Supply-chain risks and resilience mechanisms relevant to military aviation: a systematic review of defense and aerospace literature
Rui Fernando Correia Ferreira, Wesley Canedo Souza Junior, Bruno VilelaPurpose
This study synthesizes defense and aerospace supply-chain literature to identify and organize risks and resilience mechanisms relevant to the industrial, maintenance, and sustainment systems supporting military aviation, with particular attention to aircraft availability and operational continuity.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review of Scopus and Web of Science identified 20 studies addressing defense, military and aerospace supply chains. Following a PRISMA-based selection process, risk and resilience statements were extracted, thematically coded, supported by lexical matching and manually reviewed.
Findings
Four risk clusters were identified, Physical/Cybersecurity, Strategic Dependency, Hostile External Environment and Inefficient Management, and five resilience clusters, Structural Preparedness, Adaptive Response, Operational Intelligence, Strategic Cooperation, and Critical Sustainment. Together, they show how readiness depends on industrial capacity, maintenance continuity, information, adaptation and cooperation.
Research limitations/implications
The corpus is limited to two overlapping databases, title-based queries, retrievable full texts and 20 studies. Grey literature and specialized defense repositories are not systematically covered. The clusters should therefore be interpreted as a preliminary taxonomy requiring validation across countries and aviation programs.
Practical implications
The study links strategic stocks, supplier diversification, predictive monitoring, rapid reconfiguration, allied cooperation and lifecycle sustainment to operational continuity.
Social implications
Stronger military aviation supply chains support national security and the continuity of strategic public capabilities during conflict or systemic disruption.
Originality/value
The study offers a disaggregated taxonomy of risks and resilience mechanisms relevant to military aviation supply chains, connecting technical, industrial, organizational, geopolitical and sustainment dimensions while distinguishing aviation-specific evidence from transferable evidence drawn from adjacent contexts.