System interdiction and defense
By: by Eitan Israeli
Publisher: Naval Postgraduate School; Available from National Technical Information Service
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Monterey, Calif; Springfield, Va
Language: eng
Number of pages: 133
Description: We study the problem of interdicting components of an adversary's system, e.g., a war-time economy, a transportation network, etc. Basic techniques are developed and illustrated with a simple network interdiction problem, "maximizing the shortest path" (MXSP). In MXSP, an interdictor wishes to employ limited interdiction resources as effectively as possible to slow an adversary in moving between two network nodes. "Interdiction" destroys a network arc entirely or increases its effective length through an attack. This bi-level, max-mm problem is formulated as a mixed-integer program (MIP), but unique decomposition algorithms are developed to solve the problem more efficiently than standard branch and bound. One algorithm is essentially Benders decomposition with special integrality cuts for the master problem. A second algorithm uses a new set-covering master problem, and a third is a hybrid of the first two. We extend our techniques (i) to solve general system-interdiction problems, some of which cannot be formulated as is, (ii) to solve system-defense problems where critical system components must be identified and hardened against interdiction, and (iii) to solve interdiction problems with uncertain interdiction success. We report computational experience for MXSP, a shortest- path network-defense problem and MXSP with uncertain interdiction success.
Notes: "March 1999".

Dissertation supervisor(s): R. Kevin Wood.

Dissertation (Ph.D.  in Operations Research) Naval Postgraduate School, March 1999.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-110).

Approved for public release; distribution unlimited.

Also available online.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat reader.

Israeli Air Force author.

dk/dk cc:9116 5/4/99.