Think again – supplying war: reappraising military logistics and its centrality to strategy and war

This article argues that logistics constrains strategic opportunity while itself being heavily circumscribed by strategic and operational planning. With the academic literature all but ignoring the centrality of logistics to strategy and war, this article argues for a reappraisal of the critical role of military logistics, and posits that the study and conduct of war and strategy are incomplete at best or false at worst when they ignore this crucial component of the art of war. The article conceptualises the logistics–strategy nexus in a novel way, explores its contemporary manifestation in an age of uncertainty, and applies it to a detailed case study of UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.     

面向验证的启发技术设计

采用有效的人工智能技术提高验证效率正成为解决验证复杂性的手段之一。本文针对STG（State Transition Graph）中状态枚举数据量大的问题,提出隐含遍历的状态映射策略。并根据状态存储和电路结构特征,重点研究了HASH表状态冲突处理、函数域限定、函数不相交分解和混合搜索等启发技术策略。     

二次流引射对保形非对称喷管性能的影响

发动机与飞机后体结构设计合理与否直接影响发动机的部件匹配和性能。利用三维雷诺平均N-S方程和k-ωSST湍流模型对飞翼布局无人机保形非对称喷管在典型飞行状态下开展了内外流流场特性的数值分析,获得了后体尾喷管推力性能和三维流动特征随二次流压力比的变化趋势。结果表明:发动机喷管落压比条件一定的前提下,通过合理优化二次流通道、增大二次流压力比,可以有效改善后体/喷管主流流场特性;当二次流与主流的流量比在0. 2%～1. 86%内时,后体尾喷管轴向推力系数的变化幅度大约为3%,在一定程度上能够减弱发动机主流的过膨胀程度,减小发动机推力损失,无人机后体尾喷管性能得到显著提高。     

大口径舰炮将重展雄风

由于浅水战争和不对称威胁,要求在中短距离上攻击各种目标,但这种条件常常严重地阻碍了反舰导弹性能的发挥。同反舰导弹相比,大口径火炮要便宜得多,能更加即时地使用,且快速灵活,所以现在各大军事强国都在加紧研制新型大口径舰炮,重新考虑使用大口径火炮来代替反舰导弹,并且提供海上火力支援,使大口径舰炮重新登上战舰的舞台。为此,介绍了美国、德国、英国、意大利、俄罗斯、法国的大口径火炮研制情况。     

基于蒙特卡洛法的无人机飞行冲突解脱安全评估

冲突解脱技术是无人机与有人机共域飞行的前提保障。针对目前缺少对冲突解脱技术安全评估的方法,提出运用蒙特卡洛法对飞行冲突进行仿真模拟,得出冲突解脱算法的安全效率。提出基于改进蚁群算法的冲突解脱技术,实现无人机的飞行冲突解脱;利用蒙特卡洛法,对飞行冲突过程进行大规模仿真,计算冲突解脱效率,与基本蚁群算法进行对比,并从安全角度对结果进行分析。提出的思路可为未来无人机空域运行安全评估体系的构建提供一种理论参考。     

Walking a tightrope: the International Criminal Court and conflict prevention in Africa

Many African countries gained political independence in the 1960s. This era of independence came with promises and great expectations of economic, political and social development. Fifty years later, it is certain that the promises and expectations of independence have not been easily realised. Perennial violent conflicts have continued to ravage many countries in Africa, causing the catastrophic breakdown of law and order. Therefore, one of the major issues in conflict resolution discourse in Africa is how to develop functional mechanisms for the prevention of violent conflicts. This article examines the capacity of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to act as a mechanism for conflict prevention in Africa. Notwithstanding the doubts and uncertainties associated with the impact of law on conflict transformation, this article argues in the main that the ICC contributes to conflict prevention in Africa by expressing global norms of international law, challenging the culture of impunity in some countries, contributing to general deterrence, speedily intervening in some violent conflicts, and contributing to building some records of atrocities by identifying who did what.     

The African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis: conceptual breakthrough or anti-imperialist phantom?

The creation of an African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis (ACIRC) is a sign of Africa's willingness to take its destiny into its own hands. Presented as a reaction to the slowness of the development of the African Standby Force (ASF), it is also a response to some of the ASF's conceptual weaknesses. This decision reflects a wish to establish an instrument better equipped to deal with the challenges Africa is facing. Departing from the (sub)regional logic of the ASF results from a desire to take into account the transnational nature of threats, while its enlarged mandate is meant to offer Africa the capacity to intervene in all kinds of conflicts, including by undertaking peace enforcement activities. But the obstacles on the road towards the actual creation and mobilisation of this capacity should not be underestimated. These include material difficulties, but also political tensions, between ‘small’ and ‘big’ states as well as between the African Union and subregional organisations. The risk then is high that the ACIRC, whose announcement came as a reaction to France's intervention in Mali, ends up joining the ranks of the many ‘anti-imperialist’ phantoms haunting the history of the Organization of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU). Confronted by events considered ‘neocolonial’ initiatives, African actors have indeed traditionally reacted by launching grand projects that never got off the ground. However, by actually establishing this new instrument, they may also demonstrate that times have definitively changed.     

The Kashmir conflict in South Asia: voices from Srinagar

This article looks at the Kashmir conflict in South Asia, which has been going on since 1947, when India and Pakistan became independent from British colonial rule. After looking at some historical background, the article looks at both the external dimension as well as the internal dimension of the conflict. The external dimension tends to focus on Indo-Pak relations over Kashmir and the internal dimension looks at India's repressive state policies within the state of Kashmir. This article uses Mary Kaldor's “New War” thesis as a theoretical framework to understand the situation and pays special attention to the conflict's very complex and multifaceted nature. The article argues that although the levels of violence have differed from time to time in the region since 1947, today the conflict seems to have less to do with Indo-Pak relations or the external side of things and has more to do with the internal dimension and India's undemocratic ways within Kashmir. Today, Kashmir is one of the most militarised conflict zones in the world. The stationing of the Indian military and paramilitary forces in the region has only exacerbated the situation since it is the security personnel who cause much of the problem. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act gives these security forces extraordinary powers in the region, which they often abuse. The armed forces have no real understanding of the local culture or sympathy for local religious sentiments. Poverty, corruption, administrative failure, police brutality, identity politics and human rights abuses are some of the key features associated with this conflict. Methodologically, a number of interviews were carried out with the local people in the region recently. From the data gathered through the interviews, it is very obvious that the people still feel very oppressed and that the situation is still very volatile, fraught with uncertainty. Finally, after making an assessment of the situation, the article tries to suggest methods of peaceful building and conflict management as the way forward.     

THE HUMAN CAPITAL PEACE: DEVELOPMENT AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT

This paper explores the relationship between human capital and international conflict. In theory, human capital may increase the opportunity cost of military service and the economic cost of injury and loss of life in combat; it may decrease the benefits of conflict as human capital cannot be easily appropriated or transferred; it may affect societal norms toward peace and war; and it may alter military productivity through new technology and complementarities between military technology and personnel. Using a panel of politically relevant dyads, I find robust empirical evidence that human capital may significantly decrease the likelihood of militarized conflict between nations. In short, the findings suggest that promoting human capital‐oriented development may help to increase peace in the world.     

What Goes Up Must Come Down: Military Expenditure and Civil Wars

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of civil war on military expenditure. We employ two measures of military expenditure: the share of military expenditure in general government expenditure and the logarithm of military expenditures. We would reasonably expect a priori that military expenditure as a share of general government expenditure increases during a civil war and that such increases would taper off over the duration of a civil war. We also explore whether the termination of a civil war induces a decline in the share of military expenditure as a share of the general government expenditure in the short-run. We find evidence the of share of military expenditure increases during a civil war and falls in the year succeeding the end of a civil war, and, in particular, if a war ends in a peace treaty. The level of military expenditures, however, rises during civil wars and does not appear to decline in the short-term after the end of a civil war.