On the nature and scope of defence economics

Defence economics uses the tools of economics to study the defence sector and its domestic and international implications. Simple models require careful application in defence economics, since indirect effects may have counterintuitive impacts. For example, while certain arms races can lead to the outbreak of war, others may have the counterintuitive effect of discouraging the outbreak of war owing to mutual deterrence.

The world is now multipolar rather than bipolar, analogous to an oligopoly situation. This multipolar world can be analyzed by a qualitative characteristic function, where the formation of a potential coalition allows study of the shift from conflict to cooperation in international relations. Some new issues to be considered in this framework include accidental nuclear war, potential arms races and conflicts in the third world, and the proliferation of chemical weapons and missiles.     

防空兵分队兵力机动综合保障能力评估

根据兵力机动任务对综合保障的实际需求,构建了综合保障能力的评估指标体系。在此基础上,分别构建了战斗保障能力、后勤保障能力、装备保障能力以及综合保障能力评估模型。明确了防空兵分队兵力机动实施综合保障的主要内容,较好的解决了防空兵分队兵力机动综合保障评估问题。     

基于BP神经网络的防空预警雷达阵地选址决策方法

防空预警雷达阵地选址的优劣直接影响到雷达本身及防空武器作战效能的发挥。为了在雷达阵地选址中快速处理繁多的数据和进行定量分析,减少人为主观因素,给出了防空预警雷达阵地选址决策指标体系,并构建了基于BP神经网络的防空预警雷达阵地选址决策模型。最后通过实例验证了该模型对优选防空预警雷达阵地选址具有可行性和实用性。     

摆动喷管控制精度相关问题讨论

对不同性质的喷管特点以及在控制力作用下喷管的响应特性进行了初步分析;以某防空导弹为例,阐述了摆动喷管在非理想状态下摆动时作动器牵连运动、正负摆角不对称、力臂变化、摆心漂移、位移传递系数精度和预调角对摆角控制的影响;同时说明了负载力矩和伺服机构相关参数影响着摆动喷管位置控制精度。     

Mandated defence offsets: can they ever deliver?

Defence offsets are elements of defence procurement deals additional to the primary content. Offsets are usually expected to yield technological or industrial benefits to the purchasing country (e.g. countertrade, technology transfers, or additional jobs) and military buyers often require suppliers to make offsets available “cost-free.” The authors argued previously that such strategies achieve little of value to buyers that lack market power and are unnecessary otherwise, since purchasers with the market power to extract more value for money from foreign suppliers can do so anyway. This article also focuses on the supply side of offset deals. The USA is the world's largest defence offsets supplier but the US government opposes offsets demands as economically inefficient and trade distorting. Even if offsets are inefficient and trade distorting, they may still benefit a materiel-exporting country such as the USA as they may induce exports and create associated benefits for the offsets provider.     

Building Stability Overseas: Three case studies in British defence diplomacy – Uganda,Rhodesia–Zimbabwe,and Sierra Leone

In 2011, the Department for International Development, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and the Ministry of Defence launched the Building Stability Overseas Strategy (BSOS). This document sought to integrate cross-government activity as it related to conflict and security so as to ‘take fast, appropriate and effective action to prevent a crisis or stop it escalating and spreading’. At the heart of the strategy was the recognition that addressing instability and conflict overseas was morally right and in the UK's national interests. This confluence of foreign policy realism and ethical outlook most clearly found harmony in the acknowledgement that it was cheaper for the international community to avoid conflict than it was to try to manage it. Through an examination of three historical case studies (Uganda 1964–1972, Rhodesia–Zimbabwe 1979–1981, and Sierra Leone 2000–2007), this article seeks to demonstrate just how difficult this seemingly sensible strategic outlook is. In particular, the article shows there are historical parallels in British postcolonial history that very closely resemble contemporary policy choices; that these can be used to define what is different about past and present practice; and, which in turn, can be used to – at least tentatively – mark out the potential strengths and weaknesses in BSOS.     

The German wars of liberation 1807–1815: The restrained insurgency

In the Age of Napoleon, ‘small wars’ and ‘revolutionary war’ were closely connected. There were, however, different strands of this phenomenon: speaking professionally, conservative officers condemned small wars as an irregular regression to previous less disciplined forms of warfare. The Prussian state continually tried to discipline and regulate spontaneous risings. Yet the irregular character of small wars offered the opportunities for a less complex way of fighting, thus enabling the arming of the ‘people’ to fight. Individual undertakings, such as Ferdinand von Schill's doomed campaign in 1809, were designed to spark off a general popular uprising. But they were cheered by many and supported by few. Meanwhile, Neidhardt von Gneisenau conceived guerrilla-style Landsturm home-defence forces, which were designed for an irregular people's war. These concepts were put into practice in the ‘war of freedom’ – or ‘war of liberation’ – in 1813. Eventually both the mobilisation and the tactics remained regular, however, despite the emphatic appeal to a national ‘people's war’.     

Modeling of the whole process of shock wave overpressure of free-field air explosion

The waveform of the explosion shock wave under free-field air explosion is an extremely complex problem. It is generally considered that the waveform consists of overpressure peak, positive pressure zone and negative pressure zone. Most of current practice usually considers only the positive pressure. Many empirical relations are available to predict overpressure peak, the positive pressure action time and pressure decay law. However, there are few models that can predict the whole waveform. The whole process of explosion shock wave overpressure, which was expressed as the product of the three factor functions of peak, attenuation and oscillation, was proposed in the present work. According to the principle of explosion similarity, the scaled parameters were introduced and the empirical formula was absorbed to form a mathematical model of shock wave overpressure. Parametric numerical simulations of free-field air explosions were conducted. By experimental verification of the AUTODYN numerical method and comparing the analytical and simulated curves, the model is proved to be accurate to calculate the shock wave overpressure under free-field air explosion. In addition, through the model the shock wave overpressure at different time and distance can be displayed in three dimensions. The model makes the time needed for theoretical calculation much less than that for numerical simulation.     

模糊综合评判舰艇编队防空武器协同共用效能评估

为定量评估水面舰艇编队防空武器协同共用效能,依据舰艇编队对空防御的作战过程和信息流程,确立了防空武器协同共用效能评估指标体系,建立了基于模糊综合评判的防空武器协同共用效能评估模型。采用改进的层次分析法确定各因素的权重,运用模糊综合评判的方法,进行了综合的定量分析和应用计算,模型比较准确地反映了各种主要因素对防空武器协同共用效能的影响,为评价舰艇编队防空武器协同共用效能提供了分析依据。     

Economic impact of the ministry of defence’s budget: methodological design and results for the Spanish economy

This article analyses the economic impact of the expenditure budget of the Spanish Ministry of Defence (MoD) and its Autonomous Agencies (AA), distinguishing direct, indirect and induced effects. The input–output methodology is used to find intersectoral effects on the rest of the economy. The article quantifies the economic impact in terms of production, gross value added (GVA), employed population, tax revenue, and also in terms of its contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Spain in 2010. The results show that the activity of the MoD and AA generates 1.2% of the country’s GDP and 1.7% of total employment in that year.