British counter‐insurgency in Kenya, 1952–56: Extension of internal security policy or prelude to decolonisation?

Despite considerable post‐war planning, the British counter‐insurgency campaign in Kenya did not constitute a Colonial Office strategy for decolonisation. COIN in Kenya had one purpose: to re‐impose law and order, or British control. If for no other reason, this is demonstrated by the initial reluctance of the Colonial Office to intervene. Frequent re‐assessments and postponement of the ending of the State of Emergency, and the subordination of socio‐economic and political reforms to military objectives, show clearly that decolonisation was not high on the British list of priorities in Kenya. This article questions the relationship between COIN and decolonisation, and the validity of models of British counter‐insurgency.     

Life distribution analysis based on Lévy subordinators for degradation with random jumps

For a component or a system subject to stochastic degradation with sporadic jumps that occur at random times and have random sizes, we propose to model the cumulative degradation with random jumps using a single stochastic process based on the characteristics of Lévy subordinators, the class of nondecreasing Lévy processes. Based on the inverse Fourier transform, we derive a new closed‐form reliability function and probability density function for lifetime, represented by Lévy measures. The reliability function derived using the traditional convolution approach for common stochastic models such as gamma degradation process with random jumps, is revealed to be a special case of our general model. Numerical experiments are used to demonstrate that our model performs well for different applications, when compared with the traditional convolution method. More importantly, it is a general and useful tool for life distribution analysis of stochastic degradation with random jumps in multidimensional cases. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 483–492, 2015     

War’s Horizon: Soldier-Led Adaptation in Iraq and Vietnam

Wartime adaptation is a process of adjustment from the war you planned for to the one you have. This process of adjustment is done, in part, by the practitioners of war in the theater of conflict–soldier-led adaptation. Drawing upon two case studies of gun truck development in Iraq and Vietnam I argue that soldiers created networks in order to adapt to battlefield challenges and that the pattern of those networks carries implications for the likelihood of formal adoption by the organization. Simply put, the pattern of the flow of ideas, resources, and skills across the battlefield may affect the likelihood of bottom-up adaptation.     

An alliance between Cyprus and Greece: assessing its partners’ relative security contribution

The issue that this paper tackles is the assessment of the relative security benefits that Cyprus and Greece derive in the context of their cooperation on defence matters. This form of cooperation, known as the ‘Integrated Defence Space Doctrine’, aims at defending their interests in the Aegean Sea and the broader East Mediterranean theatre. The paper relies heavily on earlier research on this topic, which deals with the Greek–Cypriot alliance facing an arms race against Turkey, and uses a coefficient especially designed to assess the optimal levels of security and the associated defence expenditure of the two allies. A comparison of the relative security coefficient values for the two allies suggests that the security benefit that Greece derives thanks to its alliance with Cyprus exceeds the corresponding Cypriot benefit by far. Given the importance assigned to human resources by this index, in conjunction with the demographic problems of Greece, this conclusion justifies the recent Greek defence policy revision, emphasizing quality, capital equipment and flexibility of forces. This revision aims at satisfying the security requirements of the alliance and the increasing demands of an arms race against Turkey.     

Estimated UK employment dependent on ministry of defence expenditure and defence exports

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has published estimates of the number of average full‐time UK industry employees dependent on MOD expenditure and defence exports for a number of years. This paper provides the outcome of a recent review of the process used. The method of deriving MOD and defence export final demand vectors, and calculating from these estimates of direct employment (i.e. that in supplying companies) and indirect employment (i.e. that incurred through the supply chain) are described. Difficulties with the data are explored. Alternative approaches, methods used in other countries and challenges posed by changing MOD administrative systems are briefly discussed.     

Ridge regression analysis of the defence‐growth tradeoff in the United States

An examination of past analyses suggests that today's sailors may be less responsive to compensation changes than previous generations. Such a change could make recruiting and retaining high‐quality sailors more difficult. However, variation in researchers' decisions over time may simply have created the appearance of such a change. Our results suggest there is little variation in the pay elasticity over time. In contrast, the different reduced‐form models we use to measure this relationship can explain most of the variation in the literature. Therefore, the evidence suggests that while sailors may have changed over time, their response to compensation has not.     

Military Debt: Perspectives from the Experience of Arab Countries

The sectoral production function model of Feder (1983) has been widely used to examine the link between defence spending and economic growth. In this paper, the model, for which too much has been claimed in some past work, is examined, and the case is made for using growth in real non‐defence output rather than growth in real aggregate output (inclusive of military spending) as the dependent variable. Attention is restricted to a small group of OECD countries for which reliable labour force and capital stock (as well as defence) data are obtainable. With non‐defence output as the dependent variable and using only high quality data, no evidence in favour of the underconsumptionist (as opposed to the defence as a burden) position is found.     

Book review

La Conversion économique du secteur militaire, J. FONTANEL, Economica, Paris, 1994, pp. 112. Paperback. ISBN 2–7178–2650–5.