When the Going Gets Tough… Monitoring Missions and a Changing Conflict Environment in Sri Lanka, 2002–2008

This article analyzes how the conflict environment in which a civilian monitoring mission is deployed influences the monitors' assessment of the operation. It draws on unique empirical material from the experience of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), deployed to oversee a ceasefire agreement in Sri Lanka 2002–2008. With material from a survey and in-depth interviews, experiences of the monitors are analyzed and changes over time are traced in relation to the monitors' assessment of the mandate and organizational set-up of the mission. The study points to the difficulty of monitoring missions to address escalation during an ongoing peace process. Its function is dependent on the goodwill of the parties. In essence, monitoring missions have the potential to strengthen peace when there is momentum in favor of progress, but when relations between the parties turn sour and the conflict escalates a civilian monitoring mission basically loses its potential. During the final stages of the war, which saw a very large number of civilian casualties, the war-torn areas were closed to international observers. Moreover, international pressure for a short-term ceasefire to alleviate the humanitarian situation was dismissed by the Sri Lankan government, which also saw the backing of several important actors, not the least China.     

Bounded flexibility in days‐on and days‐off scheduling

This article presents a flexible days‐on and days‐off scheduling problem and develops an exact branch and price (B&P) algorithm to find solutions. The main objective is to minimize the size of the total workforce required to cover time‐varying demand over a planning horizon that may extend up to 12 weeks. A new aspect of the problem is the general restriction that the number of consecutive days on and the number of consecutive days off must each fall within a predefined range. Moreover, the total assignment of working days in the planning horizon cannot exceed some maximum value. In the B&P framework, the master problem is stated as a set covering‐type problem whose columns are generated iteratively by solving one of three different subproblems. The first is an implicit model, the second is a resource constrained shortest path problem, and the third is a dynamic program. Computational experiments using both real‐word and randomly generated data show that workforce reductions up to 66% are possible with highly flexible days‐on and days‐off patterns. When evaluating the performance of the three subproblems, it was found that each yielded equivalent solutions but the dynamic program proved to be significantly more efficient. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 60: 678–701, 2013     

熵权灰色关联分析法的坦克夜间射击目标选择

针对夜间战场上坦克目标威胁评估问题,结合多目标决策问题,将熵权和灰色关联分析法相结合,提出一种基于熵权灰色关联分析的坦克夜间射击目标选择模型,并详细给出了该算法的思想、算法.该方法克服了传统评估算法中主观赋值的缺陷,最后利用实例证明了该方法的有效性.     

海军舰艇编队防空导弹协同作战技术研究

主要以信息化条件下如何提升海军舰艇编队防空导弹作战能力为背景,重点描述协同指挥和协同制导作战的概念内涵、国内外研究现状、作战模式、主要实现的功能,给出不同指挥层次下各指挥节点的体系结构和功能定位,进而从信息场和功能界面等方面说明协同指挥和协同制导2个功能层次的区别.     

防空导弹仿真软件模型验证方法研究

研究了防空导弹仿真软件模型验证方法,建立仿真模型验证流程,采用平滑化、归一化等方法,对试验数据进行预处理,运用图示比较、系数分析、窗谱密度估计等方法对模型进行了验证.将实物试验数据结果与相同初始条件下的仿真试验结果进行了一致性检验,并给出定量分析结果,从而验证仿真软件模型的置信度,为防空导弹仿真软件模型验证提供了一种较为有效的方法和途径.     

Sink the Bismarck (with luck?)

This paper describes a stochastic simulation of one of the key naval operations in World War II, and shows how the result of that operation might have differed considerably from the historical outcome. The simulation demonstrates that it is never possible to predict with confidence the results of military operations involving a few high‐value units.     

A PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF THE SECURITY AND DEFENCE TECHNOLOGICAL AND INDUSTRIAL BASE IN SPAIN

This study analyses the performance of the productivity of the main industrial subsectors composing the security and defence technological and industrial base (SDTIB) in Spain from 1996 to 2009. Accordingly, we have used the non-parametric data envelopment analysis and bootstrapping techniques to compute Malmquist productivity indexes that allow us to split productivity growth into efficiency change and technical progress. The results obtained show productivity improvement in the SDTIB as a whole due mainly to advances in technology and to a lesser extent to the contribution of technical efficiency. The bootstrap approach yields further evidence, as for many cases, productivity growth or decline, is not statistically significant. This is the first time a study of this kind has been carried out on the production process of this sector in Spain.