Nuclear‐and missile‐related trade and developments for selected countries,November 1997‐February 1998

The material in this overview is drawn from selected abstracts that appear in the Center for Nonproliferation Studies' nuclear and missile databases. Transactions of nuclear and missile technologies, parts, and materials are listed according to the recipient country. Other developments are listed according to the country where the event or development took place.     

The Israel Defense Forces as an epistemic authority: An intellectual challenge in the reality of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict

The changes in the nature of warfare and its transformation toward Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) intrastate conflict have challenged the patterns of interaction between the political and the military echelons in Israel. It seems that the political echelon's superiority is maintained at the institutional and formal levels, but on the substantive level, which demands relying on knowledge and systematic staff work, the political echelon's position is weakened and loses its validity.

Introducing the military echelon in Israel as an epistemic authority regarding the violent confrontation and the main outlines of the military knowledge development process might clarify why the absence of the required dialogue between the echelons and the weakness of the intellectual effort increased the military's influence over the shaping of Israeli conflict-management strategy. The argument's validity and its explanatory power can be found relevant for other countries whose militaries are deeply involved in the management of LIC.     

Analysis of algorithms for two‐stage flowshops with multi‐processor task flexibility

In this article we introduce a 2‐machine flowshop with processing flexibility. Two processing modes are available for each task: namely, processing by the designated processor, and processing simultaneously by both processors. The objective studied is makespan minimization. This production environment is encountered in repetitive manufacturing shops equipped with processors that have the flexibility to execute orders either individually or in coordination. In the latter case, the product designer exploits processing synergies between two processors so as to execute a particular task much faster than a dedicated processor. This type of flowshop environment is also encountered in labor‐intensive assembly lines where products moving downstream can be processed either in the designated assembly stations or by pulling together the work teams of adjacent stations. This scheduling problem requires determining the mode of operation of each task, and the subsequent scheduling that preserves the flowshop constraints. We show that the problem is ordinary NP‐complete and obtain an optimal solution using a dynamic programming algorithm with considerable computational requirements for medium and large problems. Then, we present a number of dynamic programming relaxations and analyze their worst‐case error performance. Finally, we present a polynomial time heuristic with worst‐case error performance comparable to that of the dynamic programming relaxations. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004.     

A note on scheduling parallel machines subject to breakdown and repair

In this paper we consider n jobs and a number of machines in parallel. The machines are identical and subject to breakdown and repair. The number may therefore vary over time and is at time t equal to m(t). Preemptions are allowed. We consider three objectives, namely, the total completion time, ∑ C_j, the makespan C_max, and the maximum lateness L_max. We study the conditions on m(t) under which various rules minimize the objective functions under consideration. We analyze cases when the jobs have deadlines to meet and when the jobs are subject to precedence constraints. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004.