Estimating the economic impact of the 1973 Navy base closing: Models,tests, and an ex post evaluation of the forecasting performance

In 1973 the Defense Department made plans to close many Navy bases in the United States. Hardest hit was Rhode Island which would suffer a loss of 45.61% of the total cutback of 42,812 jobs. This paper describes two models which were built to forecast the severity of the economic impact in Rhode Island: one used the reduced form equation approach, and the other the simultaneous equations system approach. Tests on multicollinearity, specification, and serial correlation were conducted. An ex post evaluation of these two models' performance in forecasting then concludes the paper.     

Tarnishing victory? Contested histories & civil–military discord in the U.S. Navy, 1919–24

ABSTRACT

As the First World War came to an end, the U.S. Navy's leadership engaged in a bitter fight over the “lessons” of the war. Admiral William S. Sims and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels fought against each other's irreconcilable positions. Sims argued that the Navy Department's inexpert civilian secretary had hamstrung mobilisation, impeded the anti-submarine campaign, and ostracised capable officers in favour of friends upon whom he bestowed medals. Daniels countered that his administration had masterfully responded to the crisis of war. The Navy's record, Daniels insisted, could best be summarised as “a great job greatly done.” Only disloyal nit-pickers could find fault in its accomplishments. The Sims-Daniels controversy raged in congressional hearings, the press, and in partisan histories written by the protagonists. The heart of the dispute and its uncertain resolution rested in radically different understandings of American civil–military relations, naval heroism, and the determinants of victory.     

The Needs of Political Policy versus the Reality of Military Operations: Royal Navy Opposition to the Arctic Convoys, 1942

It has become commonplace, especially in the post-Vietnam strategic environment, to quote Clausewitz's dictum that war is the continuation of policy by other means. We are told that military operations are dictated by, and must serve, clear political ends. Such thinking has been invoked to support everything from punitive strikes, to peacekeeping missions, to the ‘Powell’ doctrine and its political ‘exit strategies’, but at times political policy and military operations do not mix. In 1942 the Royal Navy bowed to political pressure and, against its collective better judgement, continued the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. These military operations culminated in the destruction of convoy PQ 17 in early July. This conflict between political policy and military strategy provides an object lesson of why in war issues of means and priorities must outweigh the importance of any given political policy.     

From show of force to naval presence,and back again: the U.S. Navy in the Baltic, 1982–2017

This article discusses roles and missions of the United States Navy with a particular focus on the Baltic Sea. That particular sea has gained renewed political and military attention following Russia's resurgent and increasingly hybrid-offensive foreign policy. Baltic nations, uncertain of what the future holds, ought to look at sea power and maritime missions in the Baltic, as well as US naval presence in Europe, to draw lessons for future posture.     

Russian Reactions to Reagan's ‘Maritime Strategy’

The US Navy's audacious Maritime Strategy of the 1980s is often credited with acting as a key catalyst to the demise of the USSR. In assessing the role of strategic missile submarine “bastions” in the country's overall military strategy, the authors are skeptical of the above thesis, explaining that Moscow actually viewed deployments of Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles on to US submarines (versus direct threats against the Soviet Navy itself) as the most alarming threat. The authors concede that the arms race played a role in the collapse of the USSR, but deny a direct connection with Soviet naval development citing the relatively minor naval proportion of overall defense spending. For the difficulties facing the fleet at the end of the Cold War, they instead blame deep systemic problems internal to the Soviet Navy.     

‘A Better War?’ – The View from the Nixon White House

This article examines the relationship between the White House and the US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) during President Richard M. Nixon's administration. It argues that dysfunctional civil-military relations between 1969 and 1972 undermined the implementation of a sound military strategy during the United States' withdrawal from South Vietnam as Nixon attempted to achieve ‘peace with honor’ during the Vietnam War's final campaigns. By 1972, the relationship between the White House and MACV headquarters had reached the nadir of civil-military relations during the Southeast Asian conflict and had served to undercut the United States' ability to effectively disengage from a long and bitterly contested war.     

网络中心战与网格技术

在当前的世界新军事变革中,网络中心战和军事信息网格是两个极重要的、具有发展趋向性的概念。本文阐述了"网络中心战"是军事需求牵引和技术推动的产物,以及美军网络中心战和 全球信息网格的内涵,并对应用网格技术建设我海军信息网格,实现我海军综合电子信息系统一体化进行了初步探讨。     

Noncognitive skills and job match: evidence from military applicants

The study examines the effect of noncognitive skills on early career choices among young job seekers. Specifically, we analyze the influence of personality traits on the decision by military applicants either to choose the military or a civilian career option. We use a unique micro-level data-set of applicants to the US Navy and exploit the fact that many individuals who initially apply for military jobs eventually choose civilian careers instead. In this institutional setting, job candidates use new information to update their beliefs about the military job match. Personality traits are viewed as productive abilities that influence applicants’ expectations about the economic return to the job and occupational training offered by the Navy. The study finds that many of the 15 lower order personality facets associated with the Big Five traits are predictive of applicants’ job choices and provides suggestive evidence of a link between personality traits, job match expectations, and career choice.     

海军无人作战平台的军事应用

文章详细介绍了海军无人作战平台在战场感知、指挥控制、精确打击、信息作战、综合保障等5个方面的军事应用,并对其应用领域和作战样式的发展趋势进行了分析。     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXTERNAL DEBT,DEFENCE EXPENDITURES AND GNP REVISITED: THE CASE OF TURKEY

This paper contributes to the continuing debate on the economic effects of military expenditure by undertaking a case study of Greece. Within Europe Greece provides a particularly interesting object of study. It has the highest military burden in Europe and NATO, is the only European Union country situated in the unstable environment of the Balkans, faces a military threat from Turkey, and has a very weak economy. After some background analysis of the economy and military expenditure, the paper investigates the determinants of Greek military expenditure as well as whether the high military burden has played an important role in Greece's poor economic performance over the period 1960–1996. It estimates a Keynesian simultaneous equation model with a supply side, which allows the indirect effects of military expenditure to be captured explicitly. It concludes that the major determinants of Greek defence spending are not economic but strategic (the threat of war) and that the direct effect of defence spending on economic growth as well as the indirect effects through savings and trade balance are all significantly negative. On the basis of such strong results, the paper concludes that defence spending is harmful for the Greek economy.     

The Demand for Turkish Defence Expenditure

Although a number of studies concerning Turkish defence-growth relation have been published in recent years, little attention is given the demand for Turkish defence expenditure. This is an important issue for understanding which variables contribute to the determination of the demand for military expenditure. However, it is difficult to develop a general theory or a standard empirical approach for the determination of the demand military expenditure. This study models and estimates the demand for Turkish defence expenditure for the period 1951-1998 using autoregressive distributed lag approach to cointegration (ARDL) following the methodology outlined in Pesaran and Shin (1999). This procedure can be applied regardless of the stationary properties of the variables in the sample and allows for inferences on long-run estimates, which is not possible under alternative cointegration procedures. The findings suggest that Turkish defence spending is determined by NATO's defence spending, Greece's defence spending and some security considerations.     

On the production of victory: Empirical determinants of battlefield success in modern war

Using a data set of historical battles from 1600 to 1973, this paper analyzes the empirical determinants of tactical success in modern war. Based on a reduced form approach we consider key elements of military theory as production factors for combat success as an output of a military production function. The paper focuses on the relationship of material and non-material factors to battlefield success, and especially on the role of superior force strengths. Contrary to the emphasis on technology which can be found in the recent literature, our estimation results indicate that numerical superiority has retained its crucial role for battlefield performance throughout history. In general, human elements of warfare, like leadership, morale and surprise, have continued to be important determinants of battle outcome despite technological progress in weapons.     

The 'Cult of the Offensive' Revisited: Confronting Technological Change Before the Great War

Conventional wisdom maintains that military thinkers before the Great War resorted to an irrational, and ultimately self-defeating, 'cult of the offensive' to overcome the rapidly increasing effectiveness of modern firepower. On the contrary, an underlying and, indeed, compelling military rationale did exist for placing renewed emphasis on the offensive spirit, particularly after the Russo-Japanese War. Moreover, the cult's central argument was not that moral forces alone could overcome material factors, but that the human element must be made strong enough to complement the newfound power of military technology. The idea was not to pit man against machine, but to make man worthy of machine.     

Gorshkov's Gambit

This article is a portrait of Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, commander of the Soviet Navy for almost three decades, from 1956–85. The author, a retired US Navy admiral with a Harvard PhD in Russian studies who served as both defense and naval attaché in Moscow, draws on numerous face-to-face interactions with Gorshkov. He also explores Gorshkov's memoirs that were published recently in Russia but have not appeared in an English translation. The paper is not only a first-hand account of an important historical figure, but also a window into the world of military-to-military diplomacy and intelligence during the Cold War.     

SHOULD MILITARY UNIFORMS CARRY THE UNION LABEL?

It is widely believed that the unionization of military labor leads to reduced discipline and lower combat capability. Case studies of the performance of existing military unions, however, generally suggest that unionization has a benign impact on the performance of the armed forces. In this paper, we offer a theoretical economic analysis of the likely impact of military unionization on volunteer militaries. Our analysis suggests that military unionization will unambiguously lead to larger, but less disciplined, armed forces, leaving the overall impact of unionization on defense capability ambiguous. Military unionization, however, will clearly enhance social welfare.     

Estimating reliability growth (or deterioration) using time series analysis

In this paper we propose a method for estimating reliability growth (or deterioration) using time series analysis. Our method does not call for the specification of a particular model, and estimates the growth in the presence of periodicity. We illustrate our procedure by considering some binomial failure data generated during the testing of a large system of the U.S. Navy.     

Military expenditure and unemployment in the OECD

The effect of military expenditure on employment is a matter of considerable importance. However, few of the standard economic analyses of unemployment take any explicit account of variations in military expenditure in their models. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the prevalent neglect of this variable in labour economics is justified.

The paper briefly surveys previous estimates made of the employment effects of military expenditure. It then considers evidence from the simple dynamic reduced form regressions estimated on long historical series for the US and the UK and pooled post‐war data for 11 OECD countries. It does not suggest that the share of military expenditure is a significant influence on the unemployment rate. This implies that in analysing unemployment no special account need be taken of military expenditure and that the fear that reductions in the share of military expenditure will be associated with higher average unemployment levels is misplaced.     

The German Invasion of Norway, 1940: The Operational Intelligence Dimension

While many analyses of the 9 April 1940 invasion of Norway have looked at the successful interplay of German air, sea and land components, the part performed by intelligence has largely received only cursory attention. This article seeks to redress this, and investigates the pivotal role intelligence played in the planning, preparation, and carrying out of Weserübung. The study examines the dearth of relevant information in the early planning stage; the subsequent accumulation of military assessments of Norway's defensive capabilities; the process of denying London and Oslo intelligence regarding Berlin's intentions; the significance of Danish and Norwegian airfields to the operation; and the importance of maritime reconnaissance and wireless intercepts in monitoring the disposition of the Royal Navy. Although primarily concerned with German intelligence gathering and utilisation, British efforts, including the potential impact of Ultra, are also considered.     

ANALYSING DEFENCE DEPENDENCY: THE IMPACT OF THE ROYAL NAVY ON A SUB‐REGIONAL ECONOMY

This paper provides a methodology for estimating the economic impact of defence spending at a sub‐regional level. It does so by calculating the income and employment generated by Britain’s Royal Navy and associated defence activities in the City of Portsmouth and its surrounding area, during the financial year 2003–2004. In an era of military consolidation, the paper offers an insight into the multifaceted impact of defence‐related expenditure. Hence, it presents a generic framework that could prove useful to other researchers when seeking to measure the sub‐regional impact of naval, airforce and army facilities in other national contexts.