Uncovering foreign military innovation

An analysis of US assessments of Germany's development of armored warfare illustrates the problems that intelligence agencies face as they attempt to understand military innovation. The covert nature of German Army's tank research in the years immediately following World War I limited the number of indicators of Berlin's interest in armored warfare. Similarly, the United States possessed at best a fragmentary picture of German experimentation with armor. By the outbreak of World War II, however, US military attaches had nonetheless developed an accurate understanding of German concepts of armored warfare. If the United States is to avoid strategic surprise in the future, it must cultivate intelligence sources and employ considerably different methods from those of the Cold War.     

POWER,INFLUENCE, AND HIERARCHY: DEFENSE INDUSTRIES IN A UNIPOLAR WORLD

The global defense‐industrial sector reflects the hierarchy of power in the post‐Cold War world. As in the larger international system, the United States plays the dominant role in the defense sector as well. It is a comparative advantage often used by US policymakers to influence the foreign policy behavior of other states. Curiously, the radical concentration of the world’s defense industrial sector, as described here, has received relatively little scrutiny from either academia or the media, even though it not only reflects the international order but provides the United States with considerable leverage in it.     

Using container inspection history to improve interdiction logistics for illicit nuclear materials

Strengthening the United States' ability to prevent adversaries from smuggling nuclear materials into the country is a vital and ongoing issue. The prospect of additional countries, such as Iran, obtaining the know‐how and equipment to produce these special nuclear materials in the near future underscores the need for efficient and effective inspection policies at ports and border crossings. In addition, the reduction of defense and homeland security budgets in recent years has made it increasingly important to accomplish the interdiction mission with fewer funds. Addressing these complications, in this article, we present a novel two‐port interdiction model. We propose using prior inspection data as a low‐cost way of increasing overall interdiction performance. We provide insights into two primary questions: first, how should a decision maker at a domestic port use detection data from the foreign port to improve the overall detection capability? Second, what are potential limitations to the usefulness of prior inspection data—is it possible that using prior data actually harms decision making at the domestic port? We find that a boundary curve policy (BCP) that takes into account both foreign and domestic inspection data can provide a significant improvement in detection probability. This BCP also proves to be surprisingly robust, even if adversaries are able to infiltrate shipments during transit. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 60: 433‐448, 2013     

四轴超精密车床的改进坐标驱动装置

带微进给方式步进电机的PC控制轴系驱动装置可生产光学质量的表面。超精密车床可生产诸如球体和非球体之类的集合体,其表面粗糙度≤5nmRa,可用于光学装置的反光镜或空气轴承转轴的超精密零件。     

Finite Markov chain models skip-free in one direction

Finite Markov processes are considered, with bidimensional state space, such that transitions from state (n, i) to state (m, j) are possible only if m ≤ n + 1. The analysis leads to efficient computational algorithms, to determine the stationary probability distribution, and moments of first passage times.     

Book reviews

British Naval Policy and Norwegian Security: Maritime Power in Transition, 1951-60.. By Mats Berdal. Forsvarsstudier No. 2/92, Institutt For Forsvarsstudier (IFS) Oslo, Norway, 1992, ISSN 0333-3981.

The European Security Order Recast: Scenarios for the Post-Cold War Era.. By Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, Pierre Lemaitre, Elzbieta Tromer and OLE Waever. Pinter, London (1990), ISBN 086187143X, £30.00.

Mates and Muchachos: Unit Cohesion in the Falklands War.. By Nora Kinzer Stewart. Brassey's (US), Washington DC (1991), ISBN 008-037-4395, $20.

The Declining Hegemon: The United States and European Defense, 1960-1990.. By Joseph Lepgold. Praeger, New York (1990), ISBN 0-275-93657-0, $15.95 pb.

Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance.. By Donald Mackenzie. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, and London, England (1990), ISBN 262-132-583, £19.95.     

Application of level crossing analysis to discrete state processes in queueing systems

In this paper we introduce a discrete state level crossing analysis and present some basic results and a key theorem of level crossings. We illustrate the fertility of the discrete state level crossing analysis by applying it to queueing systems with (i) bulk arrival, (ii) instantaneous feedback, (iii) limited waiting space, and (iv) to machine interference problems.     

A time series analysis of some interrelated logistics performance variables

This paper is a case study. We show how the powerful methods of time series analysis can be used to investigate the interrelationships between Alert Availability, a logistics performance variable, and Flying Hours, an operational requirement, in the presence of a major change in operating procedures and using contaminated data. The system considered is the fleet of C-141 aircraft of the U.S. Air Force. The major change in operating procedures was brought about by what is known as Reliability Centered Maintenance, and the contaminated data were due to anomalies in reporting procedures. The technique used is a combination of transfer function modeling and intervention analysis.