Operations Research: Strategies and Tactics for Optimal Military Decision Making

By Fouad Sabry

What is Operations Research

Operations research, often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decision-making. The term management science is occasionally used as a synonym.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Operations research

Chapter 2: George Dantzig

Chapter 3: Management science

Chapter 4: System of systems

Chapter 5: Social complexity

Chapter 6: Computational science

Chapter 7: Decision analysis

Chapter 8: Analytic hierarchy process

Chapter 9: David B. Hertz

Chapter 10: Reuven Rubinstein

(II) Answering the public top questions about operations research.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Operations Research.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Jun 22, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Operations research

Operations analysis (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis) is a discipline concerned with the development and application of analytical methods to enhance decision-making.

Operational research (OR) encompasses the development and application of a wide variety of problem-solving techniques and methods in the pursuit of improved decision-making and efficiency, including simulation, mathematical optimization, queueing theory and other stochastic-process models, Markov decision processes, econometric methods, data envelopment analysis, ordinal priority approach, neural networks, expert systems, decision analysis, and the analytic hierarchy process. Almost all of these methods involve the development of mathematical models that attempt to characterize the system. OR has strong connections to computer science and analytics due to the computational and statistical nature of the majority of these fields. When faced with a new problem, operational researchers must determine which of these techniques is most applicable given the nature of the system, the goals for improvement, and the constraints of time and computing power, or develop a new technique tailored to the problem at hand (and, afterwards, to that type of problem).

According to the journal Operations Research, the major subdisciplines of contemporary operational research are:

Information and computer technology

Financial engineering

Production, service sciences, and supply chain administration

Policy modeling and government service

Revenue management

Simulation

Stochastic models

Transportation engineering (mathematics)

Game theory for planning

Linear programming

Nonlinear programming

Particularly for 0-1 integer linear programming in NP-complete problems

Programming techniques in Aerospace engineering and Economics

Information theory applied to Quantum computing and Cryptography

Programming quadratique for quadratic equation and function solutions

In the decades following the two world wars, operations research methods were increasingly utilized to solve problems in business, industry, and society. Since then, operational research has grown into a field widely used in a variety of industries, including petrochemicals, airlines, finance, logistics, and government, with a focus on the development of mathematical models that can be used to analyze and optimize sometimes complex systems, and has become an area of active academic and industrial research.

In the 17th century, Blaise Pascal and Christiaan Huygens used game-theoretic concepts and expected values to solve problems involving sometimes complex decisions (problem of points); others, such as Pierre de Fermat and Jacob Bernoulli, used combinatorial reasoning instead.

Scientists in the United Kingdom (including Patrick Blackett (later Lord Blackett OM PRS), Cecil Gordon, Solly Zuckerman, (later Baron Zuckerman OM, KCB, FRS), C. H. Waddington, Owen Wansbrough-Jones, Frank Yates, Jacob Bronowski, and Freeman Dyson) and the United States (George Dantzig) sought to improve decision-making in logistics and training schedules.

During World War II, the modern field of operational research emerged. During World War II, operational research was defined as a scientific method for providing executive departments with a quantitative basis for decisions about operations under their control..

Blackett moved from the RAE to the Navy in 1941, after having previously worked for the RAF Coastal Command, and then to the Admiralty in early 1942.

While analyzing the methods used by RAF Coastal Command to hunt and destroy submarines, one analyst inquired about the color of the aircraft. As the majority of them were Bomber Command aircraft, they were black for nighttime operations. On the recommendation of CC-ORS, a test was conducted to determine if that was the best color to camouflage the aircraft for daytime operations in the gray skies of the North Atlantic. Tests revealed that white aircraft were typically not spotted until they were 20 percent closer than their black counterparts. This modification indicated that 30% more subs would be attacked and sunk with the same number of sightings. In response to these findings, Coastal Command modified its aircraft to have white undersurfaces.

Other research conducted by the CC-ORS indicated that if the trigger depth of aerially delivered depth charges was reduced from 100 feet to 25 feet, the kill ratios would increase on average. The reason for this was that if a U-boat spotted an aircraft shortly before it arrived over the target, the charges would do no damage at 100 feet (since the U-boat wouldn't have had time to descend to 100 feet), and if it spotted the aircraft far from the target, it had time to alter its course under water, reducing the likelihood that it would be within the 20-foot kill zone of the charges. It was more effective to attack