Israeli counter‐insurgency strategy and the war in South Lebanon 1985–97

Little has been written about attempts to alter the domestic political systems of these countries, even though this was central to the missions. The latter two cases were selected as extremes on a ‘degree of difficulty’ scale. In Somalia there was basically no governing structure; the US had to build one in order to end the starvation caused by civil war. In Panama the US took over a government in place and had an alternative national leader; the problem was to change the existing state system. The cases reveal a stress on short‐run security issues over long‐term political questions.     

One size does not fit all: personalized incentives in military compensation

A critical element in implementing a compensation scheme including nonmonetary incentives (NMIs) is recognizing that preferences vary widely across Service members. There are at least three sources of variability: across different population classes, across individuals within a population class, and across NMI packages for a particular individual. Surveys across different military communities, ranks, and years of Service show the difficulty of identifying any NMI that has significant value for even 50% of the active duty force. At the same time, approximately 80% of the surveyed Service members expressed a significant positive value for at least one NMI. Therefore, one-size-fits-all incentive packages will not be nearly as effective as more personalized incentive packages. The authors discuss variability in Service member NMI preferences and outline an approach to implementing personalized NMI packages in military compensation through a sealed-bid reverse auction, where Service members select individual NMIs from a “cafeteria-style” menu of options.     

The Randomization of Terrorist Attacks

The purpose of this article is to explore the economic theoretical foundations of the idea that rational terrorist organizations deliberately randomize their attacks (by type, timing, location, and targets) to generate uncertainty and intimidation. A choice theoretic framework is applied to the analysis of the terrorist organization's behavior to determine whether welfare (utility) gains from the randomization of terrorist attacks are plausible and feasible. The randomization of attacks can appear to promise higher amounts of political influence for each resource input but it turns out that randomization cannot manufacture a situation where higher amounts of political influence are obtained for each resource input.The results imply that, rather than randomization and instability, the rational terrorist organization is more likely to prefer stability. The findings and implications provide a theoretical explanation for the non-randomness of terrorist attacks.Thismay be one small step towards explaining the patterns – non-randomness – in the time-series of terrorist incidents.     

Fire truck relocation during major incidents

The effectiveness of a fire department is largely determined by its ability to respond to incidents in a timely manner. To do so, fire departments typically have fire stations spread evenly across the region, and dispatch the closest truck(s) whenever a new incident occurs. However, large gaps in coverage may arise in the case of a major incident that requires many nearby fire trucks over a long period of time, substantially increasing response times for emergencies that occur subsequently. We propose a heuristic for relocating idle trucks during a major incident in order to retain good coverage. This is done by solving a mathematical program that takes into account the location of the available fire trucks and the historic spatial distribution of incidents. This heuristic allows the user to balance the coverage and the number of truck movements. Using extensive simulation experiments we test the heuristic for the operations of the Fire Department of Amsterdam‐Amstelland, and compare it against three other benchmark strategies in a simulation fitted using 10 years of historical data. We demonstrate substantial improvement over the current relocation policy, and show that not relocating during major incidents may lead to a significant decrease in performance.     

Stolen trauma: why some veterans elaborate their psychological experience of military service

The embellishment of a warrior biography has a long history but examples of veteran elaboration of traumatic experience have become increasingly apparent. Although legislative change in the UK has removed the penalties for fabrication and a progressive decline in the military footprint may have increased the likelihood of such false trauma narratives, a paradigm shift in explanations for mental illness underpins this phenomenon. The recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 1980, followed by studies to identify risk factors, led to a greater appreciation of psychological vulnerability. As a result, the use of shame to discourage acts formerly labelled as “cowardly” or “lacking in morale fibre” is no longer considered appropriate. Recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan generated popular sympathy for service personnel, whilst media focus on PTSD has led the UK public to believe that most veterans have been traumatised by their tours of duty.     

Warranty design under buyer and seller risk aversion

This paper provides a framework in which warranty policies for non-repairable items can be evaluated according to risk preferences of both buyers and sellers. In particular, a warranty price schedule is established such that sellers are indifferent among the policies. Given this schedule, a buyer's response is expressed by selecting the price-warranty combination that minimizes disutility. Within this framework, a warranty can be viewed as an instrumet of risk management that can induce more sales and greater profitability. For given utility functions, analytical results for the development of a price schedule are developed. Numerical results illustrate the substitution effects between warranty terms, prices, and risk parameters.     

Landmarks in defense literature

Strategy in the Missile Age. By Bernard Brodie. RAND Corporation, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1959. Paperback editions 1965, 1967.