Country survey XVIII: The two Koreas' defence economy

In this paper we change the structure of the basic conflict model. This makes it possible to found an economic theory of war and peace. Apart from few exceptions there exist no peace equilibria in the related literature of conflict theory. The aim of the paper is to fill this gap, because most parts of the world live in peace. Further we show that negotiations are possible to avoid a war. The main result is that war breaks out only if the distribution of resources and/or the effectiveness of weapons is sufficiently unequal.     

UNDERSTANDING CHINA'S ANTISATELLITE TEST

In discussing China's January 2007 hit-to-kill intercept of the Chinese weather satellite FengYun-1C, most American analysts sought the “message” for the United States—either by asserting that China's test was a deliberate step toward a comprehensive counterspace capability to offset U.S. conventional military superiority or an attempt to force the United States to the negotiating table on “the prevention of an arms race in outer space.” Chinese officials, after a long silence, eventually claimed the test was an “experiment” that was “not targeted at any country.” We traveled to China several times in 2007 and had a series of conversations with Chinese individuals knowledgeable about the history of this particular antisatellite program and with access to information about the decision-making process prior to and after the final test. These discussions were off the record, not for attribution, given the sensitivity of the subject. They reflected the views of some of the key institutions involved in the test from the State, the Communist Party, the People's Liberation Army, and aerospace experts involved in debris calculations. The information conveyed to us suggests that American commentators tend to place much greater importance on the United States as a driver in China's decision to develop the technology and conduct the test than do the Chinese.     

An enterprise portfolio approach for defence capability planning

Capability-based planning (CBP) is considered by many defence organisations to be the best practice for enterprise-level planning, analysis and management. This approach, loosely based around investment portfolio theory, is premised on balancing the cost, benefit and risk of capability options across the defence enterprise. However a number of authors have recently noted limitations of its current applications. The authors propose a more general, insurance-based approach, which can support the evolutionary improvement of the current CBP approach. This approach is implemented as hedging-based planning and aims to better reflect the enterprise nature of defence organisations, capturing both force structure and force generation aspects of military systems.     

Helpless or Deliberate Bystander: American Policy towards South Vietnam's Military Coups, 1954–1975

The USA's role in fomenting and responding to military coups remains an understudied and politically contentious subject despite it being a recurring foreign policy problem exemplified most recently in both Egypt and Mali. To the extent this topic has been addressed in any depth by scholars, it is mainly limited to an examination of a small number of coups that occurred during the Cold War that the CIA was accused of sponsoring. However, this emphasis on well-known cases to the exclusion of lesser-known cases has resulted in a biased view of omnipotent US power. This limitation is reflected in the case of South Vietnam, in which the focus has been placed on the 1963 coup that overthrew President Ngo Dinh Diem, whereas the numerous other coups that occurred have received little or no attention. In this article, a more inclusive approach will be taken in which US policy will be examined with respect to all of the main coups and coup attempts that occurred during the period 1954–1975.     

Conjectures for framing cyberwarfare

Cyberspace has emerged as a potentially new (and unconventional) domain for warfare. Much debate has focused on understanding cyber conflict. The ability to critically analyse this phenomenon is important; however, the nascent nature of cyberwarfare and the complexity of the systems involved create challenges not met by conventional approaches. As a first step, this requires an analytical construct to frame discussions in a way that highlights distinct characteristics of the cyber domain. An approach proposed is one of the postulating conjectures for debate as a way to achieve this and to demonstrate its use, both at the strategic and operational levels. It is suggested that such an approach provides one component of a mature analytical framework for the analysis of cyber across a range of warfare domains.     

Optimal replacement of continuously degrading systems in partially observed environments

Motivated by wind energy applications, we consider the problem of optimally replacing a stochastically degrading component that resides and operates in a partially observable environment. The component's rate of degradation is modulated by the stochastic environment process, and the component fails when it is accumulated degradation first reaches a fixed threshold. Assuming periodic inspection of the component, the objective is to minimize the long‐run average cost per unit time of performing preventive and reactive replacements for two distinct cases. The first case examines instantaneous replacements and fixed costs, while the second considers time‐consuming replacements and revenue losses accrued during periods of unavailability. Formulated and solved are mixed state space, partially observable Markov decision process models, both of which reveal the optimality of environment‐dependent threshold policies with respect to the component's cumulative degradation level. Additionally, it is shown that for each degradation value, a threshold policy with respect to the environment belief state is optimal if the environment alternates between two states. The threshold policies are illustrated by way of numerical examples using both synthetic and real wind turbine data. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 395–415, 2015     

Spies,advisors, and grunts: Film portrayals of counterinsurgency in Vietnam

Vietnam was a complex conflict, which historians and political scientists have struggled to understand. Some of the bitterest disputes in the historiography revolve around the US approach to counterinsurgency in Vietnam. Many different facets of the war have received the attention of filmmakers, and an examination of their work suggests new ways of thinking about the conflict. This article considers film portrayals of three phases of the Vietnam War – firstly, the early period of ‘political action’, then the advisory period, and finally the Americanization of the war after 1965. It suggests that by examining the experiences of participants in each of these phases, Vietnam War cinema helps to illustrate the problems that faced various American approaches to counterinsurgency in the conflict. Combined with the importance of films in determining popular perceptions of both historical conflicts and counterinsurgency in general, it suggests that they are worthy subjects of study and critique.     

Flexibility and complexity in periodic distribution problems

In this paper, we explore trade‐offs between operational flexibility and operational complexity in periodic distribution problems. We consider the gains from operational flexibility in terms of vehicle routing costs and customer service benefits, as well as the costs of operational complexity in terms of modeling, solution methods, and implementation challenges for drivers and customers. The period vehicle routing problem (PVRP) is a variation of the classic vehicle routing problem in which delivery routes are constructed for a period of time; the PVRP with service choice (PVRP‐SC) extends the PVRP to allow service (visit) frequency to become a decision of the model. For the periodic distribution problems represented by PVRP and PVRP‐SC, we introduce operational flexibility levers and a set of quantitative measures to evaluate the trade‐offs between flexibility and complexity. We develop a Tabu Search heuristic to incorporate a range of operational flexibility options. We analyze the potential value and the increased operational complexity of the flexibility levers. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007     

On some stochastic inequalities involving minimum of random variables

Let X_i be independent IFR random variables and let Y_i be independent exponential random variables such that E[X_i]=E[Y_i] for all i=1, 2, ? n. Then it is well known that E[min (X_i)] ≥E[min (X_i)]. Nevertheless, for 1≤i≤n exponentially distributed X_i's and for a decreasing convex function ?(.). it is shown that .