ARTIFICIAL WAR
Multiagent-Based Simulation of Combat
by Andrew Ilachinski (Center for Naval Analyses, USA)
Military conflicts, particularly land combat, possess the characteristics of complex adaptive systems: combat forces are composed of a large number of nonlinearly interacting parts and are organized in a dynamic command-and-control network; local action, which often appears disordered, self-organizes into long-range order; military conflicts, by their nature, proceed far from equilibrium; military forces adapt to a changing combat environment; and there is no master "voice" that dictates the actions of every soldier (i.e., battlefield action is decentralized). Nonetheless, most modern "state of the art" military simulations ignore the self-organizing properties of combat.
This book summarizes the results of a multiyear research effort aimed at exploring the applicability of complex adaptive systems theory to the study of warfare, and introduces a sophisticated multiagent-based simulation of combat called EINSTein. EINSTein, whose bottom-up, generative approach to modeling combat stands in stark contrast to the top-down or reductionist philosophy that still underlies most conventional military models, is designed to illustrate how many aspects of land combat may be understood as self-organized, emergent phenomena. Used worldwide by the military operations research community, EINSTein has pioneered the simulation of combat on a small to medium scale by using autonomous agents to model individual behaviors and personalities rather than hardware.
Contents:
- Nonlinear Dynamics, Deterministic Chaos and Complex Adaptive
Systems: A Primer
- Nonlinearity, Complexity, and Warfare: Eight Tiers of Applicability
- EINSTein: Mathematical Overview
- EINSTein: Methodology
- EINSTein: Sample Behavior
- Breeding Agents
- Concluding Remarks and Speculations
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Readership: Undergraduates, graduate students, academics and
researchers in computer science; political and physical scientists; computer game developers; military historians.
�Ilachinski is a wonderful writer, taking his time with each subject and thus making this book accessible to the nonscientist with a basic understanding of complexity.�
T Irene Sanders
Executive Director
Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy |
�... its detailed discussion of agent-based modeling will make it a useful resource for students of other domains. Its detailed discussion of a software package that users can obtain at no cost makes it a potential resource for either self-study or classroom instruction in system modeling. For members of the military modeling community, it promises to be an indispensable resource on the state of the art, and an important technical foundation for future research.�
�This is the first example of a book designed for a wide audience dealing exclusively and in detail with their application to warfare ... it is easy to imagine researchers from other disciplines or even application-minded sectors such as computer game designers getting a good deal of value from it ... this book has much worthy of recommendation and it is certainly unique at the present time. It would be surprising if in future years this book is not seen as a landmark publication in military OR circles.�
| International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Applications |
