Moral Aspects of “Moral Injury”: Analyzing Conceptualizations on the Role of Morality in Military Trauma

In clinical circles, the concept of “moral injury” has rapidly gained traction. Yet, from a moral philosophical point of view the concept is less clear than is suggested. That is, in current conceptualizations of moral injury, trauma’s moral dimension seems to be understood in a rather mechanistic and individualized manner. This article makes a start in developing an adequately founded conceptualization of the role of morality in deployment-related distress. It does so by reviewing and synthesizing insights from different disciplines into morality and trauma. This discussion will lead to three positions: (1) values and norms are by definition characterized by conflict, (2) moral conflict may entail important social dimensions, and (3) moral conflict may lead to altered beliefs about previously held values. These insights provide important steps in further developing conceptions of the role of morality in deployment-related suffering.     

指挥员作战决策行为的EWA学习模型分析

摘要：为在根本上提高作战决策质量,从行为学角度入手,以指挥员这一“人”为中心,并结合认知科学、心理学等知识对指挥员作战决策行为进行研究。从博弈角度出发,通过引入EWA模型,对指挥员作战决策行为进行分析和优化。结果表明,EWA模型,特别是加入“老练”指挥员后的模型能够明显改善指挥员决策行为,对指挥员,尤其是经验匮乏的指挥员决策行为表现有着重要的作用。     

第四代歼击机空战战术决策研究

根据第四代歼击机的作战能力,分析了空战过程中可能存在的三种态势,提出了影响第四代歼击机空战战术的重要因素。结合影响因素进行了模糊决策讨论,基于模糊神经网络的方法完成了空战决策系统的设计,并通过神经网络的训练,确定了模糊决策网络。最后,通过仿真验证,表明决策系统实际输出与期望结果是一致的,决策结果是准确的,能够为决策者根据战场态势进行决策提供参考,缩短了决策时间,提高了指挥决策效能。     

作战辅助决策中的不确定性信息处理方法

根据作战辅助决策的过程,分别分析了对不确定性信息的处理方法.实践证明,该处理方法具有较高的实用价值,可用于作战辅助决策的参考.     

Countering the effects of IED systems in Afghanistan: an integral approach

The current approach to countering the threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan has met with limited success. The relative lack of success may be in part because the current approach is not holistic and discounts the social systems that foster the IEDs. Insurgents are using IEDs as a tool to further their strategic aims, but the coalition and to a lesser extent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) are attacking the IEDs as if they are an end in and of themselves. Combining network disruption with information change maximizes the opportunities for mitigating the IED threat. More specifically, to mitigate the IED threat requires disrupting the social and economic systems associated with IEDs, and at the same time providing alternative economic opportunities and improving rule of law and governance at the local level. In other words, counter-IED (C-IED) must be Counter-Insurgency (COIN) centric to be successful. This paper reviews the current state of C-IED efforts, identifies five main problems with the current approach, and suggests changes to reduce or mitigate the IED threat in Afghanistan.     

蒙特卡洛法的截击空战仿真

针对具体空战环节,应用蒙特卡洛方法仿真了截击空战的全过程,提出了截击空战仿真的程序逻辑方案;并结合具体实例,得出仿真数据,定量分析了空战毁伤概率,进而分析了截击空战的作战效能。仿真结果比较符合实际空战情况,具有一定的创新性和实际应用价值,其分析问题解决问题的方法和过程对解决类似的问题有一定的借鉴意义。     

基于规则推理的海战仿真实体决策方法

研究在海军战术仿真中应用基于规则推理的方法实现作战实体的自主决策行为,该方法用决策规则描述作战实体决策时所依据的军事决策知识,通过对决策规则的推理实现决策作战实体的决策推理过程.分别介绍了作战实体的决策模型、决策规则的知识表示方法以及决策模型的决策推理方法.基于规则推理的海战仿真实体决策方法推理机制接近人类的思维方式,结构逻辑容易为军事人员所掌握,易于理解和维护,便于实现.     

Women combatants and the liberation movements in South Africa

This article examines women's role as combatants in national liberation forces in South Africa. Three categories – guerrilla girls, combative mothers and the in-betweeners – are introduced to underscore the varied ways in which women have participated in combat within the national liberation movements. Factors such as age and one's ability to leave the country affected whether women could participate in combat as ‘guerrilla girls’ or if it limited them to fighting apartheid violence from home, or if there were women who can be defined as having fallen somewhere in between these categories. These categories are used to theorise women's combat roles in the anti-apartheid struggle, thus broadening and challenging the dominant notions of combat that often hide women's contributions in war. In this regard, different periods of struggle, physical location, as well as age, determined the methods of activism available to men and women.     

Female participation in war: Bio‐cultural interactions

Throughout history fighting has been associated with men. Cross‐cultural studies of male/female differences have found serious violence as the most distinctive sex difference there is. Is that a matter of education and social conventions, or are men naturally far more adapted to fighting than women are? This question is at the centre of public debate nowadays regarding the right and ability of women to enlist in combat roles in the armed services. The article attempts to elucidate the nature of the bio‐cultural interactions involved, whose complexity, and even existence, are all too often ignored in the debate.     

不确定条件下编队协同作战空中目标威胁评估

针对决策环境的不确定性,对不确定条件下舰艇编队协同作战的空中目标威胁评估过程进行了深入研究;在此基础上,根据舰艇编队协同决策的特点,综合运用风险型多属性决策理论,建立了满足不同决策层的舰艇目标威胁评估模型和编队目标威胁评估模型,从而提出了不确定条件下编队协同作战的空中目标威胁评估方法。最后,通过实例说明了所提方法的有效性。     

Moral Advantage,Strategic Advantage?

This article argues that Man is a moral being and strategy inherently is a human project. It follows that strategy has to have a moral dimension. All human beings have a moral compass, acquired by social–cultural necessity. The compass has survival value. The problem is that the human race does not possess only one such compass. Since will is key to strategic performance, and because that will requires as fuel a sufficient confidence in the justice of a cause, in principle at least one belligerent's moral armament may be usefully superior to another's. One can claim with confidence that strategic advantage can be secured by some moral advantage.     

Bringing it all back home: Hollywood returns to war

This essay looks at two Hollywood films Black Hawk Down and We Were Soldiers as reflective of a more general popular mood in the US that accompanied Operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ and the removal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In part this mood was a militaristic one, though this can also be seen as a rather belated response by Hollywood to invest moral purpose in the US military following an earlier spate of hostile Vietnam war films. The two films examined are different in form: Black Hawk Down is a combat film about extraction while We Were Soldiers is unusual for a US Vietnam war film for investing moral purpose in both the US combat troops as well as the Vietnamese enemy. Overall it is possible to conclude that both films contribute to a kicking by Hollywood of its earlier Vietnam war ‘syndrome’ which is likely to have wider cultural and political repercussions.     

Home-Grown Fighting: A Response to the Argument for a Byzantine Influence on MS I.33

Abstract

In an earlier issue, Dr. Timothy Dawson suggested that the fighting techniques found in Royal Armouries MS I.33 may have been influenced by earlier Byzantine sword and shield combat. For evidence, he cites a series of 9th-century ivory carvings depicting similar positions found in I.33. This article is a response to Dr. Dawson’s, in which it is argued that there is ample evidence for similar combat positions being found in Western Europe that both pre-date and are contemporary with I.33.     

Towards a Humanitarian Military Ethics: Moral Autonomy,Integrity and Obligations in the British and German Armed Forces

Humanitarian operations may pose challenges to which armed forces prepared for warfighting seem rather ill-equipped. It is the aim of this article to examine in what way military ethics should be adapted to humanitarian tasks. Two ideal types of military ethics are defined here: warfighting and humanitarian. The warfighting ethic is supposed to maximise the utility of the military in war and combat and to that end utilises the virtues of loyalty and honour. In contrast, humanitarian obligations require to a larger extent the development of personal integrity and an ability to follow one’s own conscience. The adaptation of military ethics is demonstrated in the case studies of the UK armed forces and the German Bundeswehr. Whereas the moral code of the UK armed forces remains anchored in the principles of the warfighting ethic, the case of the Bundeswehr presents a military ethic closely approximating the humanitarian ideal type.     

导弹单发杀伤概率影响因素分析

提出了进行导弹单发杀伤概率影响因素分析的必要性,进行了大量的导弹单发杀伤概率仿真计算,对作战条件和弹目交会条件等重要影响因素进行了深入地分析研究,并对导弹的作战使用、战术决策和目标机的最佳规避机动策略进行了深入探讨。研究成果给飞行员在导弹作战使用过程中进行战术决策提供了强有力的科学理论依据。     

潜艇自航式诱饵组合使用方法

潜艇自航式诱饵组合使用方法的优劣主要评判依据是使用的方法最终使得潜艇对抗鱼雷成功的概率,对抗时间和诱骗距离是影响对抗成功概率的两个重要因素,它们又主要围绕发射时机、初始航向以及潜艇机动等几个问题展开。通过分析各个诱饵的作战使命,在一定态势下,根据诱饵的性能、鱼雷报警距离及舷角等各方面因素,建立大小口径声诱饵协同作战的弹道模型,并由此得到了诱饵发射时机、初始航向等参数。     

潜艇自航式诱饵组合使用研究

潜艇自航式诱饵组合使用方法的优劣主要评判依据是使用的方法最终使得潜艇对抗鱼雷成功的概率,对抗时间和诱骗距离是影响对抗成功概率的两个重要因素,它们又主要围绕发射时机、初始航向以及潜艇机动等几个问题展开。该文通过分析各个诱饵的作战使命,在一定态势下,根据诱饵的性能、鱼雷报警距离及舷角等各方面因素,建立大小口径声诱饵协同作战的弹道模型,并由此得到了诱饵发射时机、初始航向等参数。     

A Lanchester-type aggregated-force model of conventional ground combat

This article develops a Lanchester-type model of large-scale conventional ground combat between two opposing forces in a “sector”. It is shown that nonlinear Helmbold-type equations of warfare with operational losses may be used to represent the loss-rate curves that have been used in many aggregated-force models. These nonlinear differential equations are used to model the attrition of combat capability (as quantified by a so-called firepower index) in conjunction with a rate-of-advance equation that relates motion of the contact zone (or FEBA) between the opposing forces to the force ratio and tactical decisions of the combatants. This simplified auxiliary model is then used to develop some important insights into the dynamics of FEBA movement used in large-scale aggregated-force models. Different types of behavior for FEBA movement over time are shown to correspond to different ranges of values for the initial force ratio, for example, an attack will “stall out” for a range of initial force ratios above a specific threshold value, but it will “break out” for force ratios above a second specific threshold value. Such FEBA-movement predictions are essentially based on being able to forecast changes over time in the force ratio.     

UCAV编队对地攻击智能决策系统总体结构

UCAV编队对地攻击是未来战争制信息权和制空权的关键所在,结合无人作战飞机(UCAV)与有人驾驶飞机各自的特点和优势,提出了UCAV编队对地攻击系统的基本组成和对地攻击流程.根据UCAV编队对地攻击的战术决策类型和决策方式,构造了UCAV编队对地攻击智能决策系统的总体结构并且提出了决策系统应该解决的关键技术,详细分析了所建立的UCAV编队对地攻击决策系统的决策方式和决策流程,并且对该系统所涉及的关键技术进行了详细的研究.     

航母编队防空作战编成评判方法

航母编队防空作战编成是影响其海上生存和完成作战任务的关键因素,在构建航母编队防空作战效能评估指标体系基础上,运用直觉模糊集理论的多属性决策方法,对航母编队防空作战编成待评方案进行评估。实例证明了该方法的可用性和有效性,可为航母编队指挥员指挥决策提供理论和方法支撑。