Estimating Air Force Deployment Requirements for Lean Force Packages: A Methodology and Decision Support Tool Prototype
Abstract
The Air Force has been grappling for several years with how to survive and fight in contested, degraded, and operationally limited (CDO) environments, and one of its recent innovations has been the advancement of basing concepts that require significant resilience and mobility of combat forces. These concepts are still under development, and the need for mobility and agility places pressure on planners to reduce the military footprint and potentially take significant risks in the interest of speed. The Air Force does not currently have a comprehensive tool or methodology for integrated deployment planning that can rapidly explore trade-offs among capability (or risk), speed, and cost to achieve lean force packages for use in CDO environments. The purpose of this analysis is to describe and demonstrate a methodology and prototype tool for lean force package planning and analysis - called the Lean Strategic Tool for the Analysis of Required Transportation (Lean-START) - that does just that. Lean-START, an Excel-based spreadsheet model, determines the list of equipment and personnel required to support a user-specified operation, along with the movement characteristics of the materiel for a wide range of support areas. It acts as both a demand generator of the manpower and materiel needed at an expeditionary base to achieve initial operating capability, and also an iterative planning environment to inform course of action and concept development.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1085567
Entities
People
- James A. Leftwich
- Jason Mastbaum
- Kristin Van Abel
- Patrick Mills
Organizations
- RAND Corporation