The Somali National Army: an assessment

To engage properly with the Somali National Army, to understand it in the hope of improving stability and the lives of over 12 million Somalis, good basic information on its composition and characteristics is necessary. Authoritative accounts on the subject have been scarce for over 25 years. This account seeks to detail the army’s dispositions across southern Somalia, and, more importantly, the brigades’ clan compositions and linkages. Clan ties supersede loyalties to the central government. The army as it stands is a collection of former militias which suffer from ill-discipline and commit crime along with greater atrocities. Estimates of numbers are unreliable, but there might be 13,000 or more fighters in six brigades in the Mogadishu area and five beyond.     

Single‐machine scheduling with deadlines to minimize the total weighted late work

We consider scheduling a set of jobs with deadlines to minimize the total weighted late work on a single machine, where the late work of a job is the amount of processing of the job that is scheduled after its due date and before its deadline. This is the first study on scheduling with the late work criterion under the deadline restriction. In this paper, we show that (i) the problem is unary NP‐hard even if all the jobs have a unit weight, (ii) the problem is binary NP‐hard and admits a pseudo‐polynomial‐time algorithm and a fully polynomial‐time approximation scheme if all the jobs have a common due date, and (iii) some special cases of the problem are polynomially solvable.     

Regular and irregular forces in conflict: nineteenth century insurgencies in South America

ABSTRACT

In the decades following independence from Spain, ‘civil wars’ ravaged the newly established polities in South America. Former vice-regal capitals inherited a larger portion of the colonial administration and had larger economic resources and a hegemonic project they were able to have permanent and professional armed forces, capable of leading the offensive and giving battle following the European rules of military art. The central hypothesis of this work is that there is a necessary relationship between the shape of these asymmetrical conflicts, their outcome and the political territorial configuration of each country in post-revolutionary Spanish America. When permanent armies took over from local militias, the capital kept the integrity of its territories and there was a tendency towards political centralization. When this did not happen and the militias managed to find a way to defeat their centralizing enemies, the local powers had an opportunity to renegotiate their participation in the political body, and sought to maintain their independence, which was manifest in federal agreements, otherwise a process of territorial fragmentation began. More than a difference between regular and irregular forces there was one between intermittent, and permanent mobilization.     

Honour,Comradeship and Betrayal: Lord Capel’s Sword

The sword which is the subject of this article and which will be referred to as the Capel sword, is a fine example of what has become known as an Irish basket-hilt. Whilst there are other examples in existence, what makes this sword unique and particularly important is the fact that it is known to have been owned by two important Royalist military leaders, Lord Arthur Capel and Sir John Owen. These two extraordinary men came from different backgrounds but their fate was linked through circumstances beyond their control. The story this sword tells is one of comradeship, loyalty, total belief in a cause, betrayal and ultimate sacrifice.     

美军装备采办中项目管理组织模式——IPT研究

IPT（Integrated Product Teams）作为一种新型的项目管理组织模式,美军最先将其应用到装备采办中。十几年的实践证明,它大大地提高了采办效率,优化了采办系统组织结构。文章围绕美军装备采办过程中IPT基本概念出发,简要分析了其组织管理和优势,以及对我军的启示。这对于深化我军装备采办管理运行机制改革,具有一定的现实意义。     

弹体压心位置变化对末制导炮弹弹道的影响

首先对比弹体压心位置变化对火箭增程弹道和末制导炮弹名义弹道的不同影响,重点分析弹体压心位置变化对末制导炮弹末导段弹道的影响特点,得出弹体压心位置变化对末导段弹道的捕获域和有效攻击区有着重要影响的结论。该结论对末制导炮弹的射表编拟以及新型末制导炮弹的设计都具有重要指导意义。     

激波诱导异质气体界面失稳的数值模拟

基于二维N-S方程,利用有限差分数值离散方法,对激波诱导异质气体界面失稳的现象进行了数值模拟,与文献中实验结果和计算结果进行了定性比较,并进一步分析了整个流动的非定常动态变化特性和非线性特征.研究表明,本文数值模拟的非定常流场图谱与文献中的实验结果和数值结果吻合较好;数值结果捕捉到了六氟化硫界面的演变过程及流场中复杂的波系结构.     

Strategic dynamic sourcing from competing suppliers with transferable capacity investment

We study the supplier relationship choice for a buyer that invests in transferable capacity operated by a supplier. With a long‐term relationship, the buyer commits to source from a supplier over a long period of time. With a short‐term relationship, the buyer leaves open the option of switching to a new supplier in the future. The buyer has incomplete information about a supplies efficiency, and thus uses auctions to select suppliers and determine the contracts. In addition, the buyer faces uncertain demand for the product. A long‐term relationship may be beneficial for the buyer because it motivates more aggressive bidding at the beginning, resulting a lower initial price. A short‐term relationship may be advantageous because it allows switching, with capacity transfer at some cost, to a more efficient supplier in the future. We find that there exists a critical level of the switching cost above which a long‐term relationship is better for the buyer than a short‐term relationship. In addition, this critical switching cost decreases with demand uncertainty, implying a long‐term relationship is more favorable for a buyer facing volatile demand. Finally, we find that in a long‐term relationship, capacity can be either higher or lower than in a short‐term relationship. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 2009