INADEQUACY OF COST PER 'KILL' AS MEASURE OF EFFECTIVENESS.

Cost per enemy `kill' is a commonly used measure for determining the relative worth of competitive components for a defense system If the defense system components are employed in such a manner that they do not affect each other, this measure of effectiveness appears to be suitable for many situations If there are interactions among the components of a defense system, however, a comparison based on cost per enemy `kill' which is not obtained from consideration of the over-all defense system can be misleading This paper presents an analysis which indicates that such misleading situations often exist To perform this analysis, a somewhat simplified mathematical model is developed to represent the actions and outcomes of an enemy attack against a defense system The mathematical model permits partial analytical treatment of moderately complicated attack-defense situations and may be useful in many types of military operations-research work [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]