Rapid Airlift Planning for Amphibious-Ready Groups
Abstract
An Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) consists of ships capable of conducting flight operations that routinely require the transport of personnel and cargo (PMC) to remain operationally viable. Planning PMC transport for an ARG and nearby airfields is labor intensive and often results in the inefficient use of rotary wing and tilt rotor aircraft. Personal experience shows that: (1) only a limited number of aircraft routes are explored; (2) operating costs are not explicitly considered; and (3) PMC plans may take up to 12 hours to create. This thesis develops and implements the PMC Route Optimizing Program (PROP), an optimization based decision support system. PROP output prescriptions provide aircraft takeoff and landing times, routes, and transported PMC -- everything required for planning PMC missions. We demonstrate PROP using 18 realistic test cases with up to four aircraft, five pickup and delivery locations, and up to 500 PMC requests. All test cases solve in less than one hour.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2015
- Accession Number
- AD1008957
Entities
People
- Travis A. Hartman
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School