Markov modelling of the effectiveness of arms sanctions: A case study of the Falklands War

Abstract

Within a war fighting scenario, high level effects will emerge as a result of actions or constraints at a lower level. Simulation of this emergence for realistic numbers of components has not been possible because of the large number of system states to be considered. We use a previously developed envelope method and show that it enables a dramatic reduction in the number of states that must be considered, as long as the optimal attack sequence is known. The method is applied to an example (for which the optimal attack sequence is obvious) from the Falklands War, to evaluate the effectiveness of a particular arms sanction. The outcome demonstrates that the envelope method offers an achievable data preparation load as well as computational tractability and that it is a practical way to evaluate the benefits of particular sanctions when the optimal sequence is known.