTWC official warnings. The TPU was used to recreate TCCOR timelines for 42 different cases affecting military bases at Guam, Kadena, JA, Sasebo, JA, and Yokosuka, JA during the 2002 -- 2007 typhoon seasons. These timelines were then compared to historical TCCOR timelines and wind observations to identify any trends and biases in set time and duration for each TCCOR. A wind speed probability model was also used to compare the timelines to the wind observations and to categorize them based on consistent trends in probability at each predicted and historical TCCOR. The results suggest that potential biases exist in the Tropical Prediction Utility that tend to predict TCCOR earlier than they were set in practice. Although clear trends were identified between wind speed probabilities and elevated TCCOR, statistical uncertainties exist when using the probabilities to discern between 'hits' and 'false alarms.' While this thesis identified basic traits in TCCOR settings, a larger sample of cases is needed for further study to determine factors that discriminate between hits and false alarms."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Wallace, Kenneth A.
2008-09
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Conceptual Framework for Tactical Private Satellite Networks
"The purpose of this research is three-fold. First is to examine the current state of military satellite communications and to analyze current trends in the commercial satellite communications market that support military Command and Control, as well as facilitate network operations. Second is the operational implementation of such private satellite networks within the context of Net Centric Operations, as well as within the context of a coalition environment. Third, this work will illustrate how the private satellite network could be managed, as well as understanding how the network could be used in the context of a network management control channel to exercise management of numerous dispersed network devices and nodes. The focus will be to define, examine, and research the conceptual framework for a tactical private satellite network that facilitates Command and Control of geographically dispersed tactical units, as well as provides a mechanism for the management of tactical networks. After having acquired a clear picture of today's state and future's capabilities of SATCOM, research will be directed to how a tactical private satellite network would be implemented to support Network Centric Operations and how this tactical private satellite network could be utilized as a tool for the management of tactical networks."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Conrad, Brian H.; Tzanos, Ioannis
2008-09
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Prototype Development of Low-Cost, Augmented Reality Trainer for Crew Service Weapons
From the thesis abstract: "A significant emerging threat to coalition forces in littoral regions is from small craft such as jet skis, fast patrol boats, and speedboats. These craft, when armed, are categorized as Fast Inshore Attack Craft (FIAC), and their arsenal can contain an array of weapons to include suicide bombs, crew-served weapons, anti-tank or ship missiles, and torpedoes. While these craft often have crude weapon technologies, they use an asymmetric tactic of large numbers of small, cheap, poorly armed and armored units to overwhelm coalition defenses. Training on crew-served weapons on coalition ships has not advanced to meet this new threat. The current training methods do not satisfactorily train the following skills: Rules of engagement (ROE), marksmanship against highly maneuverable targets, threat prioritization, target designation, field of fire coordination, coordinated arms effects, or watch station to CIC communications. The creation of a prototype Augmented Reality Virtual At Sea Trainer (AR-VAST) shows that emerging augmented reality technologies can overcome limitations of traditional training methods. A fully developed AR-VAST system would be a deployable technology solution that uses in-place weapon systems as trainers in real-world environments with simulated enemy targets. While the AR-VAST architecture can be expanded to allow for training and coordination with multiple weapon operators, phone talkers, and bridge teams for maximum training effectiveness, the current prototype addresses the primary issue of identification and marksmanship."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Conger, Nathan
2008-09
