As part of a continuing project on aging aircraft and the replacement-or-repair decision, the authors develop a parsimonious model of the decision and apply it to the U.S. Air Force's C-21A transport and KC-135 tanker aircraft. They find that, for the C-21A, it probably would be appropriate to undertake a 20,000 flight hour system and component replacement schedule-prescribed renovation in the 2012 timeframe, but the aircraft should be retired around 2020.

As part of a continuing project on aging aircraft and the replacement-or-repair decision, the authors develop a parsimonious model of the decision and apply it to the U.S. Air Force's C-21A transport and KC-135 tanker aircraft. They find that, for the C-21A, it probably would be appropriate to undertake a 20,000 flight hour system and component replacement schedule-prescribed renovation in the 2012 timeframe, but the aircraft should be retired around 2020. For the KC-135 tanker, it would be optimal to replace the KC-135 before the end of the decade

The U.S. Air Force is grappling with the challenge of aging fleets and the optimal time to replace them. This monograph examines commercial aviation data to draw inferences about aging aircraft that may be relevant to the Air Force. It focuses on "aging effects"-i.e., how aircraft maintenance costs change as aircraft grow older. Although commercial aircraft clearly differ from military aircraft, the aging-effect estimates might help the Air Force to project changing maintenance costs over time.

The average age of aircraft in the U.S. Air Force is 22, making aging an increasing concern. The Air Force program responsible for maintaining the structural safety of its aircraft faces challenges, however, such as budgetary pressures, regulations, and communication issues. The authors sought insights on these issues by comparing similar programs in other services. Their observations suggest the value of clear policies, independent assessments, standard metrics, and open and clear communication.

Innovations in the area of Defence Support Systems are multi-disciplinary, cover a broad range of technologies, and could not possibly be covered within a single volume. This research book presents a sample of research as below: • On the Transition of Innovation and Technology in Defence • Inserting Innovations In-service • Classification of Battlefield Ground Vehicles based on the Acoustic Emissions • Convoy Movement Problem – An Optimization Perspective • Machine Vision Algorithms for Autonomous Aerial Refueling for UAVs using the USAF Refueling Boom Method • Motion Optimization Scheme for Cooperative Mobile Robots • An Automated Decision System for Landmine Detection and Classification The book is directed to the application engineers, research students, professors, decision makers and scientists & engineers working in defence and related areas.

This monograph describes a model for evaluating the combined capacity of organic (U.S. Air Force owned and operated) and contractor maintenance assets to meet aircraft programmed depot maintenance (PDM) workloads. The PDM Capacity Assessment Tool (PDMCAT) forecasts the average number of aircraft that will be in PDM status each year over several decades, based on the initial number of aircraft in PDM status, the physical capacity of the facility or facilities (number of docks available for conducting PDM work), the PDM induction policy (the period allowed between the completion of one PDM and the start of the next), and the minimum hands-on flow time (the minimum time it would take a facility to complete a PDM if only one aircraft were in PDM status). While not directly part of the model, the derived induction data can be used to estimate both near- and long-term obligation authority requirements for different induction policies, labor rates, and workload forecasts. To illustrate the model's operations and capabilities, we applied the model to evaluate the U.S. Air Force's current capacity for supporting KC-135 PDM and examined several options for improving both near- and long-term availability. In the process, we discovered that, while future annual fleet costs increase and availability decreases with age and workload, they do so rather less rapidly because the aircraft induction rates (the number of aircraft inducted each year) decrease as the PDM flow time increases. This leads to a less-drastic cost and availability forecast than usual.

Part of a larger RAND Project Air Force study on capability-based programming, this report introduces a revealed preference methodology to estimate the value to the United States Air Force of expediting F-15 fighter jet programmed depot maintenance (PDM). Such a valuation estimate would be useful in depot-level cost-benefit analysis. The authors rely on the fact that the Air Force has chosen to pay for intermittent PDM on F-15s to assert that F-15s must have enough value after PDM visits to justify PDM costs. Air Force expenditure data suggest that a typical fiscal year 2005 PDM visit cost about $3.2 million. Using the aircraft valuation curves consistent with PDM being worthwhile, the authors find that expediting an F-15's last PDM visit by a month must be worth at least $60,000. However, using a plausible annual aircraft valuation decline rate, they find that expediting an old F-15's last PDM visit by a month would be worth around $75,000, while expediting a new F-15's first PDM visit by a month would be worth more than $180,000. This report also explores various robustness enhancements. Consideration of aging aircraft issues, for instance, tends to increase the estimated value of expedited PDM.

Includes publications previously listed in the supplements to the Index of selected publications of the Rand Corporation (Oct. 1962-Feb. 1963).

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Damage Assessment of Structures (DAMAS 2007), Torino, Italy, 25th to 27th June 2007