| Abstract: | Consider a situation where a single shooter engages, sequentially, a cluster of targets that may vary in terms of vulnerability and value or worth. Following the shooting of a round of fire at a certain target, the latter may either be killed or remain alive. We assume neither partial nor cumulative damage. If the target is killed, there is a possibility that the shooter is not aware of that fact and may keep on engaging that target. If the shooter recognizes a killed target as such, then this target is considered to be evidently killed. If the objective is to maximize the weighted expected number of killed targets, where the weight reflects the value of a target, then it is shown that a certain type of a shooting strategy, called a Greedy Strategy, is optimal under the general assumption that the more a target is engaged, but still not evidently killed, the less is the probability that the next round will be effective. If all weights are equal, then the greedy shooting strategy calls to engage, at each round, the least previously engaged target that is not evidently killed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 44: 613–622, 1997 |
