Methods for Collaborative Combat Capabilities Analysis: An Overview

Collaborative combat is the foundational organizational form of intelligent, informatized, and systematic combat. With the rapid development of unmanned combat system, collaborative combat becomes the trend of future combat forms. Based on the network information sharing, the key elements to decide the victory or defeat of war are no longer limited to the advanced level of individual platforms, but also depends on the collaboration level among the components of the system. Thus, analyzing the system's collaborative capabilities is a core aspect of current combat assessment and optimization. Owing to the fog of war, the analysis of collaborative combat capabilities is not only limited by the acquisition of data and the complexity of the combat system, but is also influenced by the heterogeneity, hierarchy, coupling, dynamics, and multi-domain characteristics of the collaborative relationships between equipment, making it difficult to obtain an analytical method that considers various dimensions. We comb through the main research methods used for collaborative combat capability analysis, categorizing the research methods into four perspectives: analysis based on network structure, modeling and simulation, capability aggregation, and hybrid approaches. Furthermore, we provide a forward-looking perspective on the future trajectory of collaborative combat capability analysis. This overview can serve as a theoretical and technical foundation for research into countermeasures for systemic confrontation.