British Policy on Total Maritime Warfare and the Anti-Shipping Campaign in the Mediterranean, 1940–1944

During World War II, the British ran a sustained anti-shipping campaign against Axis merchant and supply traffic in the Mediterranean. Although the effects of this on the land war in North Africa have been the subject of much debate, little attention has been paid to the nature and prosecution of the campaign itself. This article analyses the changes in British attitudes and policy towards attacking merchant shipping prior to and throughout the campaign. It then goes on to examine the conduct of the campaign itself and compare it with other British efforts elsewhere during the war. It concludes that the anti-shipping campaign in the Mediterranean was a unique combined arms offensive for the British, and a major evolution in their attitudes and policy towards maritime total war.     

More Attacks,Less Violence

A response to John Stone, Dale Peterson, and Gary McGraw on cyber war.     

India's Military Instrument: A Doctrine Stillborn

For six years, India has sought to implement an army doctrine for limited war, ‘Cold Start’, intended to enable a Cold War era force optimised for massive offensives to operate under the nuclear threshold. This article asks whether that is presently feasible, and answers in the negative. Doctrinal change has floundered on five sets of obstacles, many of which are politically rooted and deep-seated, thereby leaving the Army unprepared to respond to challenges in the manner envisioned by the doctrine's architects.     

French war plans, 1914: The ‘Balance of Power Paradox’

Historians have noted that both German and French war preparation in 1914 fell victim to the inadequacies of traditional threat-based planning: vulnerability to ‘threat deception’ which caused each to underestimate or mischaracterize the threat; a tendency to ‘mirror-image’ by fitting intelligence into preconceived notions of how the enemy was expected to behave; and ‘group think’ that discouraged a serious consideration of alternative scenarios. This article applies the ‘Balance of Power Paradox’ to explain why, at the dawn of the twentieth century, war planning in both Germany and France was driven by an acute sense of weakness which encouraged each side to fashion highly ‘risk acceptant’ strategies. In particular, he examines why and how French commander-in-chief General Joseph Joffre evolved and rationalized his audacious, and disastrous, Plan XVII to leverage French weaknesses and prevent the stronger German Army from bringing the full weight of its military strength to bear against France. The potential implication of this historical vignette is that leaders, and by extension military planners, of both strong and weak states focus on the constraints faced by their opponents, and assume that they can avoid the limitations of their position, while their opponent cannot.     

Nuclear Weapons and the Vietnam War

This article analyzes why US leaders did not use nuclear weapons during the Vietnam War. To date, there has been no systematic study of US decision-making on nuclear weapons during this war. This article offers an initial analysis, focusing on the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Although US leaders did not come close to using nuclear weapons in the conflict, nuclear options received more attention than has previously been appreciated. Johnson's advisers raised the issue of nuclear weapons and threats on several occasions, and Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser, looked into nuclear options to bring the war to an end. Ultimately, however, both administrations privately rejected such options. The conventional explanation for the non-use of nuclear weapons during the Cold War – deterrence – is insufficient to explain the Vietnam case. This article analyzes the role of military, political and normative considerations in restraining US use of nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. It argues that while military and political considerations, including escalation concerns, are part of the explanation, a taboo against the use of nuclear weapons played a critical role.     

Robust TDOA/FDOA estimation from emitter signals for hybrid localization using UAVs

This paper considers the time difference of arrival (TDOA) and frequency difference of arrival (FDOA)estimation problem for joint localization using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs),involving range migration (RM) and Doppler ambiguity within observation interval.A robust estimation method based on interpolation and resampling is proposed.Specifically,the interpolation artificially increases the pulse repetition frequency (PRF).After that,the resampling eliminates the coupling between range frequency and slow time.Finally,a coherent integration step based on inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) is used to achieve parameter estimation and suppress the grating lobes caused by interpolation.The proposed method could be efficiently implemented by fast Fourier transform (FFF),inverse FFT (IFFF) and non-uniform FFT (NUFFT) without parameter searching procedures.Numerical experiments indicate that the proposed method has nearly optimal anti-noise performance but much lower computational complexity than the maximum likelihood estimator,which makes it more competitive in practical applications.     

Innovation Inhibitors in War: Overcoming Obstacles in the Pursuit of Military Effectiveness

What explains the pace at which militaries adopt new technology? We argue that the hierarchical structure and unique expertise requirements of military organizations combine to empower select individuals as ‘gatekeepers’ of innovation. These individuals acquire beliefs throughout their military careers regarding the nature and means of warfare that act to shape their attitudes towards new military innovations. By filtering, sidelining, and ignoring competing sources of advice and information, these officers actively inhibit the adoption of new, often advantageous, innovations. We develop this argument through the analysis of two cases: the delayed acquisition of breech-loading and repeating rifles by the Union Army during the American Civil War, and the failure of the US Army to adopt an adequate heavy-type tank in World War II.     

略谈《孙子兵法》语言研究的现状

《孙子兵法》是我国古代流传下来的最早、最完整、最著名的军事著作,也是现存中国和世界军事理论史上最早形成体系的军事理论巨著。《孙子兵法》问世以来,对其军事理论价值和其语言文学价值的研究成果很多。但是,相对而言,对其语言研究还是比较薄弱的。从语音、词汇、语法、修辞、篇章结构五个方面进行分析和总结,有助于正确掌握和评价《孙子兵法》语言研究的现状和价值。