Strategic Maneuver and Disruption with Reinforcement Learning Approaches for Multi-Agent Coordination
This is an incremental review focused on military applications, targeting defense strategies against technologically advancing adversaries.
The paper reviews reinforcement learning approaches for multi-agent coordination to address the challenge of performing autonomous strategic maneuver and disruption in military contexts, aiming to gain superiority over adversaries in complex environments like multi-domain operations.
Reinforcement learning (RL) approaches can illuminate emergent behaviors that facilitate coordination across teams of agents as part of a multi-agent system (MAS), which can provide windows of opportunity in various military tasks. Technologically advancing adversaries pose substantial risks to a friendly nation's interests and resources. Superior resources alone are not enough to defeat adversaries in modern complex environments because adversaries create standoff in multiple domains against predictable military doctrine-based maneuvers. Therefore, as part of a defense strategy, friendly forces must use strategic maneuvers and disruption to gain superiority in complex multi-faceted domains such as multi-domain operations (MDO). One promising avenue for implementing strategic maneuver and disruption to gain superiority over adversaries is through coordination of MAS in future military operations. In this paper, we present overviews of prominent works in the RL domain with their strengths and weaknesses for overcoming the challenges associated with performing autonomous strategic maneuver and disruption in military contexts.