Analysis of Survivability for Combatants during Offensive Operations at the Tactical Level

Abstract

This study analyzed military personnel survivability in regards to offensive operations according to the scientific military training data of a reinforced infantry battalion. Scientific battle training was conducted at the Korea Combat Training Center (KCTC) training facility and utilized scientific military training equipment that included MILES and the main exercise control system. The training audience freely engaged an OPFOR who is an expert at tactics and weapon systems. It provides a statistical analysis of data in regards to state-of-the-art military training because the scientific battle training system saves and utilizes all training zone data for analysis and after action review as well as offers training control during the training period. The methodologies used the Cox PH modeling (which does not require parametric distribution assumptions) and decision tree modeling for survival data such as CART, GUIDE, and CTREE for richer and easier interpretation. The variables that violate the PH assumption were stratified and analyzed. Since the Cox PH model result was not easy to interpret the period of service, additional interpretation was attempted through univariate local regression. CART, GUIDE, and CTREE formed different tree models which allow for various interpretations.