Automated Helicopter Survivability Planning

This paper outlines the approach to aircraft survivability planning that is being implemented for the Survivability Planner Associate Re-router (SPAR) Program. SPAR generates survivability plans for small teams of manned and unmanned helicopters, in response to detected threats that are potentially lethal to members of the SPAR team. SPAR predicts threat lethality, which is integrated with decision aiding capabilities to provide the crew/mission management system with tactics/situational awareness as part of an integrated battle management system. SPAR assesses lethality of both Radio Frequency (RF) and Infrared (IR) threats. A survivability response plan is generated cooperatively for the team, and tailored for each vehicle in the SPAR team. SPAR planning includes actions such as rerouting, maneuvers, countermeasures deployment, engagement, and sensor planning. SPAR provides a survivability planning capability that can be readily tailored to specific aircraft and specific threats by incorporating aircraft signature/performance configuration data files and threat performance configuration data files. The critical technology being developed by SPAR is the real-time assessment of aircraft courses of action against encountered threats. The effectiveness of courses of action is assessed prior to execution to provide crew with effective real-time tactics to combat encountered threats.