Country Survey I–Military Spending in India 1

After a brief survey of the Indian economy, we survey the supply and demand of military expenditures in India over the last four decades. The causes of military expenditures appear to include regional rivalries and protracted conflicts, but it has proven difficult to delineate these with empirical models. The effects of military spending in India on economic growth appear to be benign, despite much speculation to the contrary. However, the opportunity costs of defence spending are shown to be considerable. We conclude with speculation about the role of debt and debt servicing in retarding future economic growth in India. We also speculate about the potential for the creation of a war economy in India.     

CONTRIBUTORS

Conventional wisdom states that the stability-instability paradox does not explain the effect of nuclear proliferation on the conflict propensity of South Asia, and that nuclear weapons have had a different and more dangerous impact in South Asia than Cold War Europe. I argue that the paradox explains nuclear South Asia; that the similarities between nuclear South Asia and Cold War Europe are strong; and that conventional instability does not cause revisionist challenges in the long run. I develop and probe a psychological causal mechanism that explains the impact of nuclear weapons on Cold War Europe and South Asia. Following the ten-month mobilized crisis in 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may have adopted a more moderate foreign policy toward India after experiencing fear of imminent nuclear war, as Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev did forty years earlier. I argue that the stability-instability paradox explains Cold War Europe and nuclear South Asia and will, conditional on Iranian and North Korean revisionism, predict the impact of nuclear weapon development on these states' conflict propensities.     

East versus West in the defeat of Nazi Germany

One of the most commonly expressed opinions about victory in the Second World War is that the Soviet Union was mostly responsible for beating Nazi Germany. Supposedly the great land war fought between these two powers in the East was the decisive front in Europe. The West's contribution to German defeat, on the other hand, is often seen as somewhat marginal. The Anglo‐American strategic bombing campaign in 1943 paid few dividends and it was not until after the Normandy landings in June 1944 that the West really began to divert a large amount of German resources.

The purpose of this article is to challenge some of these basic notions. Through analysing what Germany produced, where it was sent and how it was destroyed, the West's contribution to defeating Germany moves from an ancillary position to a dominant one. Taking German war production as a whole, from 1943 onwards the West was responsible for tying down and destroying a significantly larger share than the Soviet Union.     

Partial input to output impacts in DEA: Production considerations and resource sharing among business subunits

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a methodology for evaluating the relative efficiencies of peer decision‐making units (DMUs), in a multiple input/output setting. Although it is generally assumed that all outputs are impacted by all inputs, there are many situations where this may not be the case. This article extends the conventional DEA methodology to allow for the measurement of technical efficiency in situations where only partial input‐to‐output impacts exist. The new methodology involves viewing the DMU as a business unit, consisting of a set of mutually exclusive subunits, each of which can be treated in the conventional DEA sense. A further consideration involves the imposition of constraints in the form of assurance regions (AR) on pairs of multipliers. These AR constraints often arise at the level of the subunit, and as a result, there can be multiple and often inconsistent AR constraints on any given variable pair. We present a methodology for resolving such inconsistencies. To demonstrate the overall methodology, we apply it to the problem of evaluating the efficiencies of a set of steel fabrication plants. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013     

Statistical equivalency and optimality of simple step‐stress accelerated test plans for the exponential distribution

Accelerated life testing (ALT) is commonly used to obtain reliability information about a product in a timely manner. Several stress loading designs have been proposed and recent research interests have emerged concerning the development of equivalent ALT plans. Step‐stress ALT (SSALT) is one of the most commonly used stress loadings because it usually shortens the test duration and reduces the number of required test units. This article considers two fundamental questions when designing a SSALT and provides formal proofs in answer to each. Namely: (1) can a simple SSALT be designed so that it is equivalent to other stress loading designs? (2) when optimizing a multilevel SSALT, does it degenerate to a simple SSALT plan? The answers to both queries, under certain reasonable model assumptions, are shown to be a qualified YES. In addition, we provide an argument to support the rationale of a common practice in designing a SSALT, that is, setting the higher stress level as high as possible in a SSALT plan. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013     

Lanchester for cyber: The mixed epidemic‐combat model

Future conflict between armed forces will occur both in the physical domain as well as the information domain. The linkage of these domains is not yet fully understood. We study the dynamics of a force subject to kinetic effects as well as a specific network effect–spreading malware. In the course of our study, we unify two well‐studied models: the Lanchester model of armed conflict and deterministic models of epidemiology. We develop basic results, including a rule for determining when explicit modeling of network propagation is required. We then generalize the model to a force subdivided by both physical and network topology, and demonstrate the specific case where the force is divided between front‐ and rear‐echelons. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013     

Urban gangs evolving as criminal Netwar actors

The nature of conflict and crime is changing. Technology allows groups to spread their influence without regard to geographic limitations. A shift from hierarchies to network organizational forms is also occurring. As a consequence non‐state actors can extend their influence to gain social, political or economic power and challenge state institutions. This article examines the potential for gangs, transnational criminals and terrorists to embrace network forms and utilize technology to wage netwar. Factors which influence ‘third generation’ gang organization (politicization, internationalization and sophistication) are described to illustrate how a net‐based threat can mature. A move toward network organization within transnational criminal organizations and terrorist groups demonstrating the potential for these classic criminal entities to emerge as netwar actors is also reviewed. Finally, the need for state institutions such as the police and military to develop networked responses to combat networked threats is stated.