Strategic sealift is critical for the United States to be able to project military power worldwide. During the 1990 Persian Gulf War, over 95% of all military equipment arrived in theater via sealift. The importance and difficulty of sealift planning has motivated the development of a number of decision aids. These aids, relying heretofore on a combination of heuristics and simulation, help determine for a given sealift mission the overall gross transportation feasibility. The key to this transportation feasibility is satisfying desired force closure the time units arrive in the theater of operations. This thesis introduces optimization models to help plan ship schedules that deliver units as close as possible to their required arrival times. The prototypic models are demonstrated on a dual major regional conflict, obtaining near optimal solutions in less than two hours.http://archive.org/details/optimizingstrate1094535181NANAU.S. Army (USA) autho
