Optimal defence of single object with imperfect false targets

Abstract

The paper considers an object exposed to external intentional attacks. The defender distributes its resource between deploying false targets and protecting the object. The false targets are not perfect and there is a nonzero probability that a false target can be detected by the attacker. Once the attacker has detected a certain number of false targets, it ignores them and chooses such number of undetected targets to attack that maximizes the probability of the object destruction. The defender decides how many false targets to deploy in order to minimize the probability of the object destruction assuming that the attacker uses the most harmful strategy to attack. The optimal number of false targets and the optimal number of attacked targets are obtained for the case of single and multiple types of the false targets. A methodology of finding the optimal defence strategy under uncertain contest intensity is suggested. © 2011 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved.