Dynamic Plan Evaluation for Military Logistics

The defense personnel engaged in logistics planning need tools that allow them to evaluate a plan and efficiently update this information as the situation evolves. This paper reports on the work that IET performed as part of DARPA’s Ultra*Log project to design a probabilistic reasoning algorithm for dynamic plan evaluation that conforms to the stringent performance requirements of Ultra*Log’s multiagent planning architecture called Cougaar. Introduction & Background The ability to dynamically evaluate the effects of changes in the world situation on the quality of a logistics plan is crucial for military commanders who have to decide if a plan is feasible in a given situation. Furthermore, when multiple courses of action are feasible, they have to decide on the best choice for execution in a situation. The decision makers involved in military logistics planning need tools that can quickly evaluate a logistics plan given uncertain and incomplete information about a situation. Previously, we have reported on the facility that we developed to generate and manage multiple courses of action in Cougaar−a hierarchical planning, execution monitoring, and replanning system developed to solve military logistics planning problems (Upal). Cougaar (Cognitive Agent Architecture) (BBN 2002) is a multiagent system developed under DARPA’s Advanced Logistics Project (ALP) and its successor Ultra*Log. This paper reports on the work that IET performed as part of Ultra*Log to add the ability to efficiently evaluate the effects of changes on the quality and feasibility of a course of action and choose the best course of action in an uncertain situation when multiple plans are available.