Optimal Condition-Based Mission Abort Decisions

Failures of safety-critical mission-based systems, such as aircraft and submarines, could result in significant losses and damage. To enhance the survivability of such systems, their missions may be aborted if the failure risk becomes too high. We investigate such mission abort policies under a completely observed two-stage degradation process that progresses stochastically from normal to defective to failure. Mission abort decisions are considered as a function of the duration of the defective stage. This mission abort problem is formulated as a discrete-time optimal stopping problem with the goal of minimizing the expected total cost of mission failure and system failure. In addition to deriving some structural properties, we also numerically evaluate several intuitive heuristic policies. Finally, a joint optimization problem is formulated to simultaneously identify the optimal mission abort policy and the optimal investment to delay system deterioration.

Automated summary

This study investigates the mission abort policies of safety-critical mission-based systems, such as aircraft and submarines, to enhance their survivability. The mission abort decisions are considered in a two-stage degradation process, aiming to minimize the expected total cost of mission failure and system failure. The study also evaluates heuristic policies and formulates a joint optimization problem to determine the optimal mission abort policy and investment for delaying system deterioration.