Hard and Soft Defense Against a Sequence of Aerial Threats

The increasing prevalence of missiles and drones (hereafter referred to as threats) in attacks by both state and nonstate actors highlights the critical need for a robust defense system to counter these threats. We develop a combat model for the engagement between a Blue defender who is subject to repeated attacks by Red threats. The defender employs two types of defenses: hard interceptors, such as antiballistic missiles, and soft measures, such as directed-energy weapons and jamming. Employing strategies for these two types of defensive options are evaluated by a two-dimensional measure of effectiveness: expected number of leaking Red threats and the expected expenditure of hard interceptors. We define efficient frontiers on this two-dimensional space and identify defense strategies that compose these frontiers.

Funding: This research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program [PE 0605853N/2098].

Supplemental Material: All supplemental materials, including the code, data, and files required to reproduce the results, are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2024.1025.