Landmarks in defense literature

Military operations and maritime preponderance by Charles E. Callwell, Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1905.     

Measuring hard power: China’s economic growth and military capacity

China’s rapid economic growth is facilitating massive increases in its military spending and causing increased security concerns in Asia and the Western Pacific. But there is uncertainty over how large China’s military spending is relative to other countries, or how fast it is growing in real terms. We address this issue by deriving a relative military cost price index based on the relative unit costs of inputs. We find that China’s real military spending is much larger than suggested by exchange rate comparisons, and even larger than standard purchasing power parity comparisons. We also find, however, that the real growth of China’s military spending has been smaller than conventionally thought. This is due to rapidly growing wages in China and the large share of personnel in China’s military budget.     

An Investigation of the Weights of Pattern 1907 Bayonets made in the UK around the First World War Period

The standard issue bayonet of the British Army immediately preceding and during the First World War was the Pattern 1907. This was manufactured at different times and in varying numbers during that period by one official body, the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield, and by five private contractors. These bayonets were made according to published official specifications issued by the War Department and based on a ‘pattern example’ provided by the Royal Small Arms Factory. The specifications indicate, inter alia, the quality of metal used in making the bayonets, methods of inspection and proofing, and the required maximum and minimum weight range of the completed bayonet. However, examination of a series of these bayonets in a private collection suggested that their weights varied considerably from the mid-point values of the allowed weight ranges in the original and amended specifications (16.5 oz. and 17 oz., respectively). To establish if this was a common feature among this class of bayonet as opposed to a chance factor, the weights of other surviving Pattern 1907 bayonets were determined and compared to establish the degree of variance from the official specifications as originally set out by the Royal Small Arms Factory. Seventy-six percent of the 142 bayonets surveyed were found to be above the mid-point of the allowed weight range given in the amended manufacturing specifications, with many being at the upper end of the allowed range. This is a statistically unusual result. It is speculated that the target weight may have been deliberately set higher by the individual manufacturers to eliminate the possibility of rejection of any underweight bayonets by the Royal Small Arms Factory inspectors and so a refusal of acceptance and payment for the work.     

A bicriterion approach to common flow allowances due window assignment and scheduling with controllable processing times

We investigate a single‐machine scheduling problem for which both the job processing times and due windows are decision variables to be determined by the decision maker. The job processing times are controllable as a linear or convex function of the amount of a common continuously divisible resource allocated to the jobs, where the resource allocated to the jobs can be used in discrete or continuous quantities. We use the common flow allowances due window assignment method to assign due windows to the jobs. We consider two performance criteria: (i) the total weighted number of early and tardy jobs plus the weighted due window assignment cost, and (ii) the resource consumption cost. For each resource consumption function, the objective is to minimize the first criterion, while keeping the value of the second criterion no greater than a given limit. We analyze the computational complexity, devise pseudo‐polynomial dynamic programming solution algorithms, and provide fully polynomial‐time approximation schemes and an enhanced volume algorithm to find high‐quality solutions quickly for the considered problems. We conduct extensive numerical studies to assess the performance of the algorithms. The computational results show that the proposed algorithms are very efficient in finding optimal or near‐optimal solutions. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 64: 41–63, 2017     

Global strategic studies: a manifesto

This contribution reflects on the state of strategic studies today and the criticism it has received in recent years, as being outdated and irrelevant. The authors formulate some premises for reinvigorating this field of inquiry by widening its scope and research agenda to do more justice to the wide variety of actors, perspectives and practices observable in the enterprise of strategy in our contemporary globalised world.     

The Clausewitzian fallacy of absolute war

Clausewitz was much preoccupied with the apparent contradiction between real and absolute war. Why did war in history so rarely exhibit the extremes of violence and energy implied in the pure concept of war? Clausewitz’s commentators have usually followed him in thinking that this was a genuine problem in need of a solution, but I want to question that view. I will argue that Clausewitz did not have a coherent philosophy of absolute war, and therefore the contradiction he posited between real and absolute war was equally meaningless – as, too, was his effort to resolve it by claiming that some real wars approached or even attained the absolute form of war. The real problem was not the opposition of real and absolute war, but the self-contradictory theory of absolute war.     

An index policy for a stochastic scheduling model with improving/deteriorating jobs

We consider stochastic scheduling models which have the natural character that jobs improve while being processed, but deteriorate (and may possibly leave the system altogether) while processing is diverted elsewhere. Such restless bandit problems are shown to be indexable in the sense of Whittle. A numerical study which elucidates the strong performance of the resulting index policy is complemented by a theoretical study which demonstrates the optimality of the index policy under given conditions and which develops performance guarantees for the index heuristic more generally. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 706–721, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10036