Attrition Rates for Weapons with Markov-Dependent Fire

Abstract

A weapon is said to have a Markov-dependent firing policy if the result of the current round is conditioned on the outcome of the preceding round. For such a weapon we obtain the distribution of the number of rounds required to defeat a target. From this result we derive the distribution of the time required to destroy a target and the expected value of the Lanchester attrition-rate coefficient.