Engineering Commons^™

Minimization Of Collateral Damage In Airdrops And Airstrikes, Steven P. Dillenburger

Theses and Dissertations

Collateral damage presents a significant risk during air drops and airstrikes, risking citizens' lives and property, straining the relationship between the United States Air Force and host nations. This dissertation presents a methodology to determine the optimal location for making supply airdrops in order to minimize collateral damage while maintaining a high likelihood of successful recovery. A series of non-linear optimization algorithms is presented along with their relative success in finding the optimal location in the airdrop problem. Additionally, we present a quick algorithm for accurately creating the Pareto frontier in the multi-objective airstrike problem. We demonstrate the effect of …