An Assessment of Operations Research Methods for Studying Military Issues

Operations research has long been concerned with military issues, where its start and growth has been linked with such issues. Operations research methods and techniques have abundant capabilities for solving military problems. The present research is fundamental in terms of orientation, interpretative in terms of philosophy, and descriptive in terms of target. The present research is aimed at conducting an argumentative and descriptive evaluation of capabilities for operations research methods for studying military issues. Having this in mind, military issues were initially classified using Jackson's common typology and a few basic dimensions. There are also other typologies like Mingers' and Kassires' typologies in the related literature that are mostly methodological. In each field, an example of military issues has been explained for further transparency. Then, convenient methods were established for each problem by using the methodological classifications provided by the researchers in this article, interviewing the internal and external elites, and reviewing the case examples and literature. Using Jackson's typology, the problems are divided into six categories, namely normative-operational, pluralist-operational, pragmatic-operational, normative-social, and pragmatic-social. In this research, unlike the previous researches that are of a methodological or problem nature, both aspects have been taken into regard, and capabilities of operations research techniques have been evaluated in a reasoning way for each field. Similarly, a directive and framework was presented for mixed methodology to encounter such problems in terms of the type of methods and the paradigmatic nature.