British Armour and rearmament in the 1930s

This paper considers the contribution of military publishing to the nineteenth-century military revolution leading to the Great War. The subject is addressed in four contexts. The first is informational, analyzing the role of military publications in making available data and ideas that increased military effectiveness. The second is syncretic, evaluating the effect of military publications on cohesion within increasingly large, complex armies, and between armies and their societies. The third is internal. It discusses the contributions to professional insecurity generated by print, and by its electronic extensions the telegraph and the telephone. Finally, the paper considers the print revolution's influence on actual war-fighting     

Book Reviews

Iain McCallum, Blood Brothers Hiram and Hudson Maxim: Pioneers of Modern Warfare. London: Chatham, 1999. Pp. 224, 33 illus., 2 maps, biblio., index. £20. ISBN 1–86176–096–5.

Eric Ash, Sir Frederick Sykes and the Air Revolution, 1912–1918. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999. Pp.xviii + 268, 20 illus., 3 maps, biblio., index. £42.50/$59.50 (cloth), £18.50/$27.50 (paper). ISBN 0–7146–4828–0 and ‐4382–3.

Azar Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and other Modernists. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Ppviii + 334, biblio., index. £45. ISBN 0–19–820715–8.

David B. Woolner (ed.), The Second Quebec Conference Revisited: Waging War, Formulating Peace: Canada, Great Britain, and the United States in 1944–1945. Basingstoke; London: Macmillan Press, 1998. Pp.xiii + 210, index. £32.50. ISBN 0–333–75970–2.

Jeffrey Grey. Up Top: The Royal Australian Navy and Southeast Asian Conflicts 1955–1972. St Leonards NSW: Allen &; Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, 1998. Pp.xx + 380, 110 illus., 12 tables, 23 maps &; diagrams, appendices, notes, biblio., index. NP. ISBN 1–86448–290–7.

Susan L Carruthers, The Media at War. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. Pp.321, biblio., index. £14.99 (paper). ISBN 0–333–69143–1, also available in hardback.

Edward J. Marolda and Robert J. Schneller Jr, Shield and Sword: The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf War. Washington DC: Naval Historical Center, 1998. Pp.xxi + 517, 120 illus., 14 maps, biblio., index. NP. ISBN 0–1604–9476–1.

Marvin Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea: What the Navy Really Did and Desert Storm at Sea: What the Navy Really Did. Both Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Pp.xxiii + 265,9 illus., biblio., index. £44.95. ISBN 0–313–31023–8. Pp.xxiv + 329,12 illus., biblio., index. NP. ISBN 0–313–31024–6.

David Kaularich and Ronald C. Kramer, Crimes of the American Nuclear State: At Home and Abroad. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999. Pp.xviii + 195, biblio., index. £42.75. ISBN 1–55553–371‐X.

Stanley Hoffmann, World Disorders: Troubled Peace in the Post‐Cold War Era. Lanham, MD: Rowman &; Littlefield, 1998. Pp.viii+279, notes, index. $29.95. ISBN 0–8476–8574–8.

Lawrence Freedman (ed.), Strategic Coercion: Concepts and Cases. Oxford: Oxford‐University Press, 1998. Pp.400, index. £48. ISBN 0–19–829–349–6.

Stephen J. Cimbala, Coercive Military Strategy. College Station, TX: Texas A&;M University Press, 1998. Pp.229, biblio, index; $39.95. ISBN 0–89096–836–5     

Light weight HTPB-clay nanocomposites(HCN)with enhanced ablation performance as inhibition materials for composite propellant

In the present study,organically modified Montmorillonite clay with polar moiety,the Cloisite 30B,is used for preparation of Hydroxyl terminated polybutadiene(HTPB)-clay nanocomposites(HCN)by dispersion of nanoclay in polymer matrix under high shear mixing.The nanocomposites thus prepared are evaluated in composite propellants as inhibitor material for their functional utility.Several inhibition formulations containing 5 wt％-15 wt％of nanoclay,with or without the conventional filler Sb2O3,were prepared.All these formulations were evaluated for their physical,mechanical,thermal,and ablative properties.Ablation rate and density of the compositions containing Cloisite 30B is around 23％and 5％lower respectively in comparison of the base composition.Strain capability of these compositions is twofold higher than that of base composition.These compositions have also been evaluated for their smoke generation tendency by measuring infra red(IR)attenuation in the wavelength range 1.3 μm-5.6 μm and 8 μm-13 μm and thereby compared with the base composition.The corresponding results confirmed that the compositions containing Cloisite 30B as filler have much lower IR attenuation than compositions with conventional filler,Sb2O3.Replacement of 5％Sb2O3 by nanoclay showed 8％reduction in IR attenuation rate which further reduced to 16％on replacement of 15％of Sb2O3.Interfacial bonding of HCN based inhibitors is also comparable or even better than conventional inhibitors.Precisely,the nanoclay composites with Cloisite 30B as filler exhibit all desirable properties of an inhibitor.     

Maximizing the ratio of two convex functions over a convex set

The purpose of this article is to present an algorithm for globally maximizing the ratio of two convex functions f and g over a convex set X. To our knowledge, this is the first algorithm to be proposed for globally solving this problem. The algorithm uses a branch and bound search to guarantee that a global optimal solution is found. While it does not require the functions f and g to be differentiable, it does require that subgradients of g can be calculated efficiently. The main computational effort of the algorithm involves solving a sequence of subproblems that can be solved by convex programming methods. When X is polyhedral, these subproblems can be solved by linear programming procedures. Because of these properties, the algorithm offers a potentially attractive means for globally maximizing ratios of convex functions over convex sets. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006     

Waiting times for M/G/1 queues with service-time or delay-dependent server vacations

This article shows how to determine the stationary distribution of the virtual wait in M/G/1 queues with either one-at-a-time or exhaustive server vacations, depending on either service times or accrued workload. For the first type of dependence, each vacation time is a function of the immediately preceding service time or of whether the server finds the system empty after returning from vacation. In this way, it is possible to model situations such as long service times followed by short vacations, and vice versa. For the second type of dependence, the vacation time assigned to an arrival to follow its service is a function of the level of virtual wait reached. By this device, we can model situations in which vacations may be shortened whenever virtual delays have gotten excessive. The method of analysis employs level-crossing theory, and examples are given for various cases of service and vacation-time distributions. A closing discussion relates the new model class to standard M/G/1 queues where the service time is a sum of variables having complex dependencies. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

An operational analysis of system calibration

Mathematical models are proposed for studying the impact of miscalibration upon operational effectiveness. Methodology for assessing the system effectiveness and an approach for optimizing the effectiveness of a calibration program are examined. The theory application is discussed and the results of some specific and convenient models are presented.     

Concise RLT forms of binary programs: A computational study of the quadratic knapsack problem

The reformulation‐linearization technique (RLT) is a methodology for constructing tight linear programming relaxations of mixed discrete problems. A key construct is the multiplication of “product factors” of the discrete variables with problem constraints to form polynomial restrictions, which are subsequently linearized. For special problem forms, the structure of these linearized constraints tends to suggest that certain classes may be more beneficial than others. We examine the usefulness of subsets of constraints for a family of 0–1 quadratic multidimensional knapsack programs and perform extensive computational tests on a classical special case known as the 0–1 quadratic knapsack problem. We consider RLT forms both with and without these inequalities, and their comparisons with linearizations derived from published methods. Interestingly, the computational results depend in part upon the commercial software used. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010     

A practical organizational efficiency measure

There is often a call in any organization to make the system ‘more efficient’. This document describes a novel framework for measuring organizational efficiency at the microeconomic level. We show how this framework can be used to monitor an organization using data typically available in extant performance management frameworks. This is most useful in large organizations with eclectic outputs where resources may be too constrained to perform industry-level analyses, such as data envelope analysis, to infer efficiency. This method helps illuminate how the factors of an organization’s internal practices can affect its efficient use of resources.