Symmetric Case of Locks, Bombs and Testing Model

07/04/2023

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by   Isaac M. Sonin, et al.

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We present a Defense/Attack resource allocation model, where Defender has some number of “locks" to protect n vulnerable boxes (sites), and Attacker is trying to destroy these boxes, having m “bombs" that can be placed into the boxes. Similar models were studied in game theory - (Colonel) Blotto games, but our model has a feature absent in the previous literature. Attacker tests the vulnerability of all sites before allocating her resources, and these tests are not perfect, i.e., a test can be positive for a box without a lock and negative for a box with a lock. We describe the optimal strategies for a special case of a general Locks-Bombs-Testing (LBT) model when all boxes are identical and the Defender has a fixed number of locks.