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Faced with the challenge of deterring and defeating aggression by the kinds of highly capable adversaries highlighted in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) is exploring alternative weapon systems and concepts of employment that will allow it to generate combat power without being harnessed to air bases and runways that adversaries may view as high-value targets. In this report, the authors examine the logistics and sustainment aspects of an emerging operational concept for employing a family of unmanned aerial vehicles that can be launched, recovered, and sustained with minimal reliance on runways, thereby improving operational resiliency in the face of adversary targeting of runways. The authors find that this class of weapon system—called affordable runway-independent unmanned aerial vehicles (ARIUAV)—can conduct high-volume combat operations with lower resource requirements than traditional platforms. The authors identify options for reducing the logistics and support "footprint" associated with ARIUAV operations by using nontraditional support concepts and incorporating design changes that enable reduced support requirements.

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"This report examines several issues associated with the cost-per-flying-hour (CPFH) metric used in the Department of Defense (DoD). CPFH is calculated as the ratio of an aircraft fleet's operating-and-support (O&S) costs divided by its flying hours. Subsets of an aircraft fleet's total annual O&S cost are budgeted in DoD for the flying-hour program used to achieve and maintain flight-crew proficiency and used to calculate hourly rates when DoD aircraft are flown on a reimbursable basis. In addition, other aggregations of costs are used to calculate CPFH and compare O&S costs of different aircraft for various other reasons, including informing decisions on aircraft acquisition and force structure. This report examines usages of CPFH in DoD, including its use to compare O&S costs of different aircraft. The report recommends a definition of CPFH to be used when comparing aircraft and recommends several ways the cost and usage data should be normalized. The report also recommends a cost-per-aircraft metric (where primary aircraft inventory [PAI] is used for the number of aircraft) as an alternative metric for comparing the O&S costs of aircraft."--Page 4 of printed paper wrapper.

Airplanes, Military --- Cost of operation --- Evaluation. --- Maintenance and repair. --- United States. --- Aviation supplies and stores --- Costs.