The Iraq Survey Group: From Weapons of Mass Destruction to Counterinsurgency

The discovery and elimination of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was a focal point of the Coalition's strategy and operations in the aftermath of Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’. Despite the failure of the WMD mission to meet expectations after almost two years of intensive operations, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was able to integrate multinational and multi-agency forces to provide detailed intelligence regarding the history of Iraq's WMD programs and to assist in the battle against insurgents. The ISG's experience raises the question of whether a standing intelligence force could become a key component in future counterproliferation and counterterrorism efforts around the world.1 ¹The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Dept. of Defense, or the US Government. View all notes     

Book reviews

Norman Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of “Ethnic Cleansing”. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 1995. Pp.xiv + 247; app., map, notes, cartoon.

Maria Jose Moyano, Argentina's Lost Patrol: Armed Struggle, 1969–1979. New Haven: Connecticut Yale University Press, 1995. Pp.xiii + 226, biblio., abbreviations, 10 figures, 1 map, tables, index; $25/£16.95. ISBN 0–300–01622–6.

Donald E. Schulz and Deborah Sundloff Schulz, The United States, Honduras, and the Crisis in Central America, Westview Thematic Studies in Latin America, Boulder, Co: Westview, 1994. Pp.368, map, figure, select biblio., abbreviations, index. $52.50/£37.50; (cloth) $17.95/£11.95 (paper). ISBN 0–8133–1324–4 and 1323–6.

Joseph H. Alexander and Merrill L. Bartlett, Sea Soldiers in the Cold War: Amphibious Warfare 1945–1991. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1995. Pp.iii + 178, 1 map, 29 illus, biblio, index. $32.95. ISBN

Gary P. Cox, The Halt in the Mud: French Strategic Planning from Waterloo to Sedan. Westview Press, 1994. Pp.258, maps, notes, biblio, index. £33.50. ISBN 0–133–1536–0.     

空间碎片天基主动清除技术发展现状及趋势

随着国内外航天发射任务逐年增多,大量在轨滞留的失效航天器将成为未来空间资源有效利用所面临的一个严峻挑战。空间碎片天基主动清除技术是从根源上对空间资源化利用与安全处置的措施,将提升和加强近地空间的可持续循环利用。本文明晰了空间碎片天基主动清除的概念,分析了空间碎片天基主动清除技术的发展历程,提出了其发展过程中面临的非合作目标相对导航、协调控制和捕获方式及装置等主要问题,为我国空间碎片天基主动清除技术的发展提出了有益参考。     

Concavity and monotonicity properties in a groundwater management model

We consider a discrete‐time groundwater model in which the cost of pumping takes a slightly different form to that which has been traditional in the research literature to date. This enables us to prove that (a) the optimal pumping quantity is nondecreasing in the ground water stock, (b) the stock level remaining after each period's pumping is also nondecreasing in the groundwater stock, (c) the optimal decision is determined by maximizing a concave function, and finally (d) the optimal pumping quantity is nonincreasing in the number of periods to go. We show that (a)–(c), while intuitive, do not hold under traditional modeling assumptions. We also explain the connections between our results and similar ones for some classic problems of operations research. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 00: 000–000, 2011