Aerial Target Threat Estimation in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Reconnaissance Based on Neural Network
Jihui Xu Ximeng Xu
Air Force Engineering University, Air Force Engineering University,
Xi’an, China Xi’an, China
13572223788@163.com 13279460923@163.com
ABSTRACT
The application of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is the inevitable
trend of air combat. In the process of air combat, UAVs have many
advantages in target reconnaissance and detection. In the course of
UAV reconnaissance and detection, a new threat estimation method
based on the extreme learning machine (ELM) neural network is
proposed against the shortcomings of the existing methods. The
air combat data is selected from the air combat maneuvering in-
strument (ACMI). The threat estimation model based on the ELM
neural network is constructed, and the accuracy and computational
complexity of the algorithm are analyzed by simulation. The results
show that the method not only has high accuracy, but also has good
efficiency, and can accurately and quickly perform target threat
estimation during the UAV reconnaissance process.
CCS CONCEPTS
• Computing methodologies → Artificial intelligence; Dis-
tributed artificial intelligence; Multi-agent systems.
KEYWORDS
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), threat estimation, extreme learning
machine (ELM), air combat maneuvering instrument (ACMI)
ACM Reference Format:
Jihui Xu, Ximeng Xu, and Wenjie Tian. 2022. Aerial Target Threat Estimation
in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Reconnaissance Based on Neural Network. In
The 3rd International Conference On Industrial Control Network And System
Engineering Research (ICNSER 2022), May 27, 28, 2022, Nanjing, China. ACM,
New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3556055.3556065
1 INTRODUCTION
In recent years, with the wide application of unmanned and au-
tonomous technology, the development of unmanned aerial vehicle
(UAV) system has become an important direction of air combat
research. In the actual battlefield environment, personnel recon-
naissance has defects such as high risk, small field of view and easy
exposure, while UAV reconnaissance has many advantages such
as low cost, low risk, large field of view and strong concealability.
Therefore, it is a hot issue to research the effect of UAV autonomous
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3556055.3556065
68
Wenjie Tian
Air Force Engineering University,
Xi’an, China
18291861633@163.com
reconnaissance in the battlefield environment. Threat estimation in
reconnaissance and surveillance refers to inferring the threat degree
of the enemy targets to us based on the current situation between
the enemy and ourselves [1]. With the ever-increasing complexity
of the air combat environment and the lethality of precision-guided
munitions such as air-to-air missiles, accurate and quick threat
estimation of target aircraft in the air combat is not only an impor-
tant task and urgent need for situation awareness [2],but also the
premise and basis for UAVs to complete their missions [3].
The existing target threat estimation methods can be divided into
two types [4], modeling method and data method. The modeling
method is usually used to model the process of threat estimation,
and quantify the threat degree of the target [5]. Commonly used
are fuzzy reasoning, D-S evidence theory, Bayesian reasoning and
threat index method. For example, a target threat estimation method
based on fuzzy logic is proposed in literatures [6] and [7] by con-
structing the subordinating degree function of threat estimation
parameters. A target threat estimation model based on cloud model
for uncertain conditions is proposed in literature [8]. The Bayesian
reasoning network is used to solve the target threat estimation prob-
lem in literature [9]. A threat index method for the target threat
estimation problem is proposed in literature [10]. In the modeling
method, the threat index method is the most representative and
widely used because of its simple principle, easy implementation,
and accurate and reliable estimation results.
The data method is usually used to make the target threat es-
timation problems be equivalent to the prediction problems of
multivariate function [11]. The estimation parameters are taken as
input and the threat value of target as output, and the estimation
model trained by the air combat data is used to predict the threat
value of the target. For example, neural network and its improved
algorithms are used for target threat estimation in literatures [12-
14]. Regression support vector machine is used for target threat
estimation in literature [15]. The advantage of the data method is
that it does not require complicated modeling of the estimation
process, instead, machine learning algorithm is used to explore
the intrinsic relationship between the threat value of the target
and the estimation parameters, which makes the calculation of the
estimation process be easier and thus reduces the estimation time
and improves the efficiency.
The research shows that the modeling method can guarantee the
accuracy of the estimation, but it is difficult to meet the real-time
performance. The data method can meet the real-time performance
of estimation, but cannot guarantee the accuracy. Therefore, it is
an urgent problem to be solved that finding a better target threat
estimation method to make it more accurate and with good real-
time performance.
ICNSER 2022, May 27, 28, 2022, Nanjing, China Jihui Xu et al.

Extreme learning machine (ELM) is a kind of single-hidden layer

feedforward neural network, which, unlike general feedforward
neural networks, it uses the method of solving linear equations to
replace the traditional iterative process of parameter optimization,
and the least squares solution with minimum norm is used as the
network weights of output layer so that the network training can
be completed at once without iterating. The input layer weights
and hidden layer thresholds of the network are randomly set and
do not need to be adjusted during the training process, making the
parameter selection of the ELM algorithm relatively simple, which
can overcome the shortcomings of traditional BP neural network
such as training speed is slow, easy to fall into local minimum
value [16]. In addition, in view of the problem that there are fewer
air combat data available in existing data methods, the actual air
Figure 1: Air combat situation map.
combat training data in the air combat maneuvering instrument
(ACMI) is used in this paper. ACMI is an air combat data recording
device that can collect, transmit, and save information such as time, T = [t 1 , t 2 , · · ·, t N ]T
position, speed, and attitude of fighter aircrafts in real time, and can Thus, the training process can be seen as the solving process of
provide a large amount of objective and real data for the research a linear system as Eq.(2). Moreover, the hidden layer parameters w
of air combat issues [17]. and b can be set randomly. Therefore, the only unknown parameter
In summary, this paper proposes a new target threat estimation of ELM is the output weight β. Then, ELM actually defines a linear
method for UAV reconnaissance based on the ELM neural network. system:
This method combines the advantages of modeling method and
data method, and can accurately and quickly perform target threat Hβˆ − T = HH† T − T = min ∥Hβ − T∥ (4)
β
estimation.
Finally, the minimal norm solution is:
2 THREAT ESTIMATION BASED ON THE ELM βˆ = H† T (5)
2.1 Extreme Learning Machine Where H† is the Moore-Penrose generalized inverse of matrix
N ,
For the prediction problem, given N training samples{(xj , t j )}j=1 H.The minimal norm solution ensures that ELM can have minimal
where xj = [x j1 , x j2 , ·s, x jn ]T is thej − thinput vector with dimen- output weight while getting minimal training error, so it has good
sion of n , and t j ∈ R is the corresponding target, and then the generalization ability [19].
solution is an estimator learning from these N training samples
which can generate the expected outputs according to the given 2.2 Determination of Threat Estimation
inputs.Supposed that an ELM model with L hidden neurons is used Indexes
as the estimator, and then the output can be expressed as [18]: For example, a mission payload UAV reconnoitered a target aircraft,
L
Õ the situation is shown in Fig. 1 [20]. Select the aircraft coordinate
oj = βi д wi · x j + bi , j = 1, 2, · · ·, N system OXYZ and use the center of mass of the UAV as the origin O.


(1)
i=1 Use the longitudinal axis of the UAV as the X axis, and the direction
where д(·) is the activation function of the hidden neurons. wi is of pointing nose is positive. The vertical direction of vertical air-
the weight vector connecting the i − th hidden neuron and the frame on symmetry plane as the Z axis, and the vertical downward
inputs and wi = [w i1 , w i2 , · · ·, w in ]T . βi is the weight connecting direction is the positive. The Y axis is determined according to the
the i − th hidden neuron and the output. bi is the threshold of the right-hand rule. Among them, F and T represent the UAV and target
i − th hidden neuron. aircraft respectively, and target line FT refers to the connection
The training target of ELM is to minimize the error between the UAV and target aircraft. R is the relative distance. H
! between the is the relative height, and is defined as the difference between the
N
∥o j − t j ∥ , and it can be height of the target aircraft and the height of the UAV. VF and VT
Í
outputs and the targets, which is min
j=1 represent the speed vectors of UAV and target aircraft respectively.
rewritten in the matrix form: φ F is the azimuth angle of the UAV. qT is the entrance angle of the
min ∥Hβ − T∥ (2) target aircraft. The directions of the azimuth angle and the entrance
angle are defined that the right avertence is positive, and the left
where
avertence is negative, and the value range is [−180◦ , 180◦ ].
 д (w 1 · x 1 + b1 ) ··· д (w L · x 1 + b L ) In order to quantify the threat degree of the target aircraft to the
.. .. ..

H= . (3) UAV, this paper selects 5 indexes, i.e. angle threat index, speed threat
 
. . 
index, height threat index, distance threat index and air combat
 
д(w · x + b ) ··· д (w L · x N + b L ) N ×L
 1 N 1
capability threat index [21]. The equations for each index are as
β = [β 1 , β 2 , · · ·, β L ]T follows:

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Aerial Target Threat Estimation in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Reconnaissance Based on Neural Network ICNSER 2022, May 27, 28, 2022, Nanjing, China

1) Angle threat index TA :

(|φ F | + |qT |)
TA = (6)
360
2) Speed threat index TV :

 0.1VT < 0.6VF



TV = −0.5 + VT /VF 0.6VF ≤ VT ≤ 105VF

(7)
 1.0VT > 1.5VF


3) Height threat index TH :

 1.0H ≥ 5000


TH = 0.5 + 0.0001H − 5000 ≤ H < 5000

(8)
 0.1H < −5000
 Figure 2: Trajectory of the air combat data

4) Distance threat index TR :
When calculating the distance threat index of target aircraft, it
is necessary to consider both the enemy airborne radar detection
distance and the air-to-air missile range. Set Rr F and RrT as the
maximum detection distance of the airborne radar of the UAV and
the target aircraft respectively. RmF and RmT are the maximum
range of the air-to-air missile of the UAV and the target aircraft
respectively. Reconnaissance UAVs do not normally carry missiles,
so the launch range of the UAV can be viewed as 0. Then, there are
2 situations to be discussed:
a) RrT , Rr F , RmT > RmF ,
 0R ≥ RrT
0.4 − 0.4 • RR−R

R ≤ R < RrT
 rF
rT −R r F r F



R−RmT

TR = 1 − 0.6 • Rr F −RmT RmT ≤ R < Rr F


(9) Figure 3: Target threat estimation model
R−RmF
0.5 + 0.5 • RmT −RmF RmF ≤ R < RmT




 0.5 + 0.3 • RmF −R R < R


 RmF mF

b) Rr F > RrT , RmT > RmF ,

2.3 Construction of Threat Estimation Sample
0R ≥ Rr F
Data

0.3 − 0.3 • RR−R

R ≤ R < Rr F
 rT
r F −R rT rT



R−RmT A piece of air combat data is selected from ACMI in this paper. The

TR = 1 − 0.7 • RrT −RmT RmT ≤ R < RrT


(10)
R−RmF duration is 1 minute and 24 seconds, and the sampling interval is
0.5 + 0.5 • RmT −RmF RmF ≤ R < RmT


0.25 seconds and it is a total of 336 groups of data. The trajectory of


 0.5 + 0.3 • RmF −R R < R


 RmF mF the air combat process is drawn in the inertial coordinate system,
5) Air combat capability threat index TC : as shown in Fig. 2.
According to the literature [22], the air combat capability of the Each group of data contains parameters such as model, attitude,
fighter aircraft can be described with 7 parameters, i.e. maneuver- position, speed, type of weapon and time of the UAV and target
ability performance, firepower performance, detection performance, aircraft. These parameters can be used to calculate the situation
handling performance, survival performance, voyage coefficient parameters of the two aircrafts. Then, Eq. 6) to (11) can be used to
and electronic countermeasure performance. These 7 parameters calculate the threat indexes TA , TV , TH , TR and TC , and the weights
are set as ε 1 ∼ ε 7 , respectively, and the air combat capability threat of the estimation indexes are combined to calculate the threat value
index TC can be expressed as: of the target aircraft to the UAV in each group of data. From this,
h Õ  Õ i we can get 336 groups of new data with the air combat situation
TC = ln ε 1 + ln ε 2 + 1 + ln ε3 + 1 ε4ε5ε6ε7 (11) parameters R, H , VF , VT , φ F and qT as input, and the threat value
of the target as output, and use these data as sample data for target
According to the threat index method, the threat value of the threat estimation.
target T can be expressed as a weighted sum of all estimation
indexes, i.e. T = ωATA + ωV TV + ω H TH + ω R TR + ωC TC , where
ω = (ωA , ωV , ω H , ω R , ωC ) is the weight of 5 estimation indexes. 2.4 Threat Estimation model
A fuzzy analytical hierarchy process is used to calculate The sample data is divided into training samples and test samples,
the weight of each estimation index in this paper, i.e.ω = and the training samples are used to train the ELM network, and
(0.16, 0.14, 0.17, 0.23, 0.30). Refer to literature [23] for detailed cal- then the test samples are used to test the estimation performance
culation method. of the predictor. The estimation model is shown in Fig. 3.

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ICNSER 2022, May 27, 28, 2022, Nanjing, China Jihui Xu et al.

3 SIMULATION EXPERIMENTS
3.1 Experiment Settings
The estimation model is used to simulate air combat target threat
estimation, and 336 groups of sample data are divided into training
samples and test samples. Among them, the first 236 groups of
data are used as training samples, and the remaining 100 groups of
data are used as test samples. In order to avoid the prediction error
caused by the wide range of values of various parameters, all data
are normalized.
According to the input and output dimensions of the model, it
can be determined that the number of input neurons of the network Figure 4: Test results of the hidden layer neurons.
is 6, and the number of output neurons is 1. In addition, in order
to obtain a predictor with good accuracy, it is necessary to select
the number of hidden neurons of the network. For this reason, 100 is relatively good. Therefore, when training the ELM predictor, the
groups of test samples are divided into two parts, which are set as number of hidden neurons is set as L = 18.
test sample 1 and test sample 2, and the number of samples is 50.
The test sample 1 is used to conduct test experiments to determine 3.3 Accuracy Analysis of Estimation Model
the parameter L; the test sample 2 is used to conduct performance
After the network structure is determined, test sample 2 is used to
test on the finally obtained predictor.
test the estimation accuracy of the BP neural network and the ELM
The simulation experiment is conducted on a PC and the oper-
network, respectively. Among them, the parameters of BP network
ating environment is: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4590 3.3GHz processor
are set as follows, the target training error is 0.001, the maximum
with 8GB of memory. Win7 32-bit operating system with a running
number of iterations is 2000, the number of hidden neurons is set
platform of MATLAB 2010a. In order to make the experiment more
as 28 by the test experiment. The estimation results are shown in
convincing, the following simulation results are the average value
Fig. 5.
of 30 calculations.
It can be seen from Fig. 5 that the prediction error of the ELM
network is smaller than that of the BP network, and the prediction
3.2 Setting the Number of Hidden Neurons accuracy of the ELM network is significantly improved and the
The number of hidden neurons of the ELM neural network has a threat estimation can be performed more accurately.
great influence on the prediction accuracy. If the number is too
small, the ELM network cannot learn well and the prediction error 3.4 Complexity Analysis of Estimation Model
is large. If the number is too large, the training time of the network The execution time is calculated to compare the computational
increases, and the phenomenon of over-fitting easily occurs [24].In complexity of different algorithms. The results are shown in Fig. 6.
practical applications, the optimal number of hidden neurons is It can be seen from Fig. 6 that under a certain times of estimation,
usually determined by test experiment [25]. According to the Kol- the execution time of each algorithm is ranked by the ELM network
mogorov Theorem [26], for a single hidden layer neural network, <threat index method <BP neural network. This is because the two
if the number of input neurons is n, the number of hidden neurons neural network algorithms can realize the calculation of "situation
should be set as at least 2n + 1. In order to take into account the parameters-threat value" after training. Compared with the calcula-
network performance and training costs, the test experiment is tion of "situation parameters-threat index-threat value", it simplifies
used to find the optimal number of hidden neurons of the ELM the calculation process. Moreover, the training of the ELM network
network in the interval of [13, 30]. can be completed once without iteration, so the execution time is
In the test experiment, the network initial input layer weight w the shortest. While more iterative training is needed to correct the
and the hidden layer threshold b are set randomly. The activation network weights in the BP neural network, so the execution time
function д(x) is set by default, i.e.д(x) = 1+e1 −x . Then, the training is longer.
samples are used to train the network with different number of
hidden neurons, and the test sample 1 is predicted and the predicted
mean square error (MSE) is output. The computational formula of
4 CONCLUSIONS
MSE is: A new threat estimation method for UAV reconnaissance based on
N1
the ELM neural network is proposed aiming at the shortcomings
1 Õ
2 of the existing methods. The ELM neural network is proposed to
MSE = t j − t¯j (12)
N 1 i=1 use as the predictor to perform target threat estimation, and the
simulation results show that the algorithm has high estimation
where N 1 is the number of test samples, t j and t¯j are the actual accuracy and low computational complexity.
output and calculation output of the i − th sample respectively. The The shortcomings of this paper are that the training samples of
test results are shown in Fig. 4. the model are not rich enough, and only the threat estimation of
From Fig. 4, it can be seen that in this interval, when the number one UAV vs one target aircraft is studied. At present, UAV swarm
of hidden neurons is 18, the prediction accuracy of the ELM network operation is the mainstream of UAV reconnaissance field, in the

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Aerial Target Threat Estimation in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Reconnaissance Based on Neural Network ICNSER 2022, May 27, 28, 2022, Nanjing, China

Figure 5: Estimation results of test sample.

Figure 6: Execution time of the algorithms.

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