A real-time exhaustive search algorithm for the weapon-target assignment problem

Weapon-Target Assignment (WTA) as an important part of aerial defense cycle has long been ‎studied. Challenges are usually finding fast-computing methods to search optimal or near-‎optimal solution in cases of a large number of weapons and targets. This viewpoint is more ‎mathematically considerable but practically has limited usage in the mentioned context. A ‎real-time search algorithm is proposed which decomposes the WTA problem and by ‎decreasing the size of solution space and deleting impossible solutions, enables real-time ‎exhaustive search algorithm. Implementation of the algorithm for three typical scenarios shows ‎excellent real-time performance and the possibility of finding exact solutions for large-scale ‎problems.‎