Baixa do Cassang: Ending the abuse of Portuguese Africans

On 4 January 1961 in Baixa do Cassange, in the north of Angola, the blacks who worked in the cotton fields began a strike. The army with air support was called to quell the rebellion, and the article emphasizes the importance of air support tethered to the ground forces, particularly in a remote and vast area of operations in the tropical rainy season. In this case, the support originally came in the form a squadron of Lockheed PV-2 Harpoons from Luanda, some 300 kilometers away. These open-ocean reconnaissance aircraft and their crews were ill-suited for the task. When this became apparent, four small Auster D5/160s were relocated from Negage to Malange, among the ground forces. The Austers flew reconnaissance missions over the troubled zones, dropped provisions and messages to the advancing ground forces, and served as a backup communications link. When the strike ceased after three weeks, the Austers assumed a humanitarian role in support of the starving population. The conclusion is that air support to ground forces is indispensable, must be properly tailored to the job, and must operate as an integral part of the ground forces.     

An American Trojan horse? Eisenhower,Latin America,and the development of us internal security policy 1954–1960

Perceptions of Third World nations as susceptible to communist subversion and revolutionary warfare led the Eisenhower administration to formulate a coordinated internal security strategy known simply as ‘1290d’. Later renamed the Overseas Internal Security Program (OISP), this policy initiative sought to strengthen host‐nation security forces, judicial systems, and public information media in an effort to combat indirect communist intervention strategies. Implementing OISP policy in Latin America proved difficult. In Congress, the administration was criticised for colluding with dictatorial regimes, while Latin Americans feared that the new program would be used as a ‘Trojan Horse’ to penetrate their security structures. After the Cuban Revolution, however, OISP policies developed under Eisenhower came to dominate US‐Latin American security relations for the remainder of the Cold War.     

Responding to the failed state: The need for strategy

Given the challenges posed by failed and failing states, and the likelihood that such failure will continue well into the new millennium, the need for a strategic approach appears evident. Should we respond? If so, how and with what expectations? Answers to such questions require an underlying set of strategic guidelines. This article contributes to developing that strategy by examining common manifestations of state failure and some possible response objectives. It concludes by arguing that careful and tough analysis must guide our choices about where and when to respond, and how ambitiously we set our objectives.     

Property distribution and configurations of sovereign states: A rational economic model

A nation's wealth is both an object of conquest to covetous aggressors and a resource to its owners for self defense. To maintain autonomy every country must mount a defense which either makes its capture (1) more expensive than any aggressor can afford, or (2) more expensive than it is worth to aggressors. Whether this condition can be satisfied for all countries simultaneously depends as shown in this paper on relative efficacy of military offense versus defense, the aggregate of wealth among nations and its distribution, and the benefits a conqueror may obtain from conquest, including the duration of these benefits. The paper shows how these factors fit together to determine the sustainability and stability of the international distribution of property as embodied in the configuration of sovereign states.     

Concept costing for defence projects: the problem and its solution

It is intrinsic to the nature of military competition that the unit acquisition costs of defence systems rise generation by generation. Traditional “bottom‐up” methods of cost‐estimating cannot meet the increasing demands for extensive studies of many options before commencing design and, while “top‐down” estimating techniques are an improvement, in particular by reducing the time required for preparing estimates, they also are inadequate to meet current requirements. A new method has been devised, therefore, further developing “top‐down” methods using Bayesian techniques to make best use of the available information, whether certain or uncertain, and its accuracy established by example.     

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT: TRENDS IN COST AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR UK AEROSPACE

This paper, intended to stimulate debate, suggests that we are at a turning point in the history of the UK military aerospace industry. It argues that there is urgent need for a fresh vision as to how the UK military aerospace industry can both prosper and make its maximum contribution to the defence of Britain. Further, the resulting plans and policies must emphasise the robustness of defence capabilities in a future in which the only thing we can be certain is that it will be very different from the present – especially whenever defence most matters.     

WHO IS THE ENEMY?

We examine who benefits when there is a strong leader in place, and who benefits when a situation lacks a proper leader. There are fractious terrorist groups who seek to serve the same people in common cause against a common enemy. The groups compete for rents obtained from the public by engaging in actions against the common enemy. We determine the leadership structure under which each group is better off, as well as the circumstance that the common enemy prefers. We are able to state simple and general conditions for each group and the common enemy to benefit.     

DESIGNING A VIABLE PREDICTION MARKET TO FORECAST DEFENSE ACQUISITION COST AND SCHEDULE OUTCOMES

This paper is the first to demonstrate a viable prediction market that successfully forecasts defense acquisition cost and schedule outcomes, and to provide insights for defense executive decision‐making. Already used in private industry, prediction markets can also accurately forecast outcomes and their associated risks for government programs. Using virtual money, prediction markets allow traders to ‘bet’ on some future outcome. This market mechanism turns out to be a relatively simple and accurate way to discover, aggregate, and communicate to a defense executive the collective market’s beliefs about the likelihood of an eventual outcome of an acquisition program of interest.     

概念模型验证方法研究综述

概念模型验证是保证和提高仿真可信性的重要手段,是建模与仿真VV＆A中的重点和难点．首先将概念模型的验证方法划分为非形式化方法、静态方法、动态方法和形式化方法4类,并提出了一种基于本体推理的概念模型验证方法,然后对各种方法的基本思想、基本原理、基本过程、适用对象、优缺点进行全面的分析总结,明确了各种方法的优缺点和适用范围,为如何选用各种验证方法提供参考,也明确了下一步应重点研究的问题．