A robust strategy approach to a strategic mobility problem

In this paper a particular strategic mobility problem, the strategic airlift problem, is investigated with the aims of bringing an interesting and challenging class of problems to the attention of the research community and suggesting a solution procedure as a starting point for future research. The proposed solution procedure has two levels. The first level addresses the decisions of locating aircraft and supplies over the bases. This is done by generating a set of scenarios over a set of possible demand patterns (fronts) in which each front is assigned a probability of occurrence. Origin–destination matrices for each front are based on the supply locations and are used to allocate aircraft over the bases. The second level consists of routing the supplies so as to minimize the maximum operation time over all aircraft. Several heuristic procedures are applied at each level. Over a particular range of occurrence probabilities a dominant strategy is sought by applying a robustness measure and a dominance criterion. The operation of the procedure is illustrated by an application.