全球智库信息集成服务系统

Air Force Installations in the Continental United States Have Generally Similar Architectures

• A local commercial electrical utility generally supplies power to the entire installation. While there may be more than one power distribution line into a base, which provides some redundancy, only personnel from the commercial utility can typically switch power from one line to the other.
• While generators and other supplies may provide backup power for critical missions, access to fuel for generators is a key component of resilience capabilities. Scenarios that combine outages with constrained fuel delivery and/or reduced access to off-base personnel and parts can severely disrupt missions.
• Resilience capacities are often determined within individual organizational silos, not developed in the context of whole-base resources. This limits opportunities to develop efficient or novel solutions and limits visibility into dependence on single points of failure.

It Is Important to Define and Communicate Requirements

• Requirements (e.g., acceptable mission downtime) are often poorly defined or not communicated by mission owners in a timely fashion to the base civil engineer. Even when requirements are specified, their technical basis and connection to mission goals are not always clear.

Bases Are More Likely to Have Effective Responses in Place for Common Events than for Less-Familiar Ones

• The effects of exposure to different power-disruption scenarios on base capabilities are currently not systematically assessed. As expected, base personnel are typically well aware of the consequences events on base capabilities that have previously taken place and are ready to take necessary actions to cope.