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

Abstract

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) uses the term Communication Navigation Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) for capabilities that allow its aircraft to use civil airspace and air traffic control services. The resulting ability to interoperate with air traffic control systems around the world supports the USAF's global, multi-faceted mission, but entails great expense in on-board equipage and training. It is important to understand the trade-offs that the USAF must make in assessing the value of specific CNS/ATM capabilities. In this paper, we describe a model-driven analysis to assess mission effectiveness. The analysis is accomplished via a five-step process involving military route generation, simulation of the civilian airspace activity, simulation of delay events for military flights, and evaluation of several figures of merit. The software modules used for these activities were a combination of existing packages and some newly-developed programs. The analysis accounts for planned USAF CNS/ATM capabilities by aircraft type, as well as any airspace and operational restrictions that might be encountered in specific geographic regions when the aircraft does not have the required capabilities. Two layers of interactions are investigated: first, within the USAF enterprise, specifically, between the fighter and tankers assets and, second, between the USAF and civilian ATM.