MC80: Quantifying the Effect of Fleet Health on Sortie Execution in the F-16 Fleet
Abstract
By order of the Secretary of Defense, all of the US Air Force's F-16 units were tasked to improve their fleet health to a Mission Capability (MC) rate of 80 percent, as part of a Department of Defense-wide push to make its Critical Aviation Platforms, and the units that employ them, more ready and lethal. This study uses historical fleet health and sortie execution data captured from LIMS-EV to create a multiple regression model that quantifies the value of increased fleet health, defined as either MC rate or Aircraft Availability (AA) rate, in terms of increasing sortie output. It also uses forecasted near future sortie demand to assess the utility of the 80 percent MC rate standard in terms of achieving desired sortie execution levels. This research concludes that both AA rate and MC rate correlate with increased aircraft utilization, and that an increase in either fleet health metric correlates to an increased annual utilization of roughly 5 sorties per aircraft. It also identifies AA rate as a more significant input to sortie execution than MC rate is, and suggests that an AA rate standard of 71 percent is most appropriate for achieving the aircraft utilization levels needed to satisfy requirements.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2020
- Accession Number
- AD1101490
Entities
People
- Kyle R. Gladney
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology