Identification of Preferred Operational Plan Force Mixes Using a Multiobjective Methodology to Optimize Resource Suitability and Lift Cost

AFIT research in support of the Advanced Logistics Project is directed at developing a Mission-Resource Value Assessment Tool for rationally assigning relative value to resources and identifying alternative force mixes to logistics and operational planners. Research of factors that affect force mix composition has been strictly limited to how the operating environment of USAF combat aircraft influences their performance in specified aerospace missions. In contrast, this research makes use of an aircraft's designed suitability to perform specified aerospace missions in order to examine the tradeoff between mission suitability and the amount of lift needed to deploy and operate the asset. An Evolutionary approach was applied to a tri-objective constrained optimization problem with 15 decision variables with the goal of producing five Pareto optimal sets of force mixes corresponding to five progressively larger sortie capability levels.