Military Innovation and Tactical Adaptation in the Israel–Hizballah Conflict: The Institutionalization of Lesson-Learning in the IDF

This article highlights a pattern of military adaptation and tactical problem-solving utilized by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) while engaged in protracted conflict with the Lebanese militant group Hizballah. It discusses the IDF’s recent attempts to institutionalize their historically intuitive process of ad-hoc learning by developing a formal tactical-level mechanism for ‘knowledge management’. The diffusion of this battlefield lesson-learning system that originated at lower-levels of the organization is examined, as well as its implementation and effectiveness during the 2006 Lebanon War. A nuanced analysis of IDF adaptation illustrates the dynamic interplay between both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processes of military innovation.     

Indian Military Modernization and Conventional Deterrence in South Asia

In recent years, headline grabbing increases in the Indian defense budget have raised concerns that India’s on-going military modernization threatens to upset the delicate conventional military balance vis-à-vis Pakistan. Such an eventuality is taken as justification for Islamabad’s pursuit of tactical-nuclear weapons and other actions that have worrisome implications for strategic stability on the subcontinent. This article examines the prospects for Pakistan’s conventional deterrence in the near to medium term, and concludes that it is much better than the pessimists allege. A host of factors, including terrain, the favorable deployment of Pakistani forces, and a lack of strategic surprise in the most likely conflict scenarios, will mitigate whatever advantages India may be gaining through military modernization. Despite a growing technological edge in some areas, Indian policymakers cannot be confident that even a limited resort to military force would achieve a rapid result, which is an essential pre-condition for deterrence failure.     

A sequential scheduling problem with impatient jobs

There are n customers that need to be served. Customer i will only wait in queue for an exponentially distributed time with rate λ_i before departing the system. The service time of customer i has distribution F_i, and on completion of service of customer i a positive reward r_i is earned. There is a single server and the problem is to choose, after each service completion, which currently in queue customer to serve next so as to maximize the expected total return. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 659–663, 2015     

电传动装甲车辆电源系统建模与仿真

电源系统是电传动装甲车辆的核心,对其进行建模与仿真研究具有重要意义。电源系统的非线性特性导致了建模困难、模型精度低以及模型实用性差等难题,针对不同的部件特性采取不同的方法建立其仿真模型,完成了基于模糊控制的系统多目标优化功率分配策略研究。并在此基础上进行了部件和系统两个层次的仿真试验,证明所建模型能够较好地反映电传动车辆电源系统的工作特性。     

I Will Follow: Smart Power and the Management of Wartime Alliances

Abstract

This paper employs the concept of smart power to construct an analytical framework for assessing wartime alliance management. It makes two arguments. First, wartime sources of soft power differ from those obtaining during peacetime. Second, the coerciveness with which an alliance leader wields hard power towards actual or prospective allies should vary inversely with the amount of soft power it possesses. The smart power framework illuminates three types of alliance management failure. The paper’s key contentions are illustrated with examples furnished from the record of US alliance leadership since World War II.     

Missile Strategy in a Post-Nuclear Age

While the arrival of nuclear weapons coincided roughly with the development of short, medium, intermediate, and eventually intercontinental missiles, the contribution of missile technology to the deterrence equation is often lost. If nuclear weapons were eliminated, even new generation missiles with conventional payloads could struggle to render effective deterrence. But some of the physical and psychological effects commonly ascribed to nuclear weapons could still be in play. And in a world without nuclear weapons, thinking about the use and control of force from the nuclear age would also deserve renewed attention.     

面向部队实兵演习的作战能力多维聚合评估

针对部队实兵演习作战能力评估模型机械单一、要素不全、评估虚实数据脱节,流程上不适应导演部演习组织筹划,内容上无法区分指挥程序、指挥质量、指挥时效、战斗作风等不同评估对象的问题,提出一种体系完整、要素齐全、指标科学的多维聚合评估模型,同步设计AHP+权重+归一化的作战能力计算方法,可自动化地将不同评估对象分层加权求和、回...     

Ag/AgCl电极水中电场探测的幅频响应特性

采用固态粉压型Ag/AgC1电极对参数已知的水下低频交流电场进行探测.通过改变水中电场信号的特征参数进行对比实验,以检测电极对信号频率和幅值的响应特性.实验结果表明:发射信号在0～4 Hz、15～35 mV的范围内时,Ag/AgCl电极的探测灵敏度随发射信号幅值的增加而增强,并且探测信号能够真实地反映发射信号的频率特征.最后,提出了电场探测电极的响应性能的表征参数.     

Minimum violations and predictive meta‐rankings for college football

This article presents two meta‐ranking models that minimize or nearly minimize violations of past game results while predicting future game winners as well as or better than leading current systems—a combination never before offered for college football. Key to both is the development and integration of a highly predictive ensemble probability model generated from the analysis of 36 existing college football ranking systems. This ensemble model is used to determine a target ranking that is used in two versions of a hierarchical multiobjective mixed binary integer linear program (MOMBILP). When compared to 75 other systems out‐of‐sample, one MOMBILP was the leading predictive system while getting within 0.64% of the retrodictive optimum; the other MOMBILP minimized violations while achieving a prediction total that was 2.55% lower than the best mark. For bowls, prediction sums were not statistically significantly different from the leading value, while achieving optimum or near‐optimum violation counts. This performance points to these models as potential means of reconciling the contrasting perspectives of predictiveness versus the matching of past performance when it comes to ranking fairness in college football. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 17–33, 2014     

Supply licensing when the manufacturer strategically commits to invest in R&D

This article proposes a strategic reason for a proprietary component supplier to license her technology to a competitor or a manufacturer: her anticipation of the manufacturer's strategic commitment to invest in research and development (R&D). We address this phenomenon with a game theoretic model. Our results show that the manufacturer's full commitment to invest in R&D enables the supplier to license, sell a larger quantity through the supply chain, and charge lower prices. These results are robust to the type of demand uncertainty faced by the manufacturer within the class of increasing generalized failure rate distributions. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 341–350, 2014