Military Decision and Game Theory

O. G. Haywood
Additional contact information
O. G. Haywood: Missile Systems Laboratory, Sylvania Electric Products, Inc., Whitestone, New York

Operations Research, 1954, vol. 2, issue 4, 365-385

Abstract: The United States military doctrine of decision prescribes that a commander select the course of action which offers the greatest promise of success in view of the enemy's capabilities of opposing him. This paper analyzes two battle decisions of World War II, and develops the analogy between existing military doctrine and the “theory of games” proposed by von Neumann. Current U.S. doctrine is conservative. The techniques of game theory permit analysis of the risk involved if the commander deviates from current doctrine to base his decision on his estimate of what his enemy intends to do rather than on what his enemy is capable of doing. The idea of “mixed strategies” presents more difficulties but may be useful, particularly for command decisions for small military organizations. Operations Research , ISSN 0030-364X, was published as Journal of the Operations Research Society of America from 1952 to 1955 under ISSN 0096-3984.

Date: 1954
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.2.4.365 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:oropre:v:2:y:1954:i:4:p:365-385

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Operations Research from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().