Refining Air Force Asset Management Strategy: Connecting Air Force Infrastructure to Core Missions
Abstract
At this time, Air Force organizational objectives are not tied to the Air Force asset management program. Additionally, the Air Force is unable to objectively differentiate between mission and support facilities as the Air Force Strategic Master Plan requires. While difficult, there is value in adjusting Air Force asset management strategic objectives by connecting Air Force investments in infrastructure to organizational objectives. Such a connection would allow senior leaders to more confidently make difficult decision related to infrastructure in this fiscally uncertain environment. This research focuses on improving Air Force asset management strategic objectives; specifically, it investigates infrastructure assets and Air Force core missions to determine if linkages can be made between them. Qualitative and quantitative skills are used to identify keywords from Air Force strategic documents and build a model which identifies infrastructure groupings related to Air Force core missions. The model breaks infrastructure assets into two groups, (1) core directly related to Air Force core missions and (2) non-core. This method of identifying infrastructure related to core missions can be used by the Air Force to differentiate between mission and support infrastructure while also reducing the amount of uncertainty related to asset management project funding.