Hello, I am a USMA CC but I am thinking about an OR major. Can you elaborate on what is involved in an OR major and what your experience was been. It would also be great to find out what I can do with that in and out of the military (obviously the army and af are different but I imagine they have similar MOSs.
Hello! Operations Research is essentially a mix of a number of technical disciplines and is focused on making operations more effective and efficient. The most prominent disciplines are mathematics, statistics, computer science and economics. Think of it as an applied science much like engineering, but not necessarily concerned with producing a physical product. Air Force Operations Analysts support test & evaluation, data analytics, decision making, system simulation, optimization, and other things. I know these topics may sound vague, but they are used to answer questions such as
1) Can we identify trends in the type of people joining the military? Are the generally older, younger, male, female, etc.? (data analytics)
2) How can we assign new officers and enlisted to available jobs satisfying the needs of the military and also maximizing job preferences? (optimization)
3) How do we design an experiment that will fully characterize the capability of a new piece of equipment with the most information per test? (test & eval)
4) How does changing a single aircraft maintenance process affect the full maintenance system? Is there a new bottleneck? Is it possible to now reduce resources somewhere else? (system simulation)
5) How can we decide which and how many new aircraft to purchase based on national security requirements and budget constraints? To which bases should these aircraft be assigned? (decision theory/optimization)
Most, if not all, real world problems are subject to some level of uncertainty/randomness/chance. Operations research works to characterize this uncertainty and control for it when analyzing a problem. Most importantly, it is the duty of the analyst to translate the technical analysis into information that the commander can understand and act upon. Without this, the work is useless.
This is not an exhaustive explanation, but roughly how I would describe the types of things one would do with an OR degree. The Air Force has a designated AFSC (MOS) for this kind of work. It is 61A - Operations Research Analyst. I am not sure how the Army handles things.
Generally, these skills serve veterans well in the private sector. Many companies seek operations analysts to help solve complex problems!