Military Operations Research: Quantitative Decision Making: 5 (International Series in Operations Research & Management Science) - Tapa dura

Operations Research (OR) emerged in an effort to improve the effectiveness of newly inducted weapons and equipment during World War II. While rapid growth ofOR led to its becoming an important aid to decision making in all sectors including defense, its contribution in defense remained largely confined to classified reports. Very few books dealing with applications of quantitative decision making techniques in military have been published presumably due to limited availability ofrelevant information. The situation changed rapidly during the last few years. The recognition of the subject of Military Operations Research (MOR) gave tremendous boost to its development. Books and journals on MOR started appearing. The number of sessions on MOR at national and international conferences also registered an increase. The volume of teaching, training and research activities in the field of MOR at military schools and non-military schools enhanced considerably. Military executives and commanders started taking increasing interest in getting scientific answers to questions pertaining to weapon acquisition, threat perception and quantification, assessment of damage or casualties, evaluation of chance of winning a battle, force mix, deployment and targeting of weapons against enemy targets, war games and scenario evaluation. Most of these problems were being tackled on the basis of intuition, judgment and experience or analysis under very simple assumptions. In an increasingly sophisticated and complex defense scenario resulting in advances in equipment and communications, the need for supplementing these practices by scientific research in MOR became imperative.

The field of Operations Research (OR) grew out of World War II operations to improve the effectiveness of newly introduced weapons and equipment, and to solve logistical problems for the war effort. Since its beginnings, OR has rapidly become a robust set of decision-making methodologies widely used in business, engineering, and governmental sectors. Nevertheless, many of OR's military and defense contributions have remained confined to classified reports.
This book is a systematic, state-of-the-art treatment of military operations research (MOR). It has been written for those interested in learning about the applications of OR techniques to military problems, and within these discussions theoretical concepts needed for analysis of military issues are presented. The book examines issues that relate to both tactical and strategic levels. Several examples have been solved in each chapter to illustrate the application of the techniques of MOR to military systems. The data used in these examples are hypothetical. They do not correspond to any existing weapon or military situations. They are used strictly to illustrate an application of MOR in defense decision-making.