Bringing Balancing Back In: Britain's Targeted Balancing, 1936–1939

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that Neville Chamberlain rejected the British tradition of balance of power in the 1930s. In contrast to balance of power and balance of threat theories, states do not balance against aggregate or net shifts in power. Instead, leaders define threats based on particular elements of a foreign state's power. The import is that different components of power of a foreign state are more or less threatening and aggregate shifts in power alone may not provoke counterbalancing behavior. In the 1930s, Britain balanced against the most threatening components of power: the German Luftwaffe and the threat of a knock-out air assault against the homeland, Japan's Imperial Navy and its threat to Britain's commercial trade routes and the Dominions in East Asia, and the Italian Navy and the threat to Britain's line of communication through the Mediterranean Sea to India and Asia. Given Britain's difficult financial circumstances, all other components of power, such as the army and the land components of power of Germany, Japan, and Italy were ranked as secondary in terms of its rearmament priorities. Thus, London was able to narrow the gap with Berlin in specific components of power of strategic importance such as aircraft production or to exceed Germany in other areas such as the Royal Navy and its battlefleet.     

Decommissioning and paramilitary strategy in Northern Ireland: A problem compared

This study examines the problems of paramilitary decommissioning in Northern Ireland. It analyses why decommissioning has become so contentious in the Northern Ireland peace process. Decommissioning, though, is not a unique or intrinsically insurmountable problem. This is demonstrated by highlighting the issue in international context. Three examples of decommissioning in conflict resolution processes are assessed: the Lebanon, El Salvador and Mozambique. These varied examples do supply some limited lessons for Northern Ireland. This study argues that the explanation for the intractability of decommissioning in Northern Ireland resides, to a greater extent, in the tactical and strategic reasoning of the main paramilitary groupings in Northern Ireland. The factors that condition their thinking, however, can be found in the nature of the peace process itself which provides the paramilitiaries with every incentive to retain possession of their weapons.     

Optimal shift scheduling: A branch‐and‐price approach

We present a branch‐and‐price technique for optimal staff scheduling with multiple rest breaks, meal break, and break windows. We devise and implement specialized branching rules suitable for solving the set covering type formulation implicitly, using column generation. Our methodology is more widely applicable and computationally superior to the alternative methods in the literature. We tested our methodology on 365 test problems involving between 1728 and 86400 shift variations, and 20 demand patterns. In a direct comparison with an alternative method, our approach yields significant improvements both in cpu time and in the number of problem instances solved to optimality. The improvements were particularly marked for problems involving larger numbers of feasible shifts. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 47: 185–200, 2000     

Bayesian inference for a Lanchester type combat model

We undertake inference for a stochastic form of the Lanchester combat model. In particular, given battle data, we assess the type of battle that occurred and whether or not it makes any difference to the number of casualties if an army is attacking or defending. Our approach is Bayesian and we use modern computational techniques to fit the model. We illustrate our method using data from the Ardennes campaign. We compare our results with previous analyses of these data by Bracken and Fricker. Our conclusions are somewhat different to those of Bracken. Where he suggests that a linear law is appropriate, we show that the logarithmic or linear‐logarithmic laws fit better. We note however that the basic Lanchester modeling assumptions do not hold for the Ardennes data. Using Fricker's modified data, we show that although his “super‐logarithmic” law fits best, the linear, linear‐logarithmic, and logarithmic laws cannot be ruled out. We suggest that Bayesian methods can be used to make inference for battles in progress. We point out a number of advantages: Prior information from experts or previous battles can be incorporated; predictions of future casualties are easily made; more complex models can be analysed using stochastic simulation techniques. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 47: 541–558, 2000     

Automated air load planning

We describe the development of a heuristic algorithm for determining efficient 2-dimensional packings in cargo aircraft where cargo placement constraints are critically important in determining the feasibility of packing locations. We review the performance of a new algorithm versus some traditional ones for aircraft loading. The algorithm is also tested in a more generalized setting where there exist no additional constraints on items, to suggest applicability in other environments. The new algorithm has been used worldwide in the Automated Air Load Planning System (AALPS) for cargo aircraft loading, with much success. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 45: 751–768, 1998     

Discretization of the continuous ambush game

This article further considers the two‐person continuous ambush game introduced by Ruckle. This article extends the work of Ruckle, Baston and Bostock, and Lee by considering the game for a general number of barriers. By supplanting optimal strategies from a discretized version of the game, we show that there always exists a value for the game, which, furthermore, can be found using linear programming techniques. Further to this, we show that the discrete ambush game considered by Garnaev has the same value as a continuous game, allowing many new results to be obtained in both games. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 50: 515–529, 2003