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War Games and Operations Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Walter E. Cushen
Walter E. Cushen*
Affiliation:
Overations Research Office
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Summary

The problems of operations research, optimized at the tactical and strategic level, have a domain of interest much broader than many of its earlier suboptimization problems. Its appeal to scientific method requires the construction of a model from which predictions can be made. This model must have the comprehensive character of those proposed by philosophy and the sciences. Such a model is available in the form of war gaming, a traditional military training vehicle transformed in such a way as to make it a research tool of great power and flexibility and which can assume a multitude of forms. The war game as a new research tool, when applied to the important problems at a high level of optimization, carries with it the excitement of a pioneering venture and the promise of contributions of greatly increased importance to the development of military science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , October 1955 , pp. 309 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1955

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References

1 J. F. McCloskey and F. N. Trefethen, editors, Operations Research for Management, The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1954, P. xiii.

2 K. von Clausewitz, On War, Translated by O. J. M. Jolies. The Inf antry Journal Press, Washington, D. C., 1950, p. 568.

3 Cf. C. J. Hitch, “Sub-optimization in Operations Problems,” Jour. Op. Res. Soc. America, 1, 87–99, 1953.

4 E. A. Johnson, “The Executive, the Organization, and Operations Research” Seminar in Operations Research, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, October 6, 1954.

5 N. M. Smith, et al., “The Theory of Value and the Science of Decision—A Summary,” Jour. Op. Res. Soc. America, 1, 103–113, 1953. C. W. Churchman and R. L. Ackoff, “An Approximate Measure of Value,” Jour. Op. Res. Soc. America, 2, 172–181, 1954. N.M. Smith, “Comments,” Jour. Op. Res. Soc. America, 2, 181–187, 1954.

6 N. M. Smith et al., “The Theory of Value and the Science of Decision—A Summary,” Jour. Op. Res. Soc. America, 1, 108, 1953.

7 W. R. Livermore, The American Kriegspiel, W. B. Clarke Co., Boston, 1898.

8 W. E. Cushen, Generalized Battle Games on a Digital Computer, Operations Research Office Technical Memorandum No. 263, Chevy Chase, Md., 1954.

9 ibid., pp. 9–10.

10 A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, New York, The Social Science Bookstore, p. 19.