Center For Naval Analyses - CNA's History

CNA's History

CNA traces its roots to World War II when, in the early 1940s, the Navy turned to a small group of MIT scientists for help in responding to the German U-boat threat. These scientists pioneered the concept of operations research by insisting on deploying with Navy forces in order to directly observe operational challenges and collect the data needed for meaningful analyses. Their groundbreaking work not only resulted in anti-submarine warfare barrier equations that set the standard for future operations research methods, it also helped establish operations research and analysis as a distinct field, and style, of study. Over its more than 60 year history, CNA’s work has been defined by multi-disciplinary, field-based "real world" operations research and analysis that combines observation of people, decisions, and processes by rigorously trained analysts to help decision makers understand the consequences of possible actions and to implement the best possible solutions.