Suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) as an information duel

Blue strike aircraft enter region ? to attack Red targets. In Case 1, Blue conducts (preplanned) SEAD to establish air superiority. In the (reactive) SEAD scenario, which is Case 2, such superiority is already in place, but is jeopardized by prohibitive interference from Red, which threatens Blue's ability to conduct missions. We utilize both deterministic and stochastic models to explore optimal tactics for Red in such engagements. Policies are developed which will guide both Red's determination of the modes of operation of his engagement radar, and his choice of Blue opponent to target next. An index in the form of a simple transaction kill ratio plays a major role throughout. Published 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 723–742, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10046     

One Minute in Haditha: Ethics and Non-Conscious Decision-Making

In November 2005, U.S. Marine Sergeant Frank Wuterich fired on and killed five unarmed Iraqi men standing by a car near the site of an improvised explosive device explosion (IED) in Haditha, Iraq. Moments earlier, the IED had destroyed a vehicle in the convoy that Wuterich led, killing one of the men in it. This article argues that analyzing Wuterich's conduct as a rapid non-conscious response captured by the model of Recognition-Primed Decision-Making (RPD) allows us to reconstruct his implicit decision-making in ways that provide insight into psychological processes that may operate during combat. Emerging research in neuroscience suggests that RPD in situations with moral significance involves a complex neural computational process in which emotion plays a powerful role. This article maintains that incorporating these insights can provide greater understanding of the moral psychology of behavior in combat, and may help guide military-ethics training for asymmetric conflicts that pose difficult significant challenges in distinguishing combatants from civilians.     

Puzzle‐based storage systems

We introduce and develop models for a physical goods storage system based on the 15‐puzzle, a classic children's game in which 15 numbered tiles slide within a 4 × 4 grid. The objective of the game is to arrange the tiles in numerical sequence, starting from a random arrangement. For our purposes, the tiles represent totes, pallets, or even containers that must be stored very densely, and the objective is to maneuver items to an input–output point for retrieval or processing. We develop analytical results for storage configurations having a single empty location (as in the game) and experimental results for configurations with multiple empty locations. Designs with many empty locations can be made to form aisles, allowing us to compare puzzle‐based designs with traditional aisle‐based designs found in warehousing systems. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007     

Defense spending and the macroeconomy

Given Kinsella's (1990, 1991) appeal for analysis to be pursued using sub‐annual level of data, we pursue such an endeavor in this paper. We examime the effect of defence spending on real output, the unemployment rate, price level, and interest rate covering a quarterly time frame 1960:1 to 1988:1 using an unrestricted vector autoregression framework. Our results parallel the findings of Kinsella in that there appears no causal relationship in either direction between defence spending and economic performance.     

Book Reviews

Patrick Finney (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War. London: Arnold, 1997. Pp.xvi + 461, index. £15.99. ISBN 0–340–67640‐X.

Maria Emilia Paz, Strategy, Security, and Spies: Mexico and the US as Allies in World War II. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Pp.xii + 264, 10 illus., biblio., index. $55 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). ISBN 0–271–01665–5 and 01666–3.

Norman J.W. Goda, Tomorrow the World: Hitler, Northwest Africa and the Path toward America. College Station, Texas A&;M University Press, 1998. Pp.xxvi + 307, 2 maps, biblio., index. $39.95. ISBN 0–89096–807–1.

Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp.xii + 525, biblio., index. £25; $34.95. ISBN 0–521–64044‐X.

Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp.viii + 270, index. $35. ISBN 0–801403201–4.

Eric Arnett (ed.), Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in South Asia after the Test Ban, SIPRI Research Report No.14. Oxford: Oxford University Press/Stockholm Int Peace Research Institute, 1998. Pp.viii + 98, index. £12.99. ISBN 0–19–8294115.

T.V. Paul, Richard J. Harknett and James J. Wirtz (eds.), The Absolute Weapon Revisited: Nuclear Arms and Emerging International Order. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1998. Pp.vi + 312, index. $47.50/£36. ISBN 0–472–10863–8.     

Setting military reenlistment bonuses

The United States military frequently has difficulty retaining enlisted personnel beyond their initial enlistment. A bonus program within each service, called a Selective Reenlistment Bonus (SRB) program, seeks to enhance reenlistments and thus reduce personnel shortages in critical military occupational specialties (MOSs). The amount of bonus is set by assigning “SRB multipliers” to each MOS. We develop a nonlinear integer program to select multipliers which minimize a function of deviations from desired reenlistment targets. A Lagrangian relaxation of a linearized version of the integer program is used to obtain lower bounds and feasible solutions. The best feasible solution, discovered in a coordinate search of the Lagrangian function, is heuristically improved by apportioning unexpended funds. For large problems a heuristic variable reduction is employed to speed model solution. U.S. Army data and requirements for FY87 yield a 0-1 integer program with 12,992 binary variables and 273 constraints, which is solved within 0.00002% of optimality on an IBM 3033AP in less than 1.7 seconds. More general models with up to 463,000 binary variables are solved, on average, to within 0.009% of optimality in less than 1.8 minutes. The U.S. Marine Corps has used a simpler version of this model since 1986. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

General models for the supplier's all-unit quantity discount policy

The purpose of this article is to investigate some managerial insights related to using the all-unit quantity discount policies under various conditions. The models developed here are general treatments that deal with four major issues: (a) one buyer or multiple buyers, (b) constant or price-elastic demand, (c) the relationship between the supplier's production schedule or ordering policy and the buyers' ordering sizes, and (d) the supplier either purchasing or manufacturing the item. The models are developed with two objectives: the supplier's profit improvement or the supplier's increased profit share analysis. Algorithms are developed to find optimal decision policies. Our analysis provides the supplier with both the optimal all-unit quantity discount policy and the optimal production (or ordering) strategy. Numerical examples are provided. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons. Inc.