Engineering resilience into the Marine Expeditionary Units resupply system through military foraging

Abstract

This thesis studies the impact of military foraging on the resupply system of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), with a focus on the platoons and squads conducting Distributed Operations. Military foraging is defined as the sanctioned provisioning of resources from the local environment for military use. It is envisioned that the MEU augmented with foraging equipment will be more resilient to disruptions. The consumption and foraging of water and energy by the MEU is modeled as a discrete-event simulation using ExtendSim. The simulation results show that foraging enabled the MEU platoons and squads to 1) operate independently for longer durations but not to the extent of replacing the existing resupply system; 2) possess greater capacity for action at the cost of a trade-off between more resources and less manpower; and 3) become more resilient to disruptions by improving the ability to recover and reducing the susceptibility to disruptions on the resupply system. Sensitivity analysis further reveals that the quantity of the equipment and the amount of time available to forage are the most important factors that contribute to the resilience of the MEU platoons and squads.