Helping hands: civil–military cooperation and Italy's military operation abroad

In the Post-Bipolar Era the growing complexity of the military operations requires a new approach for the resolution of international crises. Since the end of the Cold War, peace support operations (PSO) have become the mainstay and principal occupation of most Western armies. At the same time, Italy has been one of the most important actors in such an area. The article focuses on the cooperation between military and civil components (a process called CIMIC) as a key variable in the Italian PSOs. We will analyse in detail the main lessons learned from past military interventions as well as the general context in which new tendencies are taking place. The maintaining of a minimum security frame becomes essential to fulfil activities ‘collateral’ to the mission: reconstructing services and infrastructure, food distribution, water and medication, law and order, de-mining, training of local forces, and supporting local institutions. These are the main tasks to obtain thrust and support from the population.     

Terrorism,insurgency, kidnapping,and security in Africa's energy sector

Energy continues to serve as the bedrock of modern economies and the main driver of modern society. For Africa, the production and supply of energy resources such as crude oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, biomass, biofuels and other renewables are an important source of employment, rents, taxes, royalties and profits. This sector brings in several tens of billions of dollars of revenue annually. The production and delivery of such resources, however, depend on critical infrastructures such as pipelines, refineries, processing plants, terminals, rigs, electrical energy pylons, substations, pump stations, vessels, and tankers. These infrastructures have been attacked by terrorists, insurgents, vandals and saboteurs, all of whom see them as targets against which to register their grievances and extract concessions from the state. This paper is a chronological account of some of the documented incidents of terrorism, insurgency, kidnapping, destruction, sabotage, and human casualties suffered in the oil and gas sectors in Africa between 1999 and 2012. It is based on data extracted from the databases of the RAND Database of World Terrorism Incidents and the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database (GTD).     

A1 Qaeda and the radical Islamic challenge to western strategy

The September 11 global crisis prompted by the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon raises major questions concerning the nature and trajectory of terrorism in the post-Cold War global order. Hitherto, terrorism has been largely debated by analysts at the level of nation states. Terrorist and insurgent movements have also been largely anchored in nationalist and ethnic power bases even when they have sought to mobilise a transnational ideological appeal on religious or class grounds. There have been a few exceptions to this pattern such as the alliance between the German Baader-Meinhof group and the Japanese Red Army Faction, but even such international alliances as this did not, until at least the 1980s, presage anything like a global terrorist network necessitating a global strategic response. This study examines terrorism and global strategic responses.     

Tacit support for terrorism: The rapprochement between the USSR and Palestinian guerrilla organizations following the 1967 war

This article demonstrates the inconsistent and wavering Soviet attitude towards national liberation movements in general and the Palestinian organizations in particular. Until the late 1960s, the Soviets viewed these organizations with suspicion, hesitating to engage in political dialogue with them. However, in the 1970s, political and military events in the region, as well as modifications in the Kremlin's Cold War strategies, led to a general shift towards the Middle East in Soviet foreign policy. Soviet leaders showed increased willingness to provide certain Palestinian organizations with arms with which to conduct terrorist activities against Israeli, pro-Israeli, Jewish and Western targets. The article explores the complex relations between Palestinian organizations and the USSR in the field of international terror. The study also exposes and analyzes the nature and content of Soviet–Palestinian arms dialogues and transactions. It provides clear evidence that Soviet policymakers and other luminaries were fully informed of, and sometimes directly involved in, these transactions and dialogues at the highest levels.     

The UK,interrogation and Iraq, 2003–2008

The UK’s interrogation operations during the conflict in Iraq (2003–2008) are often portrayed by the media as involving significant amounts of mistreatment. This article demonstrates that these practices are not necessarily representative of the UK’s interrogation operations across this conflict. In doing so it contributes to the limited literature on the practice of interrogation and on the UK’s combat operations in Iraq. The UK’s interrogation capability, and therefore its intelligence-gathering capability, is shown to have rested primarily with the military’s Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT). The JFIT suffered from limitations to the number, training and experience of its interrogators and interpreters. It is argued that maintaining a permanent, higher level of preparedness for interrogation by the British armed forces is desirable.     

Remembering and forgetting Mirambo: Histories of war in modern Africa

ABSTRACT

While the study of organised violence is considered essential to understanding the history of the West, and accordingly imbued with various layers of meaning and remembrance, war is widely regarded as inimical to the modern nation in Africa and stable development more broadly. Using examples drawn from primarily from East Africa, this paper considers the ways in which warfare in the deeper (‘precolonial’) past has been framed and envisioned in recent decades, in particular by governments whose own roots lie in revolutionary armed struggle and who began life as guerrilla movements. While in some cases particular elements of the deeper past were indeed mobilised in pursuit of contemporary political goals, in many other scenarios histories of precolonial violence were beheld as problematic and unworthy of remembrance. This paper highlights the paradox and ambiguity which has attended the memory of key aspects of Africa’s deeper past.     

SIM—LISP:一个通信网络管理专家系统外壳的设计与实现

本文介绍了笔者为开发名为OONMES的网络管理专家系统所实现的一个简单专家系统工具SIM-LISP。SIM-LISP是一个用C/C++语言来实现的模拟LISP语言的可调用函数集,它短小精巧,速度快,可以完成针对网管专家系统的事实或规则知识的表示、匹配、合一和推理等基本操作,并有与知识对象的连接功能,是网管专家系统内核实现的支撑环境。     

Helping hands: external support for the KNU insurgency in Burma

This article analyses to what extent the Burmese KNU insurgency made use of external support from states, refugees, and diasporas. Based on extensive fieldwork it is concluded that support from neighbouring states and refugees has for years kept the Karen rebellion alive. Western countries perceived forms of resistance to the illegitimate Burmese regime as just and have therefore played a crucial role in the continuation of conflict in Karen State. It is important that policymakers and donors as well as executing organizations continue to reflect critically on the way they exercise their work.     

Al Qaida on the US invasion of Afghanistan in their own words

This article consists of selected translations from captured interviews and dairies of Al Qaida members. The time period covered is from mid-2001 to early 2002 and concerns their operations in Afghanistan. The material clearly conveys a range of emotion, from confident to despondent, as well as efforts to contest the US actions. The first several pages give the reader context and some possible “lessons learned,” but the story(ies) are best told by the Al Qaida members themselves. All names are pseudonyms.     

基于GTST-DMLD-ESD的装备RMS建模仿真

装备的RMS是装备的重要设计参数,是影响战备完好和保障能力的关键因素.引入GTST-DMLD作为主要建模工具,建立起装备系统的RMS描述模型,以ESD为补充和扩展,对维修过程进行建模.并以GTST-DMLD-ESD模型作为装备RMS仿真的核心,对装备RMS仿真模型的总体框架进行了研究,并对各模块进行了较为详细的探讨.     

Does Intent equal Capability? Al-Qaeda and Weapons of Mass Destruction

The prospect of terrorists deploying weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is often referred to as the foremost danger to American national security. This danger has become more realistic because of al-Qaeda's expanding global network and the expressed willingness to kill thousands of civilians. In the past four years, numerous media reports have documented the group's ongoing quest for WMD capabilities; many reports have detailed al-Qaeda members’ attempts to manufacture or obtain certain chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) agents to use in WMD against targets in the West and the Middle East. Yet the question remains: Does al-Qaeda's current WMD capability match its actual intent? While most studies of the group have focused on its explicit desire for WMD, allegations of CBRN acquisition, and the killing potential of specific CBRN agents, few open-source studies have closely examined the evolution of al-Qaeda's consideration of WMD and, most notably, the merit of actual CBRN production instructions as depicted and disseminated in the group's own literature and manuals. The following report will examine the history of al-Qaeda's interest in CBRN agents, the evolution of the network's attitude toward these weapons, and the internal debate within the organization concerning acquisition and use of WMD. More so, the following research will assess the validity of actual CBRN production instructions and capabilities as displayed and disseminated in al-Qaeda's own literature and websites.     

Cyber sheiks and grassroots jihadis: the war in Syria and the devolution of the Bosnian Salafi communities

ABSTRACT

What was the scope of the Bosnian jihadi participation in the war in Syria? Did the Bosnian volunteers tend to join one particular faction? Why did the Bosnian youngsters decide to join the holy war in the Levant? Was this an organized and hierarchical process or was this a grassroots movement? Last, were all the Salafis in Bosnia supportive of this dynamic or did this process cause internal frictions? These are some of the questions that this research will try to answer.     

Late Medieval Lance Use: Mounted Combat and Martial Arts in Western Europe from the 14th to the 16th Century

Despite the lance’s status and the amount of attention the couched lance has received in historiography, study of its martial art has been neglected. The various lance types and techniques used by western European cavalry have only recently begun to receive scholarly attention. Additionally, Medieval European lance use has too often been studied in isolation, without an adequate understanding of the idiosyncratic and asymmetrical dynamics of mounted combat. Although the charge with the couched lance was a valid tactic, it was only one of many. Light and heavy lances were used in one hand or two to trip, block, unhorse, and wrestle. These techniques were governed by the harsh laws of distance, speed, impact, iron, and asymmetry. By utilizing the surviving Fechtbücher and several Peninsular and Near Eastern sources, a brief foray into the diverse techniques of lance use and their purposes has been attempted here.     

Country survey XVI the defence sector in the economy of a declining superpower: Soviet Union and Russia, 1965-2001

The Soviet Union was able to develop a large military-industrial complex and become the world's second superpower despite deficiencies in its centrally planned economy because defence was given high priority status and special planning, rationing and administrative mechanisms were used to attain national security objectives. However, in the period 1976-85 the effectiveness of priority protection diminished and defence institutions experienced more of the problems typical of the shortage economic system. The heavy defence burden also created growing difficulties for the civilian economy. The attempts by the Gorbachev government to reform the defence sector and improve defence-economic relationships during perestroika (1985-91) uniformly failed. For most of the transition period, the Russian military-industrial complex has been adversely affected by its low priority status, cuts in defence spending, instability of the hybrid politico-economic system, and negative growth of the economy. The armed forces and defence industry have been reduced in size and their outputs of military services and equipment have fallen to low levels. Nevertheless, the Russian armed forces still have over one million troops, significant stocks of sophisticated conventional weapons, and a large nuclear arsenal. The government of President Putin has raised the priority of the defence sector, increased real defence spending, and adopted ambitious plans to revive Russian military power. It is likely, though, that tight resource constraints will hamper efforts to reform the armed forces and to upgrade weapons. By 2010 Russia will be an important, but not dominant, military power in Eurasia.     

Traffickers,terrorists, and a ‘new security challenge’: Russian counternarcotics strategy and the Federal Service for the Control of the Drugs Trade

The collapse of the Soviet Union precipitated the massive expansion of drug use and trade in Russia. The country now has one of the largest populations of injecting drug users in the world and has become the largest single-country market for Afghan heroin. In 2003 the Federal Service for the Control of the Drugs Trade was created to coordinate a comprehensive counternarcotics strategy appropriate to the scale of this threat. The service continues to face a number of challenges in its early stages of development. However, it has made considerable advances in improving responses to large-scale organised crime and in building international cooperation.     

A model for geographically distributed combat interactions of swarming naval and air forces

This article describes the Distributed Interaction Campaign Model (DICM), an exploratory campaign analysis tool and asset allocation decision‐aid for managing geographically distributed and swarming naval and air forces. The model is capable of fast operation, while accounting for uncertainty in an opponent's plan. It is intended for use by commanders and analysts who have limited time for model runs, or a finite budget. The model is purpose‐built for the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, and supports analysis of the following questions: What happens when swarms of geographically distributed naval and air forces engage each other and what are the key elements of the opponents’ force to attack? Are there changes to force structure that make a force more effective, and what impacts will disruptions in enemy command and control and wide‐area surveillance have? Which insights are to be gained by fast exploratory mathematical/computational campaign analysis to augment and replace expensive and time‐consuming simulations? An illustrative example of model use is described in a simple test scenario. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 562–576, 2016     

Thomas Firth and Sons – Steelmakers to the Arms Industries. Part 2: Heavy Armaments

Firth’s were the first of the Sheffield steel makers to enter the field armaments. Their involvement with Colt has been outlined in an article in the journal of the Colt Collectors Association in America and their activities as steelmakers to the small-arms industries has been covered in a previous issue of this Journal. This article gives a brief overview of their involvement as manufacturers in the field of heavy armaments, being the first to make all-steel guns and their evolving role in the use of steel for ordnance, culminating in the displacement of wrought iron by the adoption of steel for ordnance manufacture by the Royal Gun Factory in the 1880s. It also highlights their development of stainless steel in this context.     

Information Is Not a Weapons System

ABSTRACT

While many militaries have tried to capitalize on the potential of information operations in internal war, few have succeeded. I argue that military information campaigns fall short of expectations for two reasons. First, the theory of influence militaries generally embrace – communications as a non-lethal weapons system – is largely invalid. While treating information as a weapons system makes it easier to integrate it into the existing military planning system, this overstates the independent effects of communications on behavior and understates the importance of interactive effects of what commercial marketing theory refers to as the “marketing mix” – product, price, promotion, and placement. It would be more appropriate to treat military information operations as a form of marketing: a composite effort to induce a specific behavior in a target audience by applying a combination of material and ideational instruments. The marketing model suggests that the efficacy of information operations will depend not simply on the message and its delivery (promotion) but on the behavior the sender seeks to induce (the product), the costs of that behavior (the price), and the opportunities available for such behavior (the placement).