Analysis of Connector Usage to Support Amphibious Operations

NPS NRP Executive SummaryReport Type: Final ReportProject Summary: During an amphibious operation, transporting Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) resources from ship to shore is a burdensome endeavor full of risks and complexity. Current scheduling techniques are arduous and time consuming, resulting in inefficiencies in the transition of resources from sea to land. Planners need an effective tool to limit these inefficiencies in an effort to expedite and prioritize the movement of supplies. In 2017, Major Robert Christafore developed the MACS tool to optimize the delivery of bulk fuel to forces ashore. This project generalizes the models and algorithms underpinning MACS in two major ways. First, we maintain our focus on delivery of one class of supplies (nominally bulk fuel) and extend the MEU Amphibious Connector Scheduler (MACS) model to encompass multiple objectives, weather implications, and reliability considerations. These additions greatly enhance the MACS’s ability to account for real world situations. Second, we generalize MACS to multiple commodities. This extension provides amphibious planners with a flexible and versatile planning instrument, which is much more operationally relevant compared to the one-commodity variant. The primary model is a temporal network flow model that generates the number of round trips from the seabase to the shore of various configurations of delivery vehicles. We develop a mixed integer linear program and a linear program approximation to solve this model. Our approach generates several different schedules, which allows the decision maker to tailor the schedule to mission-specific requirements. Through our analysis of complex notional scenarios and a historical case study, we demonstrate the potential of the updated MACS as an amphibious planning tool of the future.Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy OfficeNPS-18-M303-AApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited