Other Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

War, Wounds, And Strategy: Patient Movement Lessons From The World Wars For Great Power Competition, Phillip R. Jenkins

Faculty Publications

This thesis examines the evolution of the U.S. military's patient movement system during World War I and World War II to evaluate how well it may perform under the conditions of future large-scale combat operations. It asks whether the United States can move, treat, and sustain wounded personnel at the scale and pace required to preserve combat power in a prolonged, high-intensity conflict. Using detailed case studies of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge, the analysis focuses on how transportation platforms, organizational structure, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) shaped patient movement under conditions of attrition, disruption, and …

Impact Of Stochastic Travel Times On The Military Port Selection Problem: A Stochastic Programming Approach, William M. Titus

Theses and Dissertations

This research models and analyzes the impact of stochastic travel times on port selection during a large-scale mobilization of equipment from continental United States installations to deployment locations using sealift ships. A stochastic mixed-integer programming model is developed to minimize the average arrival time of equipment into theater. The model is solved using Sample Average Approximation. In the first stage, the model selects ports to open and assigns installations, equipment, and ships to open ports. In the second stage, travel times are realized, and equipment is assigned to specific ships that are scheduled to depart. Results show that the marginal …

Spatiotemporal Prediction Of Atmospheric Events Through Recurrent Deep Learning Model, Brian W. F. Popick

Theses and Dissertations

The main contributions of this research is to add to the growing library of literature on the use of deep learning algorithms for the spatiotemporal prediction of dangerous atmospheric and hydrologic phenomena. Specifically, we develop novel attention-based and non-attention-based recurrent neural network frameworks to produce short-range sequential forecasts for lightning and tornado occurrences. Additionally, we introduce methods that account for and include error in the model tuning process to generate more reliable models. Furthermore, we have created a lightweight spatiotemporal tornadic prediction dataset that we plan to make publicly available. The first component of this research develops three novel spatiotemporal …

Weighed And Measured: Toward An Evaluation Method For Digital Models In Source Selection, Liam N. O'Neill

Theses and Dissertations

Inspired by a recent model-based source selection conducted by the Advanced Range Threat System (ARTS) Program Office at Hill AFB, this research effort explored the development of new tools the DoD could use when evaluating models submitted with proposals. Specifically, the effort aimed to incorporate the Multi-Objective Decisions Analysis (MODA) framework into SysML diagrams as a solution for technical evaluations on models submitted with offeror proposals, eventually producing the Model-Based Decision Tool (MBDT). The MBDT is built from a Value Hierarchy based on key system requirements, each weighted by priority and measured by their own Single-Dimensional Value Functions (SDVFs). By …

Understanding Avionics Maintenance Training Student Outcomes In A Student-Centered Active Learning Environment, Scott M. Wyman

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effects of active learning compared to didactic methodologies on two soft skills, namely teamwork and self-efficacy using regression analyses and connected letter reports. Learning styles and personality traits were used as predictors. Findings indicate significant interaction effects between methodology, aural learning style, and personality traits on self-efficacy and teamwork ability. The findings highlight the nuanced role of learner traits in shaping teamwork outcomes across instructional methods. While active learning supports soft skills, individual differences must be considered in instructional design to optimize teamwork in technical education settings.

Cognitive Warfare In The South China Sea: Analyzing Media Influence And Public Opinion In Taiwan, Wyatt F. Blatti

Theses and Dissertations

In a time where conflict extends beyond traditional battlefields, cognitive warfare emerges as a powerful tool to influence perceptions and gain strategic advantages. This study investigates China’s cognitive warfare strategies against Taiwan through trend analysis, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis of news media articles from March 2013 to August 2024 to uncover evolving techniques and mitigation efforts. The findings highlight the potential for tracking cognitive campaigns overtime but will require more than news media alone and suggests future research to better understand indicators of cognitive warfare.

The Boris Experience: Evaluating Omnichannel Returns And Repurchase Intention, Jianliang Hao, Robert G. Richey Jr., Tyler R. Morgan, Ian M. Slazinik

Faculty Publications

Researchers have examined the influence of the factors on reducing return rates in retailing over the years. However, the returns experience is often an overlooked way to drive customer engagement and repeat sales in the now ubiquitous omnichannel setting. The focus on returns prevention in existing research overshadows management’s need to understand better the comprehensive mechanics linking the customer in-store return experience with their repurchase actions. Recognizing the need to bridge different stages of the returns management process, this research aims to explore the facilitators and barriers of in-store return activities.

Strategies To Alleviate Flickering: Bayesian And Smoothing Methods For Deep Learning Classification In Video, Noah Miller, Glen Ryan Drumm, Lance Champagne, Bruce A. Cox, Trevor Bihl

Faculty Publications

Excerpt: Increasing reliance on autonomous systems requires confidence in the accuracies produced from computer vision classification algorithms. Computer vision (CV) for video classification provides phenomenal abilities, but it often suffers from “flickering” of results. Flickering occurs when the CV algorithm switches between declared classes over successive frames. Such behavior causes a loss of trust and confidence in their operations.

An Analysis Of Electrical Energy Resilience Technologies As Applied To Air Force Operations, Eric D. Danko

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of 46 Resilient Energy Devices and Technology Concepts was conducted to determine their suitability for use in supporting Air Force Operations both at home station and abroad. The research consisted of two endeavors: an extensive literature review and a rank-ordering matrix. The dual nature of the efforts was designed to maximize usability and understanding for the End User, who may not be familiar with some principles of energy technologies, resilience, or design. The results showed the superiority of novel Solid (Metal) Fuels and Lead-Acid Batteries for Energy Storage and Thermoelectric Generators, Solar Photovoltaic Panels, Geothermal Extraction, Diesel Generators, …

End-User Device Management In The Air And Space Forces, Joshua Bonvissuto

Theses and Dissertations

When achieving technical superiority is a matter a national security, it is critical that the Department of the Air Force (DAF) employs a robust Information Technology Asset Management (ITAM) strategy that maximizes mission effectiveness. Since 2022, the Office of the Chief Information Officer (SAF/CN) has been developing a plan to transform the Air Force’s ITAM strategy, primarily intending to centralize End User Device (EUD) procurement to the DAF level. For this study, a Delphi study was conducted to gather expert opinions on key aspects of SAF/CN’s new ITAM strategy to identify strengths, weaknesses, and implementation challenges. This research provides valuable …

Root Cause Analysis For Troop Construction Schedule Delays And Cost Overruns, Richard H. Wilkens

Theses and Dissertations

Troop construction can be an effective tool when a project is simple enough to execute projects in a timely and cost effective manner. However, underlying variables plague these projects causing them to miss anticipated deadlines which in return could make them more costly. Significant variables that convey impact to cost and schedule are Equipment Operating Issues, Edits During Construction, Design Flaws, Lack of Communication, Poor User Coordination, Improper Documentation, Inaccurate Submittals, Low Quality Control, and Lack of Experience. Project engineers and project managers must provide effective continuity as well as improve their own competence and situational awareness to effectively mitigate …

Rotorcraft Assisted Aircraft Inspection System: Creation And Component Assessment, Adam J. Warren

Theses and Dissertations

Aircraft require frequent inspections to perform their missions safely. Current visual inspection methods are time-consuming and dangerous for inspection personnel, but they are necessary to spot flaws that could endanger the aircraft during flight. This research explores a set of methods for transforming a set of target inspection criteria into camera specifications that will allow a UAS aircraft inspection system to perform inspections on the top skin of an aircraft. Given the minimum distance for the UAS to fly above the aircraft, minimum flaw size to search for on the aircraft, minimum number of pixels to display that flaw size, …

Assessing Military Parking: A Deep Learning Approach To Evaluating Standards And Impacts, Ryan D. Lalonde

Theses and Dissertations

Current United States Department of Defense (DoD) standards require a minimum amount of parking for each building. This requirement defines how much off-street parking to construct. However, the impact of these requirements remains unclear. This study builds upon the emerging field of overhead imagery analytics by directly tying it to parking on military installations. Specifically, this study leverages a pretrained deep learning car detection model, Car Detection – USA, developed by Esri for use within ArcGIS, and couples it with open-access temporal imagery sourced from Google Earth Pro to assess selected parking lots across Area B, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, …

An Introduction Of Adaptive Training Aid Concepts And Its Application To Accelerated Training For Air Battle Managers, John C. Gillispie

Theses and Dissertations

Over the years, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) to enable autonomous systems has undergone transformative shifts in the Department of Defense (DoD), revolutionizing capabilities and strategic approaches. To further optimize these advancements, varying levels of autonomy have been introduced across critical military applications, spanning intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR), air battle management, and offensive/defensive air operations. As the technological landscape expands, so do the opportunities for autonomy to augment operations through human-agent teaming. Within the Air Force, one notably cognitively demanding role that stands to benefit from these strides is that of the Air Battle Manager (ABM). In support of …

An Analysis Of Usaf Policy Implementation For Building Information Modeling, Evan J. Ward

Theses and Dissertations

The development of Building Information Modeling (BIM) has strongly influenced the architecture, engineering, and construction communities as a path towards effective and efficient asset management. Although BIM is a standard practice in the private sector, the United States Air Force (USAF) does not mirror its civilian counterparts when it comes to BIM use. USAF BIM is limited in its use and does not extend beyond the design and construction phases of the construction life cycle. This research used a detailed querying process to analyze foundational policy documents and determine specific USAF building information requirements. After categorizing the list of requirements …

Cloud One Migration Schedule Drivers And Schedule Growth, Ryan J. Jansen

Theses and Dissertations

Cloud One, chartered in 2017 under the guidance of Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) leadership, continues to serve as the USAF’s leading cloud services and hosting platform by providing secure computing environments, application migration assistance, and data management. Prior research has yielded qualitative insights regarding Cloud One’s personnel requirements, application of technical performance, requirements fulfillment, security risks, and various other cost metrics, but schedule improvement recommendations based on the quantitative analysis of migration schedule data has yet to be provided. This research identifies trends within migration sprint schedules and completed schedule data for Cloud One’s completed application migrations. …

3- And 6-Degree-Of-Freedom Investigation Of Aerobraking To Support Cislunar And Planetary Operations, Erica C. Higginbotham

Theses and Dissertations

The first aerobraking experiment occurred in 1991 as part of the Hiten spacecraft’s cislunar survey mission, while the first non-Earth aerobraking experiment occurred in 1993 as part of the Magellan spacecraft’s mission to Venus. Although making only two trans-atmospheric passes to reduce its apogee altitude, the success of Hiten’s experiment led to the implementation of aerobraking by Magellan, reducing its orbit from elliptical to nearly circular over a span of 70 Earth days by leveraging aerodynamic drag to reduce its orbital energy via transiting the upper region of Venus’ atmosphere. The Magellan experiment helped prove the viability of aerobraking for …

A Framework For Dynamic Combat Support Exercises, Sean R. Mccarty

Theses and Dissertations

Future armed conflict will be characterized by the unknown as adversaries innovate and evolve—surprise is inevitable. Current exercises provide inadequate opportunities for combat support forces to develop improvisational skills. This research proposes an extensible framework for human-in-the-loop control of exercises using a graph network for modeling combined with topological analysis and the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. This framework is assessed using the United States Air Force Silver Flag exercise as a case study with promising results.

An Improved Saliency Map With Trustworthiness For Localizing Abnormalities In Medical Imaging, Nolan C. Skelly

Theses and Dissertations

Saliency maps are a widely used methodology to make deep learning models more interpretable. They provide post-hoc explanations through identification of the most pertinent areas of an input medical image. These techniques have been assessed based on 1) localization utility, 2) sensitivity to model weight randomization, 3) repeatability, and 4) reproducibility. Ten saliency map techniques will be tested, Grad, Smooth Grad, Integrated Gradients, Smooth Integrated Gradients, XRAI, Grad-CAM, Guided Backpropagation, Guided GradCAM, GradCAM++, and ScoreCAM. The neural networks used to predict and read medical information require a reliable solution to provide medical practitioners intelligible results. Using the information of two, …

Advances In Quaternion-Valued Neural Networks, Jeremiah P. Bill

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the construction, optimization, and application of quaternion neural networks (QNNs) to Department of Defense (DoD) related problem sets. QNNs are a type of neural network wherein the weights, biases, and input values are all represented as quaternion numbers. This work provides a critical evaluation of the myriad different quaternion backpropagation derivations that exist in the literature, testing the performance of each on a range of regression problem sets. The optimization dynamics of QNNs are explored, presenting visualizations of QNN loss surfaces and a novel method for assessing the “smoothness” of these loss surfaces. Finally, this dissertation presents …

The Characteristics Of Successful Military It Projects: A Cross-Country Empirical Study, Helene Berg, Jonathan D. Ritschel

Faculty Publications

In the armed forces, successful digitalization is crucial to ensure effective operations. Much of the existing literature on project factors during the planning and execution phases of public IT projects do not focus specifically on military sector projects. Therefore, the paper aims to provide empirical insights into the characteristics of successful military IT projects. Data from such projects in NATO countries and agencies were collected through interviews and project documents. The findings relating to the main variable of interest, “delivery of client benefit,” supported previous findings on IT project performance. Medium-sized projects performed better than small and large projects, and …

Cost Estimation Trends For Major Defense Acquisition Programs, Sammantha Jones, Edward D. White, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Shawn M. Valentine

Faculty Publications

The authors use both descriptive and inferential techniques to investigate average and standard deviation trends in cost estimates for major defense acquisition programs (MDAPs) grouped into decades from the 1970s to 2010s. For total program-cost-growth factors (CGFs), the 2010s exhibited lower CGFs compared to the 1990s. For the program-acquisition-unit cost (PAUC) CGFs, the 2010s appear lower than the 1990s and borderline lower than the 1970s. A statistically significant decreasing trend in the standard deviations of total program CGFs throughout the decades was identified. This lowering variability trend also appeared for PAUC CGFs from the 1980s onward. This finding appears to …

Design And Analysis Of Asymmetric “String-Of-Pearls” Common Repeating-Ground-Track Satellite Constellations For Missions Requiring Regional Coverage, Nathaniel Choo

Theses and Dissertations

Satellite constellation design must balance many factors that emerge from multiple sources, including environmental hazards and competing mission objectives. The dynamic nature of space systems makes the problem of ‘optimal’ satellite constellation design even more challenging. Restricting satellite constellation designs to predefined geometric frameworks can alleviate many challenges associated with the design problem; however, it raises an important question: which geometric framework performs best for each mission set? This research leverages simulations, metaheuristics, and mathematical programming techniques to address this question for missions focusing on Earth-observation of one or more regions.

First, this research captures the current state of satellite …

Portfolio Optimization Using Value Focused Thinking, Tyler Martin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the application of Value Focused Thinking (VFT) and multi-objective portfolio optimization to create a well-aligned portfolio for an organization faced with over 50 alternatives and limited funding. A novel technique is proposed to develop an optimized portfolio based on VFT scores, utilizing heuristic approaches like evolutionary algorithms. The research outcomes include an optimized portfolio, the total value evaluation of alternatives, and a sensitivity analysis. The new approach outperforms the organization’s previous method, resulting in a portfolio that better addresses the organization’s core values and objectives, scoring 21.21% higher.

Rate Effects In Aircraft Learning Curves, Caleb J. Ahern

Theses and Dissertations

Across the Department of Defense (DoD), a wide variety of analytical tools are employed by cost analysts to estimate weapon system costs. One of the techniques widely employed by practitioners is the learning curve (LC). Although learning curves have been widely studied, using rate-adjustments or production rate effects (PRE), their usage have only intermittently been evaluated in place of using the traditional learning curve. Previous studies analyzing production rate found mixed results. This research aims to examine aircraft production data to determine if production rate model is preferrable in United States Air Force programs. Additionally, this PRE research seeks to …

Team And Skill Matching For Disaster Recovery Operations, Emily B. Frahm

Theses and Dissertations

United States Air Force (USAF) bases are key power projection platforms that ensure mission readiness and help bring humanitarian aid to locations in need. Recovering airfields after attack or natural disaster is a key mission of USAF civil engineers, and accomplishing this repair as swiftly as possible is key to maintaining our position in the global order. Accomplishing a disaster recovery project is a set of teams, each assigned to a specific task, and made up of a series of personnel. The question answered within this paper is: how do we match the right person with the appropriate skills to …

Pattern Of Life Modeling On Maritime Vessels With Bayesian Inferencing, Miles A. Kelly

Theses and Dissertations

Despite decades of research, maritime traffic models’ limited predictive power continues to constrain their operational utility. We build on previous pattern of life modeling algorithms and contribute a Bayesian inferencing model for anomaly detection. Our probabilistic approach provides decision makers the capability to tailor the belief threshold for identifying anomalies and to enact a measured response based on the degree of abnormality. We perform a case study to evaluate the results, verifying that our Bayesian inferencing method accurately refines its probability when given the location and time of a ship of interest, and serving as a proof of concept for …

Uncertainty Quantification In Federated Learning For Persistent Post-Traumatic Headache, Byungmoo Brian Kim

Theses and Dissertations

A post-traumatic headache (PTH), resulting from a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), potentially develops into persistent post-traumatic headache (PPTH). Although no known cure for PPTH exists, research has shown that receiving treatment at earlier stages of PTH lowers the risk of patients developing PPTH. Previous studies have shown machine learning (ML) models capable of predicting a patient’s PTH progression, but none have considered the issue of protecting patient privacy. Due to patient privacy, ML models only have access to data within the institution. Federated learning (FL) harnesses data from separate institutions without sacrificing patient privacy as institutions can run ML …

Long-Term Asset Prioritization To Support District Planning, Melissa R. Sallberg

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force (USAF) relies on its installations to project military power across the globe. However, due to the deferred infrastructure maintenance and recapitalization backlog of $33 billion as of 2019 (Wilson & Goldfein, 2019), it is more critical than ever for base-level community planners to focus their attention to the projects that will achieve each installation’s long-term goals. The recent incorporation of asset management principles into the USAF District Planning Process allows a unique opportunity to improve the existing scoring model for a holistic look at what matters to enterprise leaders and community planners making the plans …

Investigation Of Rhine Pointing As A Solution To The Aircraft Human Machine Interface Problem, Alexandra C. Dobranski, Samuel J. Medvec

Theses and Dissertations

The human machine interface in 5th generation aircraft has not evolved proportionally with advances in display size and data density. The traditional cursor slew method fails to rapidly relocate the cursor, especially on large displays. Previous studies at the Air Force Test Pilot School and Air Force Institute of Technology identified methods that have the potential to improve the human machine interface. This research expanded upon those studies by providing an assessment of head tracking technology as a secondary method of cursor manipulation. Specifically, this study examined the effects that visual feedback (visible and invisible head tracking cursors) and cursor …