Supporting Expeditionary Forces

The goal of the Expeditionary Aerospace Force (EAF) concept is to rely on rapidly deployable, immediately employable, highly effective and flexible air and space packages to flexibly serve the strategic role that a permanent forward presence formerly played in deterring and quickly responding to aggression. Building on earlier analyses that framed a range of general EAF support concepts, this report assesses how well alternative logistics processes and organizational designs for meeting F-15 avionics maintenance demands across the spectrum of EAF operations support this concept. The alternatives range from the current decentralized organization associated with the policy of deploying intermediate-maintenance capabilities with the flying units to consolidated, nondeploying structures. The authors find that consolidating F-15 avionics intermediate maintenance and supporting operations from regional support bases would be more conducive to achieving the EAF goal than the current structure, offering the potential to quickly respond to rapidly changing situations, reduce deployment airlift requirements, and ease the stress that frequent and unpredictable deployments place on maintenance personnel. These benefits would come at the expense of greater reliance on intratheater distribution.