Rescuing Downed Aircrews: the Value of Time

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Rescuing Downed Aircrews: the Value of Time Research Report Rescuing Downed Aircrews The Value of Time Christopher A. Mouton, Jia Xu, Endy M. Daehner, Hirokazu Miyake, Clarence R. Anderegg, Julia Pollak, David T. Orletsky, Jerry M. Sollinger C O R P O R A T I O N For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR1106 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955037 ISBN: 978-0-8330-9096-6 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2015 RAND Corporation R® is a registered trademark. Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Preface Recovering downed airmen is a critical task for the U.S. Air Force, which devotes considerable resources—including personnel, equipment, and training—to ensure that it can carry out this task. In light of the impending drawdown of forces and the pressure to reduce defense budgets, the Air Force has been reassessing its personnel recovery (PR) force structure, along with other organizational aspects. It asked RAND Project AIR FORCE to assist in this reassessment with an examination of the operational risk associated with Air Force PR. Specifically, the Air Force sought “to refine the metric used to assess PR’s operational risk, [which] is the degree of likelihood of mission success.” To this end, the research described here quantifies the “rescuability window” of downed aircrews. The current research quantifies the relationship between rescuability and time so that the most cost-effective options for increasing the rescuability of downed personnel can be pursued. The implications of the findings are also summarized in this report. The research reported here was sponsored by Maj Gen Scott Zobrist, Director of Plans, Programs, and Requirements, Headquarters Air Combat Command, and Brig Gen Jeffrey Taliaferro, Deputy Director, Plans and Programs, Directorate of Plans, Programs and Requirements, Headquarters Air Combat Command, and conducted within the Force Modernization and Employment program of RAND Project AIR FORCE as part of a fiscal year 2014 project called “Measuring Personnel Recovery Operational Risk.” RAND Project AIR FORCE RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF), a division of the RAND Corporation, is the U.S. Air Force’s federally funded research and development center for studies and analyses. PAF provides the Air Force with independent analyses of policy alternatives affecting the development, employment, combat readiness, and support of current and future air, space, and cyber forces. Research is conducted in four programs: Force Modernization and Employment; Manpower, Personnel, and Training; Resource Management; and Strategy and Doctrine. The research reported here was prepared under contract FA7014-06-C-0001. Additional information about PAF is available on our website: http://www.rand.org/paf iii (This page is intentionally blank.) iv Contents Preface ............................................................................................................................................ iii Figures........................................................................................................................................... vii Tables ............................................................................................................................................. ix Summary ........................................................................................................................................ xi Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................... xvii Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................... xix 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Background ........................................................................................................................................... 1 Purpose .................................................................................................................................................. 2 Past Personnel Recovery Analyses ....................................................................................................... 3 Current Analysis Approach ................................................................................................................... 4 How the Report Is Organized ................................................................................................................ 5 2. Personnel Recovery Data from Past and Present Conflicts ........................................................ 7 The Vietnam War .................................................................................................................................. 8 Operation Desert Storm ....................................................................................................................... 14 Operation Deny Flight and Operation Allied Force ............................................................................ 16 Operation Enduring Freedom .............................................................................................................. 17 Operation Iraqi Freedom ..................................................................................................................... 19 Operation Odyssey Dawn .................................................................................................................... 20 Summary of Events ............................................................................................................................. 20 3. Approach and Methods to Assess the Value of Time ............................................................... 23 Rescuability Window .......................................................................................................................... 24 Utilizing the Value of Time ................................................................................................................ 26 Deriving the Rescuability Window ..................................................................................................... 27 The Survival Function and Data Censoring ........................................................................................ 28 The Parametric Rescuability Function ................................................................................................ 31 Regression Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 32 4. Rescuability Curves by Conflict ............................................................................................... 35 5. Rescuability Curves as Functions of Predictors ........................................................................ 39 Predictors for Rescuability .................................................................................................................. 39 Semiparametric Models Assuming Proportional Hazards .................................................................. 43 Semiparametric Models Allowing for Nonproportional Hazards ....................................................... 45 Parametric Models ............................................................................................................................... 46 6. Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 49 Findings ............................................................................................................................................... 49 Recommendations ............................................................................................................................... 51 A. Immersion Survival Data ......................................................................................................... 53 v B. Definition of Factors Recorded for Isolation Events ............................................................... 57 C. Short Description of Each Recorded Event .............................................................................. 61 References ..................................................................................................................................... 79 vi Figures Figure S.1. Rescuability Curve of All Operations .......................................................................
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