The efficiency of ground forces following Network Centric Warfare characteristics in the urban region of The Hague: An ABM study in GAMA

Abstract

Principles of Network Centric Warfare (NCW) have proven to be more effective than the application of Platform Centric Warfare (PCW) principles in warfare. Network Centric Warfare creates its advantage by gaining a technological, structural and organisational advantage. Because warfare is known to be a complex system, it is difficult to predict the future status of the battlespace. Therefore, it is relevant to investigate the concept of NCW to be well prepared when it is put to practice. Essential for simulating this concept of warfare is the acquisition of knowledge through experience by practicing the NCW principles in real-life scenarios. Agent Based Modelling (ABM) is one of the ways to simulate these real-life scenario, which will be the analysis method in this research. Both PCW and NCW are programmed in the ABM software GAMA to create empirical data about the differences between the PCW and NCW doctrine. These differences are grounded by literature and expert advice to create the behavioural rule set for every agent and scenario. The empirical data is acquired from 6 different scenarios that are written as outputs from the simulations. The indicators for mission success in this research are: (1) mission duration and (2)casualty rate per simulation. The results of the analysis is that scenario 6: Combination is the most favourable in terms of mission success, whereas scenario 4: Group-size is the least favourable. There is room for extra and more efficient coding for further research. However, this research serves as a basis to possible further research that focus more on impact of the destruction of roads or line of sight for example.