Commercial intratheater airlift2013

Intratheater airlift delivers critical and time-sensitive supplies, such as blood products for transfusions or repair parts for vehicles, to deployed forces. Traditionally, military aircraft have provided this airlift. However, for various reasons, in recent years a number of commercial carriers have provided a significant amount of airlift within U.S. Central Command. But was this more cost-effective than using organic U.S. Air Force aircraft? To explore this question, the authors collected historical (2009) U.S. Central Command data and created models to identify the most cost-effective combination of commercial and organic airlift to perform the required movements. The calculations needed to address differences in fixed and marginal costs across alternatives as well as the effects of price elasticities of demand for commercial airlift providers. Model optimization runs showed a preference for U.S. Air Force-organic aircraft but suggested that commercial alternatives should be retained to supplement Air Force aircraft for a small fraction of movements. The authors further observed that U.S. Central Command planners could have benefitted from more sophisticated decision support tools to make daily intratheater cargo-aircraft allocation decisions.