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Shortfalls in the USAF's capacity to meet potential future force demands.

• In each of the four possible futures examined, the 2017 USAF force was unable to meet the demands for all types of aircraft. For example, in the two cold war futures, the USAF can meet the projected demand for fighter aircraft but not for bomber or airlift aircraft.

• No class of aircraft performed well in all four of the examined futures. Fighter aircraft came closest, and C3ISR/BM (command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance/battle management) platforms had the biggest shortfalls, reflecting their small fleets and high demand.
• Operations that last more than a year place great demands on force structure. In analytical excursions in which contingencies were limited to no more than one year in duration, there were large improvements in the percentage of contingency demands met.
• Aircraft availability shortfalls cannot easily be corrected through changes to deploy-to-dwell policies and policies that set a maximum deployment length.

The U.S. military has mostly operated at a high operational tempo since the end of the Cold War, and there appears to be no significant reduction in demand on the horizon. However, the U.S. military has few analytical tools for identifying the force requirements associated with ongoing operations, and there are no systematic efforts within the Department of Defense to collect data on the nature of operational demands over time. This report is intended to help address this imbalance.

Drawing on a dataset of U.S. military operations since 1946, the authors quantify historical demands placed on the U.S. Air Force (USAF). They then use this historical evidence to estimate demands on the USAF flying force in four possible futures: two futures in which the United States enters a new cold war with Russia or China; one in which United States renews peace enforcement commitments like those between 1990 and 2000; and one in which U.S. military operations are dominated by global counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, as they have been since 2001.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  An Overview of Joint Operations: 1946–2016

• Chapter Three

  Analytical Approach

• Chapter Four

  Force Structure Implications of Alternative Futures

• Chapter Five

  Findings and Recommendations

• Appendix A

  Air Force Future Environment Scheduling Simulation (AF-FESS) Model Description

• Appendix B

  Notes on the Joint Operations Dataset, 1946–2016

• Appendix C

  Prolonged Joint Operations, 1946–2016

• Appendix D

  Joint Operations Chronology, 1946–2016

• Appendix E

  Force Packages Used in AF-FESS

• Appendix F

  MDS-Level Simulation Results

• Appendix G

  Estimating a Vietnam War–Level Demand on the USAF FY17 Force