The Fighter Problem: Optimal Allocation of a Discrete Commodity

Abstract

The Fighter problem with discrete ammunition is studied. An aircraft (fighter) equipped with $n$ anti-aircraft missiles is intercepted by enemy airplanes, the appearance of which follows a homogeneous Poisson process with known intensity. If $j$ of the $n$ missiles are spent at an encounter they destroy an enemy plane with probability $a(j)$, where $a(0) = 0 $ and $\{a(j)\}$ is a known, strictly increasing concave sequence, e.g., $a(j) = 1-q^j, \; \, 0 < q < 1$. If the enemy is not destroyed, the enemy shoots the fighter down with known probability $1-u$, where $0 \le u \le 1$. The goal of the fighter is to shoot down as many enemy airplanes as possible during a given time period $[0, T]$. Let $K (n, t)$ be the smallest optimal number of missiles to be used at a present encounter, when the fighter has flying time $t$ remaining and $n$ missiles remaining. Three seemingly obvious properties of $K(n, t)$ have been conjectured: [A] The closer to the destination, the more of the $n$ missiles one should use, [B] the more missiles one has, the more one should use, and [C] the more missiles one has, the more one should save for possible future encounters. We show that [C] holds for all $0 \le u \le 1$, that [A] and [B] hold for the "Invincible Fighter" ($u=1$), and that [A] holds but [B] fails for the "Frail Fighter" ($u=0$), the latter through a surprising counterexample.