Enhancing Navy HADR Readiness Through Scenario-Based Logistics Optimization in the Indo-Pacific

Abstract

The Indo-Pacific region faces increasing vulnerability to natural disasters, requiring rapid and sustained humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) operations. The U.S. Navy often plays a central role in these operations, leveraging its global reach, logistical capabilities, and forward-deployed assets to respond quickly and effectively to disasters across the region. However, current logistics planning lacks a standardized framework to determine when to deploy prepositioned supplies, rely on CONUS-based assets, or use a hybrid approach. This decision is highly dependent on the disaster’s location, severity, and impact on local infrastructure. HADR operations are central to U.S. theater strategy in the Indo-Pacific: they project American influence, strengthen relationships with allied and partner nations, and reinforce regional presence in ways that serve both humanitarian and long-term strategic objectives. Improving logistics readiness for these missions therefore supports distributed sustainment, increases asset availability, and contributes to a more resilient and strategically positioned force. Ultimately, this framework aims to inform acquisition, pre-positioning, and logistics planning for future naval operations, ensuring that humanitarian response capabilities also contribute to long-term force readiness and strategic advantage. This research proposes a scenario-based modeling approach using the Opus Suite (specifically OPUS10 and SIMLOX) to evaluate logistics strategies across diverse HADR scenarios. Historical operations such as Operation Tomodachi (Japan, 2011) and the response to Typhoon Haiyan (Philippines, 2013) serve as foundational case studies, illustrating the diversity of logistical challenges and the need for adaptable strategies. A single OPUS10 model was developed to generate an ideal stocking solution across the Indo-Pacific supply chain network. This optimized configuration then served as the baseline input for SIMLOX simulations, which assessed mission success over time by first removing stock from specific locations, simulating those locations being struck by a disaster, and then comparing how mission success recovered when resupply was provided from one location versus another versus multiple locations simultaneously. This comparative analysis across resupply configurations identifies not only which stocking locations are most critical to mission success when lost, but which alternate sources are most effective at restoring it. More broadly, this methodology can be applied to optimize emergency relief supply locations across the Indo-PACOM theater, identifying the most effective pre-positioning network to address the full range of disaster scenarios in the region. The results provide actionable, scenario-specific decision support for logistics planners determining where to route resupply assets when a forward location is compromised by a disaster.