A method for generating plans against ballistic missiles begins with the locations of regions from which missiles may be launched and identifies regions to be defended. The available sensor and engagement assets, their capabilities and possible locations are identified. At least some of the assets have sensor and engagement capabilities independent those of other assets. Initial potential plans are binary encoded, and applied to a genetic algorithm for producing a population of genetically modified solutions. These modified solutions are decoded and evaluated for fitness. The fitness evaluations are iteratively reapplied to the genetic algorithm to ultimately produce improved plans. The improved plans are decoded and finally evaluated for fitness and application. This process continues for a fixed number of iterations, at the end of which the best solution is presented as the plan best fit to achieve a valid defense against the BMD threats.