Air Force “Mission Assurance through Energy Assurance” Programmatic Integration
NCMS Project #: 140990
Problem: As the quality and availability of energy generation technologies increases in the modern landscape, so do the number of vulnerabilities and opportunities for failure. Electrical infrastructure has become more interconnected and complex, creating additional avenues for outages due to natural causes or targeted physical and cyber-attacks. Cascading electrical failures can incapacitate critical infrastructure and mission readiness.
Benefit: Uninterrupted energy is an essential ingredient to a safe environment. Using this project as a roadmap, organizations can springboard and develop plans that will work for their situation. The key benefit to the public is that fact that energy assurance is not limited to inside the Air Force installation’s fence line. A mission thread analysis for an Air National Guard location will seek to protect the Federal and the State mission through partnerships and communications with the appropriate State agencies responsible for disaster relief. These efforts will also seek to dovetail with industry and utility resilience efforts already underway. Where mission thread analysis exposes vulnerabilities outside the fence, the Air Force will work with the appropriate utility or industry partner to pursue innovative energy system hardening.
Solution/Approach: The work included in this initiative would leverage work already being done for the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment, & Energy (SAF/IE) by their mission thread Tiger Team, safety, and infrastructure office. The initiative will synthesize currently disparate energy assurance efforts into a cohesive framework and recommend policy changes to ensure that energy assurance is effectively integrated into mission assurance and evaluated with lifecycle sustainment requirements.
Impact on Warfighter:
- Mitigate risks
- Wholistic approach to energy resilience
- Assure warfighter readiness
DOD Participation:
- Assistant Secretary Air Force – Installations, Environment and Energy
- Air Force Civil Engineering Center Office of Energy Assurance
- Air National Guard
Industry Participation:
- Booz Allen Hamilton
- NCMS
Benefit Area(s):
- Energy efficiency
Focus Area:
- Energy, environmental, health, and safety