The Operational Route Planner (ORP) is a state-of-the-art anti-submarine warfare (ASW) search-planning tool used to produce rigorous, near-optimal search paths for multiple searchers employing passive and monostatic active sensors, and aircraft equipped with magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) systems.  (ORP also has a limited bistatic search capability.)  ORP generates search plans that are jointly optimized for multiple searchers, with no requirement for the user to guess a good plan, and no reliance on past practice. The search paths generated by ORP are complete and can take account of depth variations.  ORP also has the capability to evaluate the effectiveness of user-defined search paths.  It also has models for target evasive behavior.

ORP’s capabilities, however, continue to expand through additional development. Under a current project, funded by the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), DHWA, in collaboration with  Neptune Sciences, a division of Planning Systems, Inc., is modifying ORP to incorporate bistatic systems, including air-deployed sonobuoys, into the search plan, among other enhancements.

ORP uses a genetic algorithm (GA) to produce an overall, joint search plan for the assets included in the search problem. ORP runs as a standalone program on a Windows PC.  It is strictly a console application, which means it does not have a Graphical User Interface (GUI) (although some versions of ORP have been used within larger mission planning systems that do provide a limited GUI for ORP functions). All communication with (standalone) ORP is done through a file-based interface.