It is important to predict and measure the combat effectiveness (CE) of weapons system in battlefield for acquiring efficient weapon system. Moreover, quantitative calculation of weapon effectiveness under complicated and uncertain battlefield environment is also difficult based on the future network centric warfare. Many papers used the term of combat effectiveness and tried to study a lot of related issues about it. However, there is no paper dealing with the classification of study issue about CE and what will happen in this study field. In this paper, we proposed how to classify the study issue about CE and forecast future direction of this study field. Conceptually, CE is nothing but the assessment results to measure the ability of a military weapon system to accomplish its objective. We believe that it is an appropriate time to review the literature extensively on CE analysis because the research interests and the papers of CE are rapidly growing in these days. This paper reviewed many CE analysis papers, classified them according to their research content and the research methodology applied. Additionally, a comprehensive list of future research areas is also given.