Two-stage stochastic programming model of US Army aviation allocation of utility helicopters to task forces

Abstract

US Army aviation units often organize into task forces to meet mission requirements. The manner in which they allocate assets affects their long-term capabilities to provide aviation support. We propose a model to allocate utility helicopters across geographically separated task forces to minimize the total time of flight and unsupported air movement air mission requests (AMRs) by priority level. We model the allocation problem with a two-stage stochastic program, with the first-stage problem allocating a fleet’s helicopter teams to task forces. The stochastic demand for each task force is then revealed. The second-stage US Army aviation air movement operations planning problem is modeled as a stochastic mixed integer linear program (MILP). A practical application uses the air movement operations planning heuristic to solve the second-stage problem at scale and generate an optimal stochastic solution task force allocation. This paper provides evidence for the practical use of the proposed two-stage stochastic programming model for US Army aviation asset allocation by military decision-makers. Furthermore, this research provides a novel first formulation of a stochastic programming dial-a-ride problem with multinode refuel and a sound framework for military aviation asset allocation decision-making.