Optimal allocation of air services to the U.S. Pacific Surface Forces

Abstract

Two integer programming models, called FLIGHT-HOURS I and II (or FR-I and FR-II), are developed to assist U.S. Pacific Fleet Air Services Planners in the allocation of air services to support basic and intermediate ship training requirements. Air services consist of aircraft towing air targets, radiating electronic signals, simulating cruise missile flight profiles, and following shipboard directions. FR-I maximizes the weighted average of fleet readiness discretely to mimic the Navy's mission rating scaling while FR-II does so continuously, reflecting percent of training requirements completed. FR-I executes slowly and produces allocations unsuitable for real-world execution. FR-II, however, quickly solves the air services allocation problem on a desktop computer, and achieves significantly higher readiness than a manually prepared allocation plan (72.1% of training requirements completed versus 61.8%).