‘A Particularly exacting operation’: British Forces and the Battle of Surabaya,November 1945

In 1945, the Dutch government was not in a position to re‐impose its control upon its colonies in the East Indies after the surrender of Japan. In their stead, Allied forces were to take control of the islands, disarm Japanese troops and to maintain stability until the Dutch could return. The declaration of an independent Indonesia by nationalists left the British and Indian troops sent to re‐occupy the islands facing a complex situation. Increasing violence culminated in the murder of Brigadier A.W. S. Mallaby in Surabaya, which was followed by a major action by British forces to regain control. In extremely difficult circumstances, the British troops conducted a successful operation which held many lessons for the conduct of counter‐insurgency operations in the years that followed.     

A note on a first application of clustering procedures to fleet material condition measurements

The objective of this paper is to provide an independent evaluation of the nature and interpretation of ships' physical condition data generated by the USN Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV). The substantive context is the classification of ships in terms of material condition and/or readiness based on scores pertaining to individual line elements within each ship. In order to account for multi-dimensional measures of each ship, clustering procedures are employed to evaluate existing ship classification systems and to indicate other possibilities.     

Stochastic duels involving reliability

The reliability of weapons in combat has been treated by Bhashyam in the context of a stochastic duel characterized by fixed ammunition supplies. negative exponentially distributed firing times and weapon lifetimes, and a fixed number of spare weapons for each duelist. The present paper takes a different approach by starting with the fundamental duel of Ancker and Williams, characterized by unlimited ammunition and by ordinary renewal firing times, and adding to it weapon lifetimes which can be functions of time or of round position in the firing sequence. Probabilities of winning and tieing are derived and it is shown that under certain conditions the weapon lifetimes are equivalent to random time and ammunition limits.     

A two product dynamic economic lot size production model with either-or production constraints

This paper considers the production of two products with known demands over a finite set of periods. The production and inventory carrying costs for each product are assumed to be concave. We seek the minimum cost production schedule meeting all demands, without backlogging, assuming that at most one of the two products can be produced in any period. The optimization problem is first stated as a nonlinear programming problem, which allows the proof of a result permitting the search for the optimal policy to be restricted to those which produce a product only when its inventory level is zero. A dynamic programming formulation is given and the model is then formulated as a shortest route problem in a specially constructed network.     

Assessment of hazardous-inspection policies

Inspection procedures may at times pose a hazard to the system being monitored. In this article, a simple hazardous-inspection model is considered. The character of the optimal ongoing inspection policy (for inspections subsequent to the first) is reviewed, and the possible forms of the optimal initiation policy are established. Efficient computational procedures are developed for calculating optimal policies. Some discussion is included of the counterintuitive nature of some of the results.     

India's Aspirations and Strategy for the Indian Ocean – Securing the Waves?

India has increasingly high aspirations in the Indian Ocean, as enunciated by politicians, naval figures and the wider elite. These aspirations, its strategic discourse, are of pre-eminence and leadership. India's maritime strategy for such a self-confessed diplomatic, constabulary and benign role is primarily naval-focused; a sixfold strategy of increasing its naval spending, strengthening its infrastructure, increasing its naval capabilities, active maritime diplomacy, exercising in the Indian Ocean and keeping open the choke points. Through such strategy, and soft balancing with the United States, India hopes to secure its own position against a perceived growing Chinese challenge in the Indian Ocean.