Military spending and economic growth in South Africa

This paper undertakes an empirical analysis of the economic effects of military spending on the South African economy. It estimates a neo‐classical model common in the literature at the level of the macroeconomy and at the level of the manufacturing sector. An attempt is made to improve upon the model by allowing the data to determine the dynamic structure of the model through an ARDL procedure. No significant impact of military spending is found in aggregate, but there is a significant negative impact for the manufacturing sector. This suggests that the cuts in domestic military procurement that have occurred since 1989 could lead to improved economic performance in South Africa through their impact on the manufacturing sector.     

The impact of arms production on the South African manufacturing industry

The 1977 UN arms embargo was one of the main factors which led South Africa to establish a largely self sufficient import‐substituting arms industry capable of meeting the apartheid state's demand for sophisticated weaponry. While macroeconomic studies suggest that high military spending had a damaging effect on economic growth, no studies have investigated the disaggregated impact of military expenditure on industrial development. This paper applies panel data methods to the Industrial Development Corporation's Sectoral Database in order to analyse the level effects of military spending.     

The rising unit cost of defence equipment — The reasons and the results

This paper constructs a conceptual model for the selection of defence equipment providing best value for money. It then shows how the unit cost of the chosen equipment increases between one generation of equipment and its successor because of developments in the perceived threat, the available technology and industrial productivity, and demonstrates that unit cost increases can arise from a logical and rational procurement policy and are not necessarily caused by technological chimeras and military vainglory. The resulting persistent rise in unit cost is unlikely to be significantly slowed by any of the counter‐measures yet proposed.

The paper then discusses the policies which nations have adopted to accommodate past increases in unit cost, and the options which confront any nation at the point when it can no longer afford to re‐equip a particular element of its armed forces.     

Life cycle costs for decision support ‐ a study of the various life cycle costs used at different levels of defence policy and management∗

Debates on many aspects of defence economics ‐ on the scale of defence expenditure, on the allocation of that expenditure to various military capabilities, and on the selection of equipment offering the best value for money ‐ are bedevilled by misunderstandings and misconceptions about the costs of defence equipment. This paper seeks to improve understanding of defence equipment costs by defining a hierarchy of defence equipment within which the direct and indirect life cycle costs of defence equipment may be allocated at different levels. Having reviewed the direct and indirect components of the life cycle cost, this paper then shows how different costing studies for different purposes require different approaches to life cycle costing, and that there is no unique life cycle cost which can be assigned to one particular item of defence equipment. There is instead a range oflife cycle costs, each of which is appropriate for a particular study, and it is important that a quoted cost of an item of defence equipment should be used only in the pertinent circumstances. The paper is written from a UK perspective and accordingly uses British nomenclature, but its principles should be relevant to defence cost studies in other nations.     

THE NUCLEAR WEAPON STATES

The nuclear weapon states (NWS) have different perspectives on the desirability and feasibility of a world without nuclear weapons. A review of each of the current nuclear doctrines, postures, and disarmament policies of the five NWS shows that there is a clear divide between them, with some showing relatively determined leadership (the United States and the United Kingdom) and others expressing skepticism, if not complete disinterest (France, Russia, and China). Nevertheless, the prospects for progress on disarmament by the NWS at the 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons remain reasonably good. Yet complete success will require much time as well as sustained and applied efforts from the NWS, first and foremost to improve their performance as international security guarantors.     

流动相似律研究

有别于经典的量纲分析方法和对流动控制方程及其定解条件的无量纲化分析方法, 论文给出了一种分析流动相似律的新思路, 亦即将复杂的流动过程分解为若干个子过程, 然后分析每一个子过程中反映其本质性态的特征量。依据这一思路导出的高超声速热化学非平衡流动相似律与文献采用经典分析方法得到的流动相似律一致。     

Performances and direct writing of CL-20 based ultraviolet curing explosive ink

A new type of explosive ink formulation that can be quickly cured was prepared with unsaturated polyester as binder,styrene as active monomer,2,4,6-trimethylbenzoyl-diphenylphosphine oxide as photoinitiator,and hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane (CL-20) as the main explosive.Then the explosive ink direct writing technology was used to charge the micro-sized energetic devices,the curing mechanism of the explosive ink was discussed,and the microstructure,safety performance and explosive transfer performance of the explosive ink molded samples were tested and analyzed.Results indicate that the composite material has a fast curing molding speed,its hardness can reach 2H within 8 min.The crystal form of CL-20 in the molded sample is still ε type.The CL-20 based W-curing explosive ink formulation has good compatibility,its apparent activation energy is increased by about 3.5 kJ/mol.The composite presents a significant reduction in impact sensitivity and its characteristic drop height can reach 39.8 cm,which is about 3 times higher than the raw material.When the line width of charge is 1.0 mm,the critical thickness of the explosion can reach 0.015 mm,and the explosion velocity is 7129 m/s when the charge density is 1.612 g/cm3.     

最小自由能法计算烟火药剂热值

烟火药剂的热值计算在烟火研究领域有着重要的作用．本文根据最小自由能原理,通过一系列基本假设计算出了体系燃烧爆炸反应后的热值,计算结果与实验衡量数据相吻合,并且程序可通过进一步完善,扩展应用于非理想气体,提高计算精度．     

Machine maintenance with workload considerations

Machine maintenance is modeled in the setting of a single‐server queue. Machine deterioration corresponds to slower service rates and failure. This leads to higher congestion and an increase in customer holding costs. The decision‐maker decides when to perform maintenance, which may be done pre‐emptively; before catastrophic failures. Similar to classic maintenance control models, the information available to the decision‐maker includes the state of the server. Unlike classic models, the information also includes the number of customers in queue. Considered are both a repair model and a replacement model. In the repair model, with random replacement times, fixed costs are assumed to be constant in the server state. In the replacement model, both constant and variable fixed costs are considered. It is shown in general that the optimal maintenance policies have switching curve structure that is monotone in the server state. However, the switching curve policies for the repair model are not always monotone in the number of customers in the queue. Numerical examples and two heuristics are also presented. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007