Identifying influential factors related to basing air refueling aircraft during wartime employment operations

Purpose Air refueling (AR) extends the range or loiter time of military fighter, bomber and other aircraft during wartime operations. This research aims to study factors related to basing decisions for AR, or tanker, aircraft during wartime employment operations. Design/methodology/approach We construct a mixed-integer program to minimize the number of tankers required to meet receiver aircraft demands, subject to various operational constraints. These constraints capture macro- and micro-level factors suspected of influencing tanker-basing decisions. The significance of these variables is determined via an empirical analysis using experimental designs and regression analyses. Findings This research quantifies the relative importance of several operational factors related to basing tanker aircraft. Empirical tests and robust sensitivity analyses using real-world scenario data confirm the importance of the suspected macro- and micro-level factors. Research limitations/implications This work includes several limiting assumptions to reduce problem complexity. Future researchers are encouraged to improve solution fidelity by incorporating additional operational factors affecting tanker-basing decisions. Practical implications The empirical analysis results provide important new insights about tanker basing decisions for analysts at the United States Transportation Command. Originality/value Prior to this research, tanker analysts at the United States Transportation Command lacked a detailed understanding of the most influential operational factors with respect to basing tanker aircraft. This research fills this knowledge gap by identifying the relative importance of three macro-level (fuel load, flight time and receiver demand) and three micro-level (ramp space, runway length and temperature) factors related to tanker basing decisions.