A multiagent framework for collaborative airlift planning using commercial air assets

Future operations by the U.S. military services will require greater collaboration within the government and with the private sector. Commercial enterprises that normally compete with one another will have to cooperate to satisfy the goals of the operation. For example, the military uses commercial airlift assets to support the movement of soldiers and cargo to the theater. Ideally, the military would like to receive adequate commercial airlift capacity at a reasonable cost, while the commercial air carriers would like to balance their workload and minimize the disruption to their daily operations. We present a distributed optimization approach that uses software agents-representing the interests of the military and commercial carriers-to collaboratively plan the airlift. By auctioning the missions and allowing carriers to swap missions when mutually beneficial, this approach cuts the controllable operating costs and schedule disruption costs by more than half compared with a centralized planning approach currently used. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.