alt.fan.david.barker moderation
Ric...@alt.fan.david.barker
of these wartime operations research efforts.
To seek out information from noise, then act on the information.
Target accuracy for precision high altitude bombing requires
a complex feedback mechanism to control deployment (pre-GPS WW II).
* My dad:
*
* Norden bombsights revolutionized aerial bombing.
*
* They were so accurate we stopped putting explosives
* in the bombs and just aimed for people.
Communications, Command and Control. The above wasn't really the best
example of OR, but I did get to quote my dad again. ;-)
* "The Future of War - Power, Technology, and American World Dominance in
* the 21st Century", by George & Meredith Friedman, 1996, ISBN 0-517-70403-X
*
* A discipline named operations research had begun to develop prior to World
* War II that aspired to use quantitative methodologies to develop a science
* of management. [snip]
*
* For the physicists and mathematicians of the Rand Corporation, the
* intuitions of common sense were utterly insufficient as a guide to
* management. Mathematical precision was necessary, and operations
* research promised to supply that precision. [snip]
*
* It had not jumped from the management of particular, limited areas of
* warfare to the structuring of entire campaigns and wars. Operations
* research had not penetrated to the very marrow of conventional warfare,
* that is, not until an attempt was made in 1961 to revolutionize the idea
* of war. This was done by an industrialist named Robert McNamara, who had
* been president at
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