Strategic Airlift En Route Analysis and Considerations to Support the Global War on Terrorism

The Global War on Terrorism has mandated the need for additional global en route airfields. En route airfields consist of bases that arestrategically located at intermediate locations between the Continental United States and the intended theater of operations. These airfieldsserve as refueling, crew staging, or maintenance stops for strategic airlift aircraft flying transoceanic routes. The focus of this study is toexamine concepts to meet this need and to address important aspects that should be considered in devising new en route strategies. Based onvarious important factors associated with potential en route airfields, a goal programming methodology was used to develop an Excel basedtool to aid the decision process for selecting the best future en route airfields and potential infrastructure improvements at those airfields.The factors included in this tool consist of 1)the distance from various origins to the en route of interest and the distance from the en route tovarious destinations, 2) the amount of parking capacity available at potential en route airfields, 3) the fuel capability present at these airfieldsto support strategic aircraft flow, 4) diplomatic relations with the en route host countries, 5) airfield distance from coastal seaports, and 6) thenumber of strategic aircraft capable airfields within a predetermined range of the potential en route. Using the developed goal program tool,25 potential en route airfields used to transit to eight global destinations from ten different origins were studied. With the above factorsassessed and examined, conclusions relating to which potential en route airfields would be the most beneficial in fighting the Global War onTerrorism are delineated.