TRACER

ABSTRACT

TRACER works alongside the human planner to assist with the dynamic targeting prosecution challenge: severely compressed decision cycles where the human planner must identify available all-domain assets with the right capabilities and perform cost/benefit assessment in time to achieve a desired effect.

TRACER provides a set of optimized solutions at machine speed, each with a primary objective and set of weighted constraints. It minimizes the rippling effect of re-tasking while maximizing change tolerance in the operational environment.

WHY?

TRACER maximizes human planning expertise, while minimizing operator burden, by doing the “heavy lifting” of data analysis, which allows human planners to focus on decisions computers cannot and should not make.

WHAT?

By building on prior planning systems, TRACER enables all-domain dynamic target (DT) prosecution that scales to hundreds of DTs during a 24-hour planning cycle. It places the human planner in the loop, allowing them to tailor the automation level and visualize option generation rationale, thus promoting system trust.

HOW?

The TRACER system is a research prototype designed to demonstrate the feasibility, advantages, and limitations of a DT decision support tool, with a desired level of maturity at the end of Phase 2. It is composed of several microservices, which builds on prior work.

The Multi-Objective Service allows the human planner to weigh their preferences over a set of planning objectives, feeding into the Option Generation Service that generates operationally relevant Effects/Integrated Tasking Order (E/I-TO) change options for prosecuting multiple DTs during plan execution. The Resource-Task Pairing Service uses an auction-based allocation engine to assign all-domain resources to these options while observing dependencies and minimizing ripple-effect changes. The Cost/Benefit Analysis Service provides visualizations to explain option generation and trade-offs across a set of factors.