Tipping the scales: short-term interventions and counterinsurgency

Particularly in African operations, United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces have faced significant problems in restoring stability. In at least a few situations, unilateral national military interventions have been launched in the same countries. In the cases of Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, the British and French interventions respectively played a significant role in re-establishing stability. Lessons from these operations suggest that if effective coordination and liaison channels are established, such hybrid unilateral-UN missions can in fact be more successful than “pure” peace operations.     

Landmarks in defense literature

The Cavalry Goes Through. By Bernard Newman. Henry Holt, New York (1930)     

Book reviews

Third World Military Expenditure: Determinants and Implications. By Robert McKinlay. Frances Pinter, London (1989)

The UK Defence Industrial Base: Development and Future Policy Options. By Trevor Taylor and Keith Hayward. Brassey's, London, for Royal United Services Institute (1989), ISBN 0-08-036713-5, £22.50

Mutiny. By Lawrence James. Buchan & Enright, London (1987), ISBN 0-907675-70-0, £12.95; Scapegoat! Famous Courts Martial. By John Harris. Severn House, London (1988), ISBN 0-7278-2103-2, £12.95; In Glass Houses. By Robert Boyes. Military Provost Staff Corps Association, Colchester (1986), ISBN 0-9513467-0-9, £6.50 (paperback)

The Nuclear Weapons World: Who, How and Where. Edited by Patrick Burke. Frances Pinter, London (1988), ISBN 086187-705-5, £50.00

Merchants of Treason—America's Secrets for Sale. By Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar. Robert Hale, London (1988), ISBN 0-7090-3543-8, £14.95 ($21.95); Intelligence and Intelligence Policy in a Democratic Society. Edited by Stephen J. Cimbala. Transnational Publishers, Dobbs Ferry, NY (1987), ISBN 0-941320-44-8, $37.50; Catching Spies—Principles and Practices of Counterespionage. By H. H. A. Cooper and Lawrence J. Redlinger. Paladin Press, Boulder, CO (1988), ISBN 0-87364-466-2, $24.95

The BattleshipRoyal Sovereignand Her Sister Ships. By Peter C. Smith. William Kimber, Wellingborough (1988), ISBN 0-7183-0704-6, £12.95; Air Power at Sea, 1945 to Today. By John Winton. Sidgwick & Jackson, London (1987), £9.95     

Production-location problems with demand considerations

The production-location problem of a profit maximizing firm is considered. A model is developed for a single firm, facing the joint problems of determining the optimal plant location, the optimal input mix, and the optimal plant size. A homothetic production function is used as the model of the production technologies, and the existence of a sequential “separability” between the production, or input mix, problem and the location problem is demonstrated.     

An optimal sequential procedure for selecting the best bernoulli process—a review

This article describes a new closed adaptive sequential procedure proposed by Bechhofer and Kulkarni for selecting the Bernoulli population which has the largest success probability. It can be used effectively for selecting the production process with the largest proportion of conforming items, and thus is applicable in vendor selection situations. The performance of this procedure is compared to that of the Sobel-Huyett single-stage procedure, and to a curtailed version of the single-stage procedure, all of which guarantee the same probability of a correct selection. Optimal properties of the Bechhofer-Kulkarni procedure are stated; quantitative assessments of important performance characteristics of the procedure are given. These demonstrate conclusively the superiority of the new procedure over that of the competing procedures. Relevant areas of application (including clinical trials) are described. Appropriate literature references are provided.     

On finding spanning eulerian subgraphs

In this article, we examine the problem of producing a spanning Eulerian subgraph in an undirected graph. After the ?-completeness of the general problem is established, we present polynomial-time algorithms for both the maximization and minimization versions where instances are defined on a restricted class of graphs referred to as series-parallel. Some novelties in the minimization case are discussed, as are heuristic ideas.