As the deployment of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) expands across various sectors, the importance of safe and efficient path planning systems is increasingly underscored, particularly in fields such as maritime safety and national security where high levels of navigational efficiency and safety are demanded. While previous path planning research often focused on either safety or efficiency, this study proposes an improved path planning framework that considers both aspects simultaneously, overcoming the limitations of traditional Global Path Planning (GPP) and Local Path Planning (LPP) to enhance route safety, efficiency capabilities. The proposed framework comprises GPP with Safety Areas (GPP-SA) and LPP with Goals & Obstacles (LPP-GO). The proposed structure ensures that the USV can navigate safely and efficiently in a variety of environments and reach its destination easily. The framework has been evaluated through various experiments, including scenario-based validation and statistical verification, demonstrating its superiority by integrating and improving upon existing methods. The findings of this research explore the feasibility of applying these advancements in real maritime environments, making a significant contribution to the realization of safe and efficient path planning in unmanned maritime and ship navigation systems.

In modern naval warfare, effectively responding to complex threats involving multiple simultaneous targets has become increasingly important. To address this need, this study proposes a practical simulation framework designed explicitly for composite warfare scenarios involving next-generation naval ships. Specifically, the framework emphasizes simultaneous threat evaluation and dynamic weapon allocation. The proposed framework comprises three major components: (1) combat entity models—including warships, aircraft, missiles, and launchers—along with their interactions; (2) a simulation timeline that chronologically represents combat engagements; and (3) a discrete-event line highlighting critical engagement events. To accurately capture the hierarchical and modular nature of combat entities, the Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) formalism is adopted, mathematically modeling combat systems as discrete-event hierarchical structures. A distinctive methodological contribution of the proposed DEVS framework is the explicit representation of weapon assignment logic through state transitions, with decision-making times modeled as state transition durations. Additionally, the resource control function is structurally separated within the command and fire control system, enabling efficient parallel responses to multiple threats. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this simulation framework, we conducted a detailed case study involving a composite warfare scenario with one alliance warship confronting 16 enemy platforms. Simulation experiments confirmed that explicitly quantifying timing effects improved participation efficiency by 2% to 7%. This demonstrates the framework's ability to address the limitation of insufficient decision cycle sensitivity analysis in recent CFCS research. Thus, the proposed framework offers valuable insights and practical implications for developing next-generation naval combat systems optimized for composite warfare.