Defense spending and the macroeconomy

Given Kinsella's (1990, 1991) appeal for analysis to be pursued using sub‐annual level of data, we pursue such an endeavor in this paper. We examime the effect of defence spending on real output, the unemployment rate, price level, and interest rate covering a quarterly time frame 1960:1 to 1988:1 using an unrestricted vector autoregression framework. Our results parallel the findings of Kinsella in that there appears no causal relationship in either direction between defence spending and economic performance.     

The Deutch commission report: An overview

The threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is real and urgent. Combating this threat requires a new and comprehensive approach by the federal government. It requires sustained leadership at the top and an organizational structure that can set policies and objectives for combating proliferation; develop integrated, government‐wide plans to implement those policies and objectives, including plans for acquiring necessary technology; make appropriate decisions regarding how resources should be allocated to carry out those plans; and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of our policies, programs, and operations. There is no such comprehensive approach today.     

Dual‐ascent and primal heuristics for production‐assembly‐distribution system design

This article proposes two dual‐ascent algorithms and uses each in combination with a primal drop heuristic embedded within a branch and bound framework to solve the uncapacitated production assembly distribution system (i.e., supply chain) design problem, which is formulated as a mixed integer program. Computational results indicate that one approach, which combines primal drop and dual‐ascent heuristics, can solve instances within reasonable time and prescribes solutions with gaps between the primal and dual solution values that are less than 0.15%, an efficacy suiting it for actual large‐scale applications. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013     

Thailand and the Insurgency in the South

The insurgency in southern Thailand has proven to be intractable over the last few years. The insurgents, who comprise several different groups, have largely retained the initiative in a series of relatively unsophisticated operations. Although involving ethnic Malay Muslims – and marked by an increasingly strong Islamist ideology – the insurgency has been predominantly ethnic rather than religious. External jihadist involvement has been minimal at best. The recent coup in Thailand may improve the odds of reaching some form of accommodation with the southern insurgents; but it is likely that the south will remain a continuing security problem for Bangkok.     

Insurgency in amber: ethnic opposition groups in Myanmar

Multiple ethnic insurgencies have existed in Myanmar since independence. The military junta's response has been extremely brutal at the tactical level, but has shown some political astuteness at the strategic level, with a series of ceasefires with most of the ethnic groups. Despite these ceasefires – most of which have resulted in the continued existence of quasi-independent armed groups – other ethnic movements have continued their armed operations. The overall strategic picture is one of stalemate, with the ethnic movements continuing to exist, but with few realistic prospects of expanding their operations.     

The Insurgency Environment in Northeast India

The northeast states of India have faced a series of insurgencies almost since independence. Most insurgent groups have been based on the competing demands of various ethnic groups, with conflicts not only between the insurgents and the government, but also between groups. The combination of anti-government and intercommunal violence shows little sign of ending. Although the Indian government has made progress in dealing with the largest groups, the continued existence of several dozen insurgent movements represents a significant security threat to internal stability in India.     

Scheduling workers in a constricted area

A generalization of the equi-partitioning problem, termed the 2D-Partition Problem, is formulated. The motivation is an aircraft maintenance scheduling problem with the following characteristics. The complete maintenance overhaul of a single aircraft requires the completion of some 350 tasks. These tasks require a varying number of technicians working at the same time. For large subsets of these 350 tasks, the constraining resource is physical space—tasks must be completed in a physical space of limited size such as the cockpit. Furthermore, there is no precedence relationship among the tasks. For each subset, the problem is to schedule the tasks to minimize makespan. Let m denote the maximum number of technicians that can work at the same time in the physical area under consideration. We present optimization algorithms for m = 2 and 3. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Scheduling on a single machine with a single breakdown to minimize stochastically the number of tardy jobs

Jobs with known processing times and due dates have to be processed on a machine which is subject to a single breakdown. The moment of breakdown and the repair time are independent random variables. Two cases are distinguished with reference to the processing time preempted by the breakdown (no other preemptions are allowed): (i) resumption without time losses and (ii) restart from the beginning. Under certain compatible conditions, we find the policies which minimize stochastically the number of tardy jobs.