Example application
Irregular Warfare Pythagoras is best employed to study situations that are not well represented in traditional, legacy simulations. An illustrative example is an Improvised explosive attack on a vehicle convoy. Figure 1 shows a convoy of blue vehicle agents traveling down a road in an urban setting. There are three improvised explosive device agents emplaced along the roadside, and a triggering agent alongside the building. The convoy agents are told to follow one another, except for the leader agent at the head of the column, whose behavior is to drive along the road.
Figure 2 shows the situation after two of the vehicles have passed the corner of the building, 13 time steps after Figure 1. The triggering agent's behavior is to watch for blue vehicles. Upon seeing two vehicles, the triggering agent orders the IEDs to change their behavior from completely passive (do nothing) to aggressive (attack!). The IEDs explode, killing two convoy vehicles, which become transparent, and damaging two others, which change their color. The IEDs did not attack the convoy until ordered to do so by the triggering agent. This simple scenario was constructed by one analyst in about two hours, and illustrates both the ease of use and the applicability of Pythagoras to many combat and non-combat analysis situations. This scenario was used to examine alternatives for convoy protection, such as IED
Background
Agent-based simulations create software entities that are capable of responding to their perceived or actual situations based upon sets of decision rules. The interactions among different agents can create autonomous and emergent (i.e., unplanned and unforeseen) behavior. Pythagoras introduces new capabilities to modeling and simulation, such as “soft” decision rules, dynamic affiliation, behavior-change triggers, and non-lethal weapons effects.
Soft decision rules may create agent behaviors that emerge as unique within any class of agents that were originally defined as identical (except for incidental variables such as agent location). The soft decision rules can have a narrow range, indicating a well disciplined, homogenous group whose decision rules are similar or identical, or they can have a wide range, providing for significant variation among individuals. Soft decision rules can be used with all of an agent's attributes, as well as leadership style and effectiveness, marksmanship, engagement desire, group affiliation preferences and other characteristics of the agent.
Dynamic affiliation allows agents to change sides as a function of events and actions that occur as the simulation plays out. One agent can change another agent's affiliation using influence techniques, such as propaganda, through one-time actions that happen to the agent, or affiliation changes may simply evolve across multiple actions.
Behavior-change triggers allow agents to change their behavior as a function of events or actions. Agents can change from aggressive to passive behaviors as their attributes change or due to some action taken by a friend or enemy. Behavior changes can be induced by individual events, group events, or can be ordered by leader agents. There is no limit to the number of behaviors that can be defined by the user. These alternate behaviors can be chained together to create complex behavior trees. Non-lethal weapons not only cause suppression, they may also change the affiliation or attributes of an agent. Suppression causes an agent to cease activity for a period of time. The changed attributes or affiliations may cause a behavior change trigger to occur or may cause other agents to interact with the changed agent in a different way. Pythagoras retains many legacy simulation capabilities. It includes direct and indirect fire weapons, sensors, communication devices and terrain. Agents can represent people, weapon systems, or other objects. Both traditional combat and new, non-combat scenarios can be represented.
An improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery shell, attached to a detonating mechanism. IEDs are commonly used as roadside bombs, or homemade bombs.
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