Optimizing Utilization of Detectors
Masters thesis — Naval Postgraduate School, 2016. Full text: https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD1027719
Arguments
Optimizing Utilization of Detectors
The same math governs how you point limited ISR assets — satellites, drones, analyst hours — at competing intelligence targets; intuition systematically underperforms when arrival rates are uncertain.
The intelligence value collected from a shared asset is maximized by computing the optimal time allocation across its competing tasks — numerical integration over a joint probability density of task arrival rates, checked by Monte Carlo simulation, beats gut-feel scheduling under uncertainty.
Why it matters
The same math governs how you point limited ISR assets — satellites, drones, analyst hours — at competing intelligence targets; intuition systematically underperforms when arrival rates are uncertain.
Use when: When one asset serves many tasks, optimize the schedule mathematically — under uncertainty, intuition leaves value on the table.