Research communication

A UK House of Commons Defence Committee (HCDC) Report on the Gulf War recommended that the UK should be self‐sufficient in supporting its Armed Forces in times of crisis and not even rely on its Allies. This recommendation is at odds with UK Government policy which rejects any formal strategy of support for the defence industrial base preferring international open competition as its procurement philosophy. This paper examines the various factors ranging from the supply of raw materials, production capacity, stockpiling, international joint ventures, and competition through to the effects on the technological update of weapon systems resulting from this philosophy. It draws conclusions supporting the HCDC recommendation and calls for joint MOD‐Industry action to address the issues involved and thereby reduce the risks to the Defence of the Realm.     

ARMY RE‐ENLISTMENT DURING OIF/OEF: BONUSES,DEPLOYMENT, AND STOP‐LOSS

In 2004, stretched by wartime deployments, the US Army countered declining retention by increasing re‐enlistment bonuses and implementing stop‐loss to prevent soldiers from separating at the end of their enlistment. We estimate the effects of bonuses, deployment, and stop‐loss on re‐enlistment between FY 2002 and 2006. We estimate that the baseline propensity to re‐enlist fell by 20%. However, we find that deployed soldiers are more likely to re‐enlist and that the estimated effects of re‐enlistment bonuses are similar to those estimated in peacetime. We evaluate the reasons for our findings, and calculate the cost effectiveness of re‐enlistment bonuses.     

Themes in defence manpower economics and challenges for the future

Raising and maintaining military forces have posed enormous challenges for the United States and its allies. Economists have made significant contributions to understanding of how to recruit and manage such forces. This paper highlights key past contributions and discusses challenges for future research. Rapid changes in the roles and missions of military personnel, technology, and the civilian labor market pose serious challenges for future military manpower policy and will challenge economists to develop new approaches to military recruiting and personnel management. Yet the body of past research can continue to provide insight and guidance in making decisions about defense manpower.     

Rent seeking and defence expenditure

A plethora of arguments from the ‘public choice school’ suggest that public goods are ‘under‐supplied’ by comparison with public sector provision of more private goods. The implication is that rent seeking by the ‘military‐industrial complex’ serves, in some measure, to offset potential allocative inefficiency. In this paper a comparison of rent seeking by producers of public goods and producers of private goods identifies a bias that favours public good supply. The bias results from the different way in which collective demand for public goods and for private goods is expressed. The prospect of larger rents to the ‘military‐industrial complex’ implies greater rent‐seeking expenditures in this sector. The extent to which public goods (and, in particular, defence) are ‘under supplied’ is much exaggerated.     

POTENTIAL PROLIFERATION POINTERS FROM THE PAST: Lessons from the British Nuclear Weapons Program, 1952–69

Becoming a nuclear weapon state and sustaining a militarily credible nuclear weapons capability is far from trivial, especially for medium powers. Such a capability is demonstrated by much more than firing a first test or acquiring significant quantities of fissile material; capability is indicated by factors including weaponization, delivery of weapons, reliability and effectiveness of weapons and their delivery systems, fissile material availability, and nuclear and non-nuclear testing. Files in the British National Archives shed considerable light on the problems faced by the nuclear weapon program of the United Kingdom from 1952 through the late 1960s. The question is whether this experience is unique or if it instead offers insights into the potential problems faced by, or facing, other medium or aspiring nuclear weapon states. The proliferation-related topics highlighted include: fissile material production, nuclear testing, the first weapon, weapon delivery rates, non-nuclear testing, delivery platform problems, and long-term maintenance and capability sustainability. Further research could provide clearer insights.     

WARFARE IN A NEW DOMAIN: THE ETHICS OF MILITARY CYBER-OPERATIONS

While most normative evaluations of military cyber-operations have emerged from the legal community, this article assesses the legitimacy of such operations from a philosophical-ethical perspective. After reviewing the relationship between rights forfeiture and the jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria of the just war tradition, it applies these criteria to several aspects of cyber-operations, including responses to cyber-activities, the use of cyber-capabilities affecting combatants and civilians, and the use of these capabilities by contractors. Finally, it briefly addresses the legitimacy of limiting rights to privacy and anonymity in service of preventing cyber-harm.     

On estimating population characteristics from record-breaking observations. i. parametric results

Consider an experiment in which only record-breaking values (e.g., values smaller than all previous ones) are observed. The data available may be represented as X₁,K₁,X₂,K₂, …, where X₁,X₂, … are successive minima and K₁,K₂, … are the numbers of trials needed to obtain new records. We treat the problem of estimating the mean of an underlying exponential distribution, and we consider both fixed sample size problems and inverse sampling schemes. Under inverse sampling, we demonstrate certain global optimality properties of an estimator based on the “total time on test” statistic. Under random sampling, it is shown than an analogous estimator is consistent, but can be improved for any fixed sample size.     

Tabular aids for fitting weibull moment estimates

Moment estimators for the parameters of the Weibull distribution are considered in the context of analysis of field data. The data available are aggregated, with individual failure times not recorded. In this case, the complexity of the likelihood function argues against the use of maximum-likelihood estimation, particularly for relatively large sets of data, and moment estimators are a reasonable alternative. In this article, we derive the asymptotic covariance matrix of the moment estimators, and provide listings for BASIC computer programs which generate tables useful for calculation of the estimates as well as for estimating the asymptotic covariance matrix using aggregated data.     

Hybrid heuristics for minimum cardinality set covering problems

Minimum cardinality set covering problems (MCSCP) tend to be more difficult to solve than weighted set covering problems because the cost or weight associated with each variable is the same. Since MCSCP is NP-complete, large problem instances are commonly solved using some form of a greedy heuristic. In this paper hybrid algorithms are developed and tested against two common forms of the greedy heuristic. Although all the algorithms tested have the same worst case bounds provided by Ho [7], empirical results for 60 large randomly generated problems indicate that one algorithm performed better than the others.