Optimizing Marine Corps Maintenance Personnel Conversion To The Joint Strike Fighter

摘要

The United States Marine Corps (USMC) is replacing its fixed wing fighter and attack aircraft with the new F-35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The Marines F-35B will replace three aging aircraft F/A-18 A+/C/D Hornet, AV-8B Harrier, and EA-6B Prowler. With the retirement of these aircraft, their associated military occupational specialties will become obsolete. The F-35B is an expensive asset, and once it is delivered the USMC wants it to be immediately operational. One of the challenges is how to prescribe the right types of maintenance personnel for accession and conversion to the JSF community as it gets established, while maintaining adequate quantities of experienced personnel in the legacy communities. This thesis develops an Integer Linear Program (ILP) that prescribes the number of maintenance personnel for monthly transition and accession into the new JSF community. The ILP reveals possible shortage or overfill of manning for each new squadron, taking into consideration the rank and years of service of available personnel for each month of an 11-year planning horizon. Using realistic data, we demonstrate the use of the ILP under different levels of accession and allowed transition for four types of maintenance personnel.