Landmarks in defense literature

The Art of War. By Sun Tzu. Translated with an introduction and commentary by Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press, London and New York, (1963)     

Least-absolute-deviations position finding

Position finding has historically been carried out by calculating the coordinates of the mean position via a least-squares procedure based on the distance of the position from several direction lines. It has been suggested that the least-squares procedure assigns too much weight to outliers among the set of direction lines, outliers which may actually be associated with objects other than the one being located. In this paper, a method of using least-absolute deviations, which yields a more outlier-resistant median estimate of the position instead of the least-squares mean estimate, is presented.     

Book reviews

European Security in the New Political Environment by James H. Wyllie, London: Addison, Wesley Longman, 1997, ISBN 0-582-24403-X (pbk), £13.99

Russia and Europe: The Emerging Security Agenda edited by Vladimir Baranovsky, Oxford: Oxford University Press, SIPRI, 1997, ISBN 0-19-829201-5 (hbk), £45.00

The Defeat of Japan by David Rees, Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, ISBN 0-275-95955-4 (hbk), £46.50

The Collective Naval Defence of the Empire, 1900-1940 by Nicholas Tracy (ed.), London: Ashgate, for the Navy Records Society, 1997, ISBN 1859-284-027 (hbk), £59.50

Knights in White Armour The New Art of War and Peace by Christopher Bellamy, London: Pimlico Press, 1997, ISBN 0-7126-739-03 (pbk), £12.50

Regional Orders: Building Security in a New World by avid A. Lake and Patrick M. Morgan (eds), University Park: Penn State Press, 1997, ISBN 0-271-01703-i (hbk), £49.50/$55, ISBN 0-271-01704-X (pbk), £7.95/$19.95

Contested Social Orders and International Politics by David Skidmore (ed.), Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8265-1284-4 (hbk), $32.95

The Politics of Threat: Minuteman Vulnerability in American National Security Policy by David H. Dunn. London: Macmillan Press, 1997, ISBN 0-333-67816-8 (hbk), £45.00

The Sociology of the Military by Guiseppe Caforio (ed.), Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998, ISBN 1-85898-619-2, 704 pp., £150

The Nordic Nations in the New Western Security Regime by Ingemar Dorfer, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-943875-83-8 (hbk), £27, ISBN 0-943875-82-X (pbk), £13     

The financial performance of aircraft manufacturers during world war II: the vicissitudes of war

Controversy has long surrounded the role and profitability of US defense contractors. From a financial perspective the question becomes whether defense contractors earn greater profits and investor returns than other companies during military conflicts. We explore this question by examining the accounting profitability and investor returns of US aircraft manufacturers before, during, and after World War II and compare them to a sample of non-defense firms. We also examine the reactions of aircraft stock prices to important political and military events of the time. We find that (1) aircraft stocks exhibited positive abnormal returns around events associated with defense buildups and outbreaks of hostile action and negative returns around events signaling an end to hostilities, (2) the company’s accounting returns improved during the war but these higher accounting returns did not translate into higher stock returns for the shareholders, and (3) investors could have earned higher stock returns had they switched out of aircraft stocks after Pearl Harbor and reinvested the proceeds in the overall market.     

Nuclear deterrence and cyber warfare: coexistence or competition?

Nuclear deterrence and cyber war seem almost antithetical in their respective intellectual pedigrees. Nuclear weapons are unique in their ability to create mass destruction in a short time. Information or “cyber” weapons, at least for the most part, aim at sowing confusion or mass disruption instead of widespread physical destruction. Nevertheless, there are some intersections between cyber and nuclear matters, and these have the potential to become troublesome for the future of nuclear deterrence. For example, cyber attacks might complicate the management of a nuclear crisis. As well, information attacks on command-control and communications systems might lead to a mistaken nuclear launch based on false warnings, to erroneous interpretations of data or to panic on account of feared information blackout. It is not inconceivable that future nuclear strike planning will include a preliminary wave of cyber strikes or at least a more protracted “preparation of the battlefield” by roaming through enemy networks to plant malware or map vulnerabilities.     

The Impact of the Unemployment Rate on Attrition of First-Term Enlistees

This study examines the effects of home-state unemployment rates on attrition behavior of Navy enlistees for successive career windows during the first term of service: the first 6?months, the second 6?months, the second year, and the third year of service. The results indicate that attrition is negatively associated with changes in the local unemployment rate during the first three career windows covering two years of service. However, after two years of service, the estimated effect of the unemployment rate becomes insignificant for most groups of sailors. This is likely because sailors with the poorest job matches are sorted out early in the first term of service.