Enroute Maintenance Support for Fighter Deployments

The purpose of this research was to examine Air Mobility Command's (AMC) role in providing enroute maintenance support for deploying fighter squadrons through the Enroute Support Team Aircraft (ESTA). The ESTA mission hurts AMC's overall airlift flow because the mission durations are so unpredictable. This paper searches for alternatives to the traditional ESTA. Two main alternatives are explored; first, using enroute stopover bases which house the same type fighter as those deploying and second, using the KC-10 in a dual role, acting as both lead navigation tanker as well as the ESTA for the deploying squadron. The dual role KC-10 holds the most promise as a consistent way for AMC to lessen the burden which the ESTA places on it, but changes in the planning process as well as in AMC Instructions would have to be implemented to realize the potential benefit.