Platform Design for Fleet-Level Efficiency: Application for Air Mobility Command (AMC)

Abstract

The approach presented here combines techniques from multidisciplinary design optimization and operations research to improve energy efficiency-related defense acquisition decisions. The work focuses upon the acquisition of new aircraft for the U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command missions. Air Mobility Command is the largest consumer of fuel in the Department of Defense, making this a relevant example application. The approach here builds upon previous efforts that examined fleet-level acquisition decisions for commercial airline-related problems, so the paper describes changes necessary to use the problem decomposition strategy of the previous applications in the context of Air Mobility Command. With many of these changes made, the approach is used to simultaneously select requirements for a new cargo aircraft; predict size, weight, and performance of that new aircraft; and also allocate the new aircraft along with existing aircraft. The fuel efficiency of the resulting fleet provides a metric for comparison. The approach, with the abstractions and assumptions used, successfully provides a description of a new cargo aircraft that impacts fleet-level metrics. Results in this study consider a simplistic three-route network and two larger networks, all informed by actual Air Mobility Command data captured by the Global Air Transportation Execution System.