History of Operations Research in the United States Army, V. I: 1942-62

Operations research (OR) emerged during World War II as an important means of assisting civilian and military leaders in making scientifi cally sound improvements in the design and performance of weapons and equipment. OR techniques were soon extended to address questions of tactics and strategy during the war and, after the war, to matters of high-level political and economic policy. Until now, the story of why and how the U.S. Army used OR has remained relatively obscure, surviving only in a few scattered offi cial documents, in the memories of those who participated, and in a number of notes and articles that have been published about selected topics on military operations research. However, none of those materials amounts to a comprehensive, coherent history. In this, the first of three planned volumes, Dr. Charles R. Shrader has for the fi rst time drawn together the scattered threads and woven them into a well-focused historical narrative that describes the evolution of OR in the U.S. Army, from its origins in World War II to the early 1960s.

This series should be of interest not only to those in the Army’s analysis community but also to civilian leaders and military commanders and staff officers at all levels.