Callwell versus Graziani: how the British Army applied ‘small wars’ techniques in major operations in Africa and the Middle East, 1940–41

The period from December 1940 through to the spring of 1941 saw the British Army win a series of rapid and decisive victories over Italian and Vichy French forces in North and East Africa and the Middle East. A key feature of these operations was the extensive British use of fast-moving all-arms mobile formations utilising superior speed and mobility to out-manoeuvre considerably larger Italian formations. A number of reasons have been given for the British Army adopting this mode of warfare, but the paper contends that the best explanation is that they were an organic evolution from methods used by the British Army in ‘small wars’ throughout the early twentieth century, use of mobile ‘frontier columns’ at the operational and tactical level of war being described and recommended by Callwell himself and visible with the Army in practice in operations in India and the Middle East in particular. The inter-war period saw the combination of this model of warfare with post-First World War military technology, notably tanks, close air support and coordination by wireless. Colonial operations in this period also saw some utilisation of what would later be identified as ‘Special Forces’ – also used extensively in the Desert War – the most obvious example being Captain Orde Wingate's Special Night Squads in Palestine in 1938.     

Maritime interdiction in Sri Lanka's counterinsurgency

A comprehensive maritime interdiction strategy to attack the insurgent's logistic system was a key element in the defeat of the Tamil Tigers. The campaign of maritime interdiction required the Sri Lankan Navy (SLN) to attack LTTE arms smuggling, sea piracy, and maritime terrorism. The SLN degraded the insurgency's robust maritime logistical network while also devising tactics to engage the maritime insurgents who reacted with swarm and suicide boat tactics. The efforts of the SLN forced the Tamil Tigers to confront the government's final land offensives with diminished resources, thus collapsing a three decades’ old insurgency in a matter of months.     

FORECASTING SERIES CONTAINING OFFSETTING BREAKS: OLD SCHOOL AND NEW SCHOOL METHODS OF FORECASTING TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM

Transnational terrorism data are difficult to forecast because they contain an unknown number of structural breaks of unknown functional form. The rise of religious fundamentalism, the demise of the Soviet Union, and the rise of al Qaeda have changed the nature of transnational terrorism. ‘Old School’ forecasting methods simply smooth or difference the data. ‘New School’ methods use estimated break dates to control for regime shifts when forecasting. We compare the various forecasting methods using a Monte Carlo study with data containing different types of breaks. The study's results are used to forecast various types of transnational terrorist incidents.     

Landmines and Conservation in Southern Africa: Peace Parks in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict

Peace parks are a modern means of conflict resolution through nature conservation. The Great Limpopo Peace Park (GLPP), which spans South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, was established to bring new hope to an area that is infamous for racial and political divisions, civil war and widespread poverty. This paper discusses the impact of international laws governing landmines, the current priority choices of the countries involved, and the situation in the two mine-affected countries: Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Minefields and politics are interrelated, and have an impact at local, national and international level. Using the GLPP as a case study, the article argues that although they have been presented as excellent examples of integrated biodiversity conservation and socio-economic development in developing countries, peace parks will not fulfil their main objective of promoting an image of peace in the aftermath of conflict without addressing landmine contamination.     

舰炮对海上集群小目标射击的毁伤概率

海上集群小目标是水面舰艇面临的主要威胁之一。以单管大口径舰炮对海上集群小目标射击作为研究对象,对集群目标进行了等效处理,分析了弹种、引信和装药的选择以及效力射中的表尺分配问题,提出多表尺效力射方法,利用该方法对海上集群小目标射击的毁伤概率进行了分析。结果表明,采用该方法并使用空炸榴弹或杀伤爆破弹,可有效破坏敌运输工具,杀伤其有生力量。     

The sixteenth-century antecedents of special operations ‘small war’

The first conceptual, theoretical treatises about small war (la petite guerre) as special operations appeared only from the middle of the seventeenth century. The term is not used in the eighteenth-century sense of ‘special operations’ in older sources. The supposed absence of any treatment of the subject is surprising considering the obsession with the ‘art of war’ in the Renaissance, but other authors attribute it to a supposed antinomy between chivalric ideals and irregular warfare. But the absence of explicit manuals on the subject is not evidence of absence of advanced reflection on this kind of operations in the Middle Ages and in Early Modern times. We should thus look elsewhere, in other genres, for writings that contain and pass on military knowledge. Epics, romances, educational and military treatises, and memoirs in fact contain elements of a theory of special operations, even though these genres differ from our conception of rationality inherited from the Enlightenment.     

Introduction: Exploring the jungle of terminology

When twentieth-century authors wrote about ‘partisan warfare’, they usually meant an insurgency or asymmetric military operations conducted against a superior force by small bands of ideologically driven irregular fighters. By contrast, originally (i.e. before the French Revolution) ‘partisan’ in French, English, and German referred only to the leader of a detachment of special forces (party, partie, Parthey, détachement) which the major European powers used to conduct special operations alongside their regular forces. Such special operations were the classic definition of ‘small war’ (petite guerre) in the late seventeenth and in the eighteenth centuries. The Spanish word ‘la guerrilla’, meaning nothing other than ‘small war’, only acquired an association with rebellion with the Spanish War of Independence against Napoleon. Even after this, however, armies throughout the world have continued to employ special forces. In the late nineteenth century, their operations have still been referred to as prosecuting ‘la guerrilla’ or ‘small war’, which existed side by side with, and was often mixed with, ‘people's war’ or popular uprisings against hated regimes.     

大型试件砂尘试验风洞有效吹风截面的论证

通过分析大型试件砂尘试验需求和现行军用标准,提出采用直吹式砂尘试验方式,实现整车状态的砂尘试验,并说明这种试验实施方法的科学性.依据射流理论并通过计算,得出距离吹风口不同位置处各个截面上的理论有效吹风截面,通过有效吹风截面与大型试件尺寸比较,说明这种形式的砂尘试验设备对常规武器系统具有很强的适应性.这项研究工作对砂尘试验设备的设计、调试和操作使用等具有技术指导作用.     

基于磁记忆的铁磁性构件定量无损检测研究

为提高磁记忆检测结果的稳定性,设计匀速采样系统,并且针对系统的实验结果进行分析。由实验结果得出提离值对系统稳定性的影响较小,扫描速度对检测结果稳定性的影响较大。     

基于Bayes理论的装备维修性验证方法

针对装甲装备关键部件维修性验证中出现的小子样问题,提出了基于Bayes理论的小子样维修性验证,重点针对对数正态分布下维修性指标验证的验后似然比验证方法进行了深入研究。通过对装甲装备某关键部件的试验数据的实例分析,验证了该方法在减少样本容量及试验费用方面的有效性和合理性。