Integrated Fleet Aerial Refueling Assessment White Paper

What is IFARA?
• Integrated Fleet Aerial Refueling Assessment was used to evaluate KC-X offerings using postulated
real world scenarios.
o One deployment, two employment and one homeland defense scenario were modeled in a
classified environment
o The KC-135R provided the baseline and was assigned a score of one. Results from both
competitors produced the number of KC-X aircraft required to complete each scenario
o Results of all 4 scenarios were rolled up into one tanker AR effective score

What Model Was Used?

• The IFARA used an AMC planning model first developed in 1982 called Combined Mating and
Ranging Planning System (CMARPS) which is designed to help analyze, plan, and schedule
deployment of tankers and receiver aircraft
o The functionality of this computer model now resides in AMC’s primary command and
control planning and scheduling system
o CMARPS is maintained at AMC under contract by Northrop Grumman

How was the Model Used in the RFP Assessment?

• Using data provided by the USAF (Nov 06) on refueling requirements, air refueling tracks, and
basing availability, both competitors ran the model to determine the number of aircraft required to
successfully meet all refueling requirements
o This was an iterative process as one model run may not produce the optimum solution.
o Planning assumptions and real world data on aircraft and airfields were the key data
necessary to run the model
• Initial model runs conducted by Boeing using USAF data revealed that a large aircraft (i.e. KC-30)
would have difficulty meeting all air refueling requirements
o We believe Northrop Grumman also discovered this issue and began lobbying the USAF to
make changes to the planning assumptions and modeling methodologies to accommodate a
larger aircraft (Jan 07)
o Changes were made to airfields that added ramp space, reduced parking intervals and ignored
ramp weight restrictions to allow more aircraft on each available airfield (Feb 07/Mar 07)
o These changes favored the larger, heavier KC-30

Key Insights
• Since model changes were now favoring large aircraft, USAF stated other factors would be included
in the analysis since based on number of aircraft required, a larger aircraft would always be better
o Other factors included fuel used to travel to and from the refueling track, number of bases
used to meet refueling requirements, runway length, and base denial
o All these factors favored the smaller, more fuel efficient KC-767
• Northrop Grumman seized on the advantages of their larger aircraft and began to heavily market their
tanker fleet AR effectiveness score using the spider chart
o Using only this effectiveness score ignores other costs like the number of airfields required,
fuel consumed
• Based on the tanker announcement briefing, it appears that the USAF was only interested in the
tanker fleet AR effectiveness score. This ignored real world issues like airfield availability and fuel
availability by basically assuming those issues away.

Provided by the Boeing Company