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Combat System Maintenance Status
David H. Olwell
Introduction and setting
Army forces depend upon combat systems to move and fight. Because Army
forces move in very stressful environments, these combat systems eventually
break and require repair. While a system is awaiting repair, it is considered non-
mission capable or NMC. The percentage of vehicles awaiting repair is one of
the key indicators of a unit’s ability to fight, and is tracked at all levels of
command. The operational readiness rate, or OR Rate, is the percentage of
systems in a given class which are Mission Capable (MC).
In this paper, we will discuss three simple models
which describe the OR rate for the number of tanks in
a tank battalion in the 1st Armored Division. We will
also discuss ways the models could be extended to
improve their usefulness to the commander.
We assume that the reader is familiar with elementary
matrix algebra, linear systems of difference equations,
and optimization using differential calculus.
Markov Chain models
We begin with a simple model where a tank can be in one of two states: mission
capable (MC) or non-mission capable (NMC). Each day, on average a certain
percentage of the mission capable tanks break, and move to the other state.
Each day, a certain percentage of the NMC tanks are repaired and become
operational. Graphically, we have:
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