REGIONAL AIR SUPERIORITY COMPARISON

A variety of air force comparison models have been developed in order to evaluate the relative air superiority of friendly and enemy forces. Even though these models are actively utilized in force structuring and operational planning processes, all of the models neglect the location of the air force assets and therefore fail to provide a regional superiority comparison of friendly and enemy air forces, but rather provide an overall assessment. With a new aspect on force comparison, a novel model is developed in this paper that puts forward the regional differences in air superiority of the friendly and enemy forces. Evaluating the effects of air assets with Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) on each geographical point in the area of operations, the importance of each point, namely ?Air Power Value?, is calculated under several different criteria. By plotting the Air Power Value of each point on the situation map, called ?Air Superiority Map?, situational awareness is substentially increased and operations are planned using numerical superiority values. Furthermore, a tool is developed in order to test the model in real-world applications.