Case Study 1
Measuring the Effectiveness
of Candidates for Equipment and Weapon System Modernization
Military Operations Research
II
Effectiveness Analysis
Analysis is needed to support decisions involving modernization of Army weapons and equipment. Unfortunately, there are insufficient resources to procure all the systems that the Army has presently in development. Thus it is important to evaluate the candidates with respect to their contribution to force effectiveness. To accomplish this task, a set of simulation runs has been made in which the candidate systems are included in the force in various combinations according to a particular experimental design. In each run, the fractional exchange ratio (FER) is computed. The results and the matrix that describes the inclusion and exclusion of systems in the various runs are provided in a spreadsheet. We note that the provided information is only one part of a greater evaluation of these candidate systems. We would expect that other measures of effectiveness would be computed, and other scenarios would be evaluated in a complete analysis.
Using the data provided, develop a response surface in order to identify the contribution of the various candidate systems to force effectiveness as measured by the FER. Do so using both L1 and L2 norm approaches. Discuss differences that you find.
Can you identify any systems that are interacting either positively or negatively?
Assuming that no other effectiveness analysis is being performed, how would one use this information to make a recommendation to a decision maker?