Combining and Analyzing the Tanker and Aircrew Scheduling Heuristics

Air refueling is an integral part of U.S. air power across a wide range of military operations. It is an essential capability in the conduct of air operations worldwide and is especially important when overseas basing is limited or not available. The planning, tasking, and scheduling of aerial refueling require solution of two major problems: assigning and scheduling of tankers to refueling points and efficiently assigning crews to each tanker. To address the scheduling of tankers, Wiley (2001) developed an efficient tabu search approach. Combs (2002) developed another tabu search approach to assign crews to tankers. This research combines the two scheduling heuristics so that the tanker schedules generated by the tanker scheduling heuristic can feed the crew scheduling heuristic.