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The shift to a US Air Force structured for expeditionary operations has presented the Air Force with a number of challenges in planning, executing, and support operations involving resources such as munitions, fuel, engines, avionics, and war reserve material. In an expeditionary world, the logistics support processes must be capable of responding to rapidly deployed forces, either by deploying along with the fighting units or by connecting support processes in permanent locations to the remote forces. In this paper, we present a general approach for reshaping logistics processes to meet Air Force expeditionary operational goals. We develop capability-based logistics models consisting of rules and algorithms that compute process timelines and requirements for material, equipment, and personnel. We use both optimization and heuristic techniques to formulate a location–allocation solution that can further refine the process.

Whether user participation in the Management Information Systems MIS development process is beneficial continues to be an uncertain issue. Although proponents claim user participation is important to MIS success, others indicate that user participation can be dysfunctional, thus leading to suboptimal systems that take longer to develop. Nonetheless, very little is written about how to implement and manage participative systems development activities. This paper presents a case study on how participative systems development was implemented and managed in a very large scale MIS project. The discussion points out that while adopting this development approach did lengthen the schedule and increase the costs of the development over original projections, it also led to a series of smooth incremental implementations.

We designed a decision support system (DSS) to help logistics managers assess wartime readiness and to identify resource and policy changes that could improve it. The DSS, known as the weapon system management information system (WSMIS), detects situations where theater wartime sortie capability might be jeopardized and by what resource shortages or logistics processing bottlenecks. The WSMIS is designed to distinguish between planned and actual logistics support capabilities. Typically logistics resources are acquired and functional processing capabilities are developed far in advance of their actual application. As a result, many intervening factors can invalidate those support plans. WSMIS provides users with the capability to revalidate or revise those plans when needed.

This research brief describes how improvements in processes, organization, doctrine, training, and systems can help improve the effective and efficient movement of equipment and personnel in contingency operations.

he U.S. Air Force’s Air and Space Expeditionary Forces (AEF) must be able to rapidly deploy and begin operations anywhere in the world. An important factor in meeting this goal is the ability to store war reserve materiel (WRM) at forward support locations (FSLs) outside the United States and then quickly transport this materiel to where it is needed. WRM includes combat support resources such as base operating equipment, vehicles, and munitions. RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) evaluated strategies for positioning WRM so that it can support a variety of future combat operations at minimal cost (considering construction, storage, and transportation) and maximum speed. PAF’s fi ndings and recommendations follow. A mobility plan should include a combination of airlift , sealift , and land transportation. Using trucks and high-speed sealift may be faster and less expensive than airlift for deployment to some regions. Th is places an emphasis on storage sites that allow for multimodal transport of WRM assets. Certain areas of the world should be considered as possible locations for new combat support bases.

As part of ongoing work to develop an agile combat support (ACS) system for the Air and Space Expeditionary Forces (AEF), RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) developed a set of analytic tools that can be used to evaluate various storage options to meet a given set of operational scenarios.

RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) was asked, as an analytic advisor to the Air Force, to develop an analytic approach to ensure that the Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF) received all potential options and a costs/benefits analysis of each.

Military aircraft maintenance is an area of special concern because of the large amount of facilities, equipment, and personnel needed to keep aircraft operational during a conflict.

The role of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and time-critical targeting in operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom confirmed their utility in US combat operations. However, because of an acquisition strategy intended to field UAVs as quickly as possible, the Air Force did not go through the usual processes of determining system requirements before design and production. These processes typically reveal important information about how to support aircraft systems. Without this information, the requirements for long-term, end-to-end support of UAVs are unclear. In this paper, we present an analysis of support options for current US Air Force UAV systems, including the Global Hawk, Predator, Pointer, Raven, Force Protection Airfield Surveillance System (FPASS), and Battlefield Air Targeting Camera Autonomous Micro-Air Vehicle (BATCAM), as well as, the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV). There is a trade-off between the need to field aircraft quickly and the need to determine logistics requirements. We have developed a new analytical tool, logistics implications capabilities assessment model (LICAM), that could help logisticians examine such trade-offs. LICAM simulates changes in fielding, operations, and support and evaluates how they affect a key operational metric, the ability of the UAVs to cover the target area.

There are many problems in directing the study and analysis of your logistics system. This is especially true when you try to modernise existing logistics facilities for multi‐divisional organisations. Recent US Department of Defense experience has provided lessons to be learned and the authors feel many firms in private industry can profit from this effort.

This paper discusses die importance of cybernetic and human factors engineering control room concepts and their relationship to die design and operation of die Air Force Logistics Command (AFLC) Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) system. This paper is organized in sections which: (1) discuss control room concepts and relate their importance to C3I operations; (2) describe AFLC's current C3I “control room” operations (the AFLC Command Post) and associated problems; and (3) provide a suggested design for the AFLC C3I control room including some information displays.

The purpose of this paper is to show how cybernetic concepts can be used to guide organizational design and development activities. The intent of the paper is to demonstrate how a cybernetic model of a viable organization can be used to diagnose potential problems in existing organizations and serve to guide organizational development activities, For illustrative purposes, a case study of the Air Force Logistics Command (AFLC) is used to demonstrate how the cybernetic organizational model can be made operational in the “real world.” The paper is designed to show how this methodology can be used as a road map for integrating and guiding several initiatives which are underway to make AFLC more responsive in meeting potential wartime scenarios. This paper is organized in sections which: (1) describe AFLC mission responsibilities and organization; (2) identify current major problems; (3) describe and use a cybernetic organizational model to diagnose causes of current problems; and (4) develop some ob...

A cybernetic conceptual framework for the Meaningful Measures of Merit (M3) program as it is proposed for Air Force Logistics command (AFLC) is discussed.

Incremental MIS design and development methodologies have received limited attention in the MIS literature. This paper describes incremental methodologies appropriate for very large scale MIS developments which can cost millions of dollars and take years to develop. This paper describes a "resource constrained" implementation planning process designed to control both the costs of incremental projects and the functional evolution of the system. The paper also discusses how the process was used in a very large scale system development.

Developing flexible databases that can accommodate the changes and enhancements necessary in development of large scale Management Information Systems (MIS) is crucial to the success of the system and ultimately to the survival of the organization. Since the MIS is constantly being modified and enhanced, it is necessary for the database to be designed to adapt to change as it occurs. Numerous articles point to the need for large scale systems decomposition into smaller subsystems for implementation purposes. They also require an incremental development strategy which coincides with the database evolutionary strategy. This paper describes a methodology for large scale database development that assists MIS managers in building databases for large scale systems. It describes how these concepts were used for implementation of the US Air Force's largest distributed processing MIS—“The Requirements Data Bank” (RDB).

To a large extent, the success or failure of a consulting effort lies in the consultant's handling of the interaction between himself and the staff of the organization he is serving. The consultant...