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Faced with a renewed emphasis on a near-peer fight, and after decades of post–Cold War military operations that barely threatened combat support, the United States is refocusing its attention on the stresses presented by a high-end fight, specifically moving the location of the ground support for air operations to a secure positional advantage against an adversary, referred to in this report as maneuver, and operations while under persistent multi-domain attack. In this report, the authors propose robust and resilient concepts for combat support command and control under this situation. The main challenges they address are the U.S. Air Force's ability to maneuver its ground posture in response to adversary threats and ability to maintain an acceptable level of combat support when communications capabilities are degraded or denied. The discussion and recommendations in this report encompass an enterprisewide scope (not catered to specific geographic combatant commands) but are sensitive to the unique circumstances of each theater. Within the range of combat support, the authors concentrate on issues of fueling and arming aircraft, and maintenance and civil engineering support. Solutions focus on the near-term time horizon for supporting the current force structure, not potential next-generation weapon systems or novel concepts of operations. This near-term focus does not preclude prudently rethinking maintenance and civil engineering requirements for future combat systems and supporting equipment where appropriate.

Command and control systems --- United States. --- Combat sustainability.

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Operations in Serbia in 1999 revealed issues with combat support execution planning and control. RAND Project Air Force (PAF) analyzed the then-current operation architecture and developed a future ("TO-BE") architecture. As part of this continuing effort, PAF and Air Force personnel formed an assessment team to observe two command post exercises, Terminal Fury 2004 and Austere Challenge 2004, that offered an operational environment in which to evaluate Air Force progress in implementing the TO-BE. The exercises highlighted opportunities in three areas--organizational structure, systems and tools, and training and education--in which continuing implementation of the TO-BE architecture should improve productivity and enhance decisionmaking.

Command and control systems --- Military planning --- United States. --- Maneuvers.

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Because adversaries have developed capabilities that may restrict or deny U.S. forces' access to a given area, the operational environment of the future may be different from the environment that the U.S. military has been accustomed to over the past 30 years. Prepositioning select war reserve materiel (WRM) may help mitigate vulnerabilities associated with operating in a contested, degraded, or operationally limited environment. In this report, RAND researchers evaluate management approaches and global prepositioning strategies for WRM postures in such environments. They describe conditions under which global management practices are advantageous and then propose methods that a global manager of WRM could employ to improve support of air component operational warfighting demands. Specifically, the authors demonstrate ways to standardize and validate determination processes for WRM requirements, establish a WRM prioritization schema, relate WRM priority to positioning postures, analyze trade-offs through modeling, and assess partner-nation risk.

Military supplies --- Operational readiness (Military science) --- Transportation --- Evaluation. --- United States. --- États-Unis.

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"While combat support communities are not responsible for defending cyber networks, they are required to ensure mission execution, including when under cyber attack. Assessing mission assurance for combat support when under a cyber attack is challenging. The fact that many combat support systems do not reside on the most secure networks indicates potential vulnerabilities to cyber attack. Yet the sheer number of information systems that can be attacked, the range of vulnerabilities that these might have, the large number of combat support functions they support, and the complicated connections all of these have to operational missions makes assessments difficult. Add to this the evolving nature of the threats and vulnerabilities in cyberspace, and the task of finding adequate mitigation plans for all possibilities is formidable. RAND researchers developed a tool that presents a sequential process for identifying those functions and information systems most likely to be problematic for the operational mission during cyber attacks"--Publisher's web site.

Cyberspace operations (Military science) --- Cyberterrorism --- Risk assessment --- Prevention. --- United States. --- Combat sustainability.

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An analysis of combat support experiences associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) that compares these experiences with those associated with Joint Task Force Noble Anvil (JTF NA), the U.S. component of Operation Allied Force, in Serbia, and the first 100 days of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), in Afghanistan.

Iraq War, 2003-2011 --- Airlift, Military --- Deployment (Strategy) --- United States. --- Supplies and stores. --- Airlift, Military.