<p>The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has highlighted the significant potential of heterogeneous UAV swarms in the military domain, where they have been employed across a wide range of modern warfare scenarios.However,because the confrontation process exhibits nonlinear characteristics—such as time-varying information superiority and defense saturation—it remains difficult to dynamically quantify their mission effectiveness and to propose corresponding improvement measures. This paper proposes an operational effectiveness evaluation method for heterogeneous UAV swarms conducting maritime strike missions based on a system dynamics (SD) model.The combat system is decomposed into multiple subsystems,and a nonlinear stock–flow SD model is developed,explicitly capturing three key mechanisms: (1)defense saturation and degradation of interception capability induced by swarm penetration; (2)attenuation of information advantage due to reconnaissance attrition and temporal information decay, modulated by the information dependency coefficient; (3) dynamic firepower allocation among different UAV types within the heterogeneous swarm.The survivability of the target destroyer and the remaining size of the heterogeneous UAV swarm are adopted as the main effectiveness indicators.Simulation experiments and sensitivity analyses are conducted around parameters such as the saturation threshold <InlineEquation ID="IEq1"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$U_{sat}$</EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"><math> <msub> <mi>U</mi> <mrow> <mi mathvariant="italic">sat</mi> </mrow> </msub> </math></EquationSource> </InlineEquation>, the information dependency coefficient <InlineEquation ID="IEq2"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$\alpha$</EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"><math> <mi>α</mi> </math></EquationSource> </InlineEquation>,and the per-UAV damage coefficient <InlineEquation ID="IEq3"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$d_{26}$</EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"><math> <msub> <mi>d</mi> <mn>26</mn> </msub> </math></EquationSource> </InlineEquation>.The results show that the proposed model can reproduce nonlinear confrontation patterns,including a threshold-like transition from penetration failure to successful saturation. When information dependency is low, the swarm can maintain a stable “reconnaissance–strike”coupling and achieve a high level of task completion within a limited time;when information dependency is high,the defender can significantly reduce strike effectiveness by prioritizing suppression of the reconnaissance link.The proposed SD-based evaluation framework provides quantitative and actionable support for swarm configuration and tactic selection in maritime strike scenarios.</p>

Evaluation of the Operational Effectiveness of a Heterogeneous UAV Swarm in Maritime Strike Missions Based on a System Dynamics Model

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发表日期：

2026年4月9日

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Yunkai Qiu,
Yuanhong Liu

摘要

The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has highlighted the significant potential of heterogeneous UAV swarms in the military domain, where they have been employed across a wide range of modern warfare scenarios.However,because the confrontation process exhibits nonlinear characteristics—such as time-varying information superiority and defense saturation—it remains difficult to dynamically quantify their mission effectiveness and to propose corresponding improvement measures. This paper proposes an operational effectiveness evaluation method for heterogeneous UAV swarms conducting maritime strike missions based on a system dynamics (SD) model.The combat system is decomposed into multiple subsystems,and a nonlinear stock–flow SD model is developed,explicitly capturing three key mechanisms: (1)defense saturation and degradation of interception capability induced by swarm penetration; (2)attenuation of information advantage due to reconnaissance attrition and temporal information decay, modulated by the information dependency coefficient; (3) dynamic firepower allocation among different UAV types within the heterogeneous swarm.The survivability of the target destroyer and the remaining size of the heterogeneous UAV swarm are adopted as the main effectiveness indicators.Simulation experiments and sensitivity analyses are conducted around parameters such as the saturation threshold $U_{sat}$ $U_{sat}$ , the information dependency coefficient $\alpha$ $α$ ,and the per-UAV damage coefficient $d_{26}$ $d_{26}$ .The results show that the proposed model can reproduce nonlinear confrontation patterns,including a threshold-like transition from penetration failure to successful saturation. When information dependency is low, the swarm can maintain a stable “reconnaissance–strike”coupling and achieve a high level of task completion within a limited time;when information dependency is high,the defender can significantly reduce strike effectiveness by prioritizing suppression of the reconnaissance link.The proposed SD-based evaluation framework provides quantitative and actionable support for swarm configuration and tactic selection in maritime strike scenarios.