Coast Guard Aviation & the Assignment Problem: An Auction Model to Allocate the Future 'All-Jayhawk' Fleet

Abstract

As the US Coast Guard (CG) prepares to transition from a mixed rotary wing fleet of MH-65 Dolphins and MH-60 Jayhawks to an ‘All-Jayhawk’ fleet, an opportunity is presented to seek an optimized set of aircraft assignments, prior to making capital facilities investments. Through more optimized assignments, the CG can achieve better mission value at cost. The objective of this thesis is to build a model to aid the CG in making rotary wing aircraft basing and satellite unit organizational decisions as it transitions to an ‘All Jayhawk’ fleet of 127 aircraft, by building a model that can tradeoff between geographic coverage and cost. The decision to assign Jayhawks to different aviation locations will be assessed under the auspices of the ‘Assignment Problem,’ the combinatorial optimization problem of assigning two sets of elements to each other, while seeking optimization for greater metrics. Optimization will be sought with an auction technique, one solution to the Assignment Problem.

This thesis will begin with a historical review of the CG’s rotary wing fleet and aviation facilities since the CG first created an aviation program in 1916. This review will showcase trends and possible correlation between increasing rotary wing aircraft ranges, reductions in full-service Air Stations, and growth in satellite aviation facilities used to forward deploy aircraft. This thesis will then break down these different Aviation Support Constructs by Architectural Decisions and model them with Design Structure Matrices to better understand differences and cost drivers. The Architectural Decisions will be used to build a model that estimates the total cost of the Jayhawk fleet’s global assignment to any mix of 39 locations under four Support Constructs. Ten years of CG mission data and aircraft capability range rings will be overlaid in GIS software, to visualize and quantify where CG missions are required, and which air stations are most valuable. Six Assignment Problem Auctions will then be conducted with differing objective criteria to seek a best identifiable set of global assignments for the Jayhawk fleet, with metrics including mission coverage percent and the Net Present Value cost of the assignment set over the fleet’s lifespan.

This analysis and the six auctions will show the relationship between geographic mission coverage and costs and will suggest a Pareto front to showcase a short list of sets of global Jayhawk assignments for consideration by the CG. Auction B will be performed with the objective criteria to seek the lowest cost set of fleet assignments while still achieving the threshold mission coverage rate. Auction B’s result will be proposed as the best-identifiable result, achieving the baseline mission coverage percent with only 14 aviation locations, 25 fewer than the status quo, and 36% less expensive than the CG’s notional plan. Following demonstration of this technique, it will be proposed for use by the CG, to be adapted with refined objective criteria, to seek an optimal set of global assignments for the future All-Jayhawk fleet.