Mission Effectiveness and European Airspace: U.S. Air Force CNS/ATM Planning for Future Years

Abstract

This paper describes a model-driven analysis to assess the mission effectiveness of specific Communication Navigation Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) capabilities to support the U.S. Air Force (USAF). Two layers of interactions were investigated: first, within the USAF enterprise, between the Combat Air Forces and the Mobility Air Forces, and second, between the USAF and civilian ATM.The analysis sought to answer the following question: "What is the degradation in mission effectiveness, assuming delays in planned avionics upgrades, in light of current and continuing denial of military-preferred routings and altitudes in civil European airspace?" Two hypothetical scenarios were considered, each with different forward basing of fighters. In each scenario, CNS enabled and CNS not-enabled aircraft were examined for mission effectiveness. Also presented are the effects of missed strike packages on the Air Operations Center (AOC) and on tanker utilization.