COOPERATION,SIGNALS, AND SANCTIONS

This paper uses game theory and modeling to address the role of incentive structures and information dynamics in nuclear inspections. The traditional argument is that compliant states should be willing to allow inspections to prove their innocence, while proliferating states are likely to impede inspections. This argument does not take into account the historical variation in inspection, signaling, and sanctioning behaviors. Using a game theoretic analysis and model, it is shown that the separation of proliferators from nonproliferators only occurs when the likelihood of proliferation is high and punishment costs are moderate. The model assumes that states can choose how much to cooperate with inspectors and must pay opportunity or secrecy costs when inspections are effective. The results are tested against a set of real-life cases, providing support for the claims of historical variation and the model's deductive propositions.     

Political Scientists and Historians in Search of the Bomb

Britain's failure to cut military commitments in spite of escalating defence costs was not the result of blocking policies by disgruntled services. Rather, there was no determination among Whitehall's political departments to cut commitments even before the service departments could obstruct a decision on force levels. The Conservative governments under Macmillan and Douglas‐Home showed a propensity for substantial force reductions in Europe rather than in out‐of NATO areas. This remained London's long‐term aim even after it had been accepted to build up British troops in Europe to agreed force levels. During Alec Douglas‐Home's premiership Britain's global military role, especially east of Suez, gained a greater significance. An Anglo‐American military axis operating in the Far East and the Indian Ocean became a prominent feature. Ultimately, Anglo‐American military interdependence outside NATO was to ensure that Britain would be able to pursue a policy with more room for independent action.     

Non-lethal weapons and the long tail of warfare

This paper examines whether non-lethal weapons (NLWs) enhance the capability of the US armed forces to conduct irregular warfare (IW) operations. With expectations that the operational environment will only continue to become more complex in the future, NLWs may reduce the level of violence received, as well as dispensed, by US forces while performing tasks in the IW spectrum. We argue that NLWs increase the ability of US forces to address the long tail of warfare and their deployment should be increased in the near term.     

Local search techniques for the generalized resource constrained project scheduling problem

In this article we address the problem of scheduling a single project network with both precedence and resource constraints through the use of a local search technique. We choose a solution definition which guarantees precedence feasibility, allowing the procedure to focus on overcoming resource infeasibility. We use the 110-problem data set of Patterson to test our procedure. Our results indicate a significant improvement over the best heuristic results reported to date for these problems (Bell and Han [1]). Two major advantages of the local search algorithm are its ability to handle arbitrary objective functions and constraints and its effectiveness over a wide range of problem sizes. We present a problem example with an objective function and resource constraints which include nonlinear and non-continuous components, which are easily considered by the procedure. The results of our algorithm are significantly better than random solutions to the problem. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Privatizing the struggle against Somali piracy

Pirate attacks against commercial vessels in the Western Indian Ocean and nearby seas reached an unprecedented level in 2011. Despite concerted efforts by the international community and shipping companies to address this threat by conducting naval patrols and equipping commercial vessels with non-lethal defenses, the frequency of pirate attacks continues to increase. The general ineffectiveness of existing anti-piracy measures has sparked interest in expanding the use of armed private security contractors to protect commercial vessels from pirate attacks. This article argues that armed private security contractors can, indeed, enhance the security of commercial vessels because these actors can provide onsite protection for commercial vessels, which should allow them to respond very quickly to pirate attacks, and because these actors are willing to use deadly force against pirates. However, this article also argues that expanding the use of these actors may increase the degree of violence used during pirate attacks, pose threats to the safety of innocent civilians, and violate a number of domestic and international laws.     

Unemployed youth: ‘time bombs’ or engines for growth?

While popular narratives about success in South Africa focus on individual effort, accidents of birth continue to determine life prospects. Inequalities in early childhood development, health, and education narrow the range of possibilities that young people have available to them, and this impacts on their risk appetite, including, through the workings of the maturing brain, a propensity to violence, substance abuse, and unsafe sex. New technology offers young people an unprecedented ability to organise and network. This fact, combined with high levels of youth dissatisfaction, unemployment, and marginalisation, leads many to worry that the young are “ticking time bombs”. While there certainly are risks, great unused pools of youth labour also present an opportunity for engaging them in social advancement programmes. Structured youth service is a tried and tested policy option that, when implemented as part of an integrated youth development strategy, can enlist thousands of young people in devoting their considerable energies to leadership for the public good.     

Age replacement policies in two time scales

We develop and estimate optimal age replacement policies for devices whose age is measured in two time scales. For example, the age of a jet engine can be measured in the number of flight hours and the number of landings. Under a single‐scale age replacement policy, a device is replaced at age τ or upon failure, whichever occurs first. We show that a natural generalization to two scales is to replace nonfailed devices when their usage path crosses the boundary of a two‐dimensional region M, where M is a lower set with respect to the matrix partial order. For lifetimes measured in two scales, we consider devices that age along linear usage paths. We generalize the single‐scale long‐run average cost, estimate optimal two‐scale policies, and give an example. We note that these policies are strongly consistent estimators of the true optimal policies under mild conditions, and study small‐sample behavior using simulation. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 50: 592–613, 2003.     

Performance and properties of Q‐Statistic monitoring schemes

In this article, we study the Shewhart chart of Q statistics proposed for the detection of process mean shifts in start‐up processes and short runs. Exact expressions for the run‐length distribution of this chart are derived and evaluated using an efficient computational procedure. The procedure can be considerably faster than using direct simulation. We extend our work to analyze the practice of requiring multiple signals from the chart before responding, a practice sometimes followed with Shewhart charts. The results show that waiting to receive multiple signals severely reduces the probability of quickly detecting shifts in certain cases, and therefore may be considered a risky practice. Operational guidelines for practitioners implementing the chart are discussed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2009