Space,the New Domain: Space Operations and Chinese Military Reforms

ABSTRACT

The Chinese military has embarked on a series of organizational and doctrinal reforms intended to better enable it to fight modern war. Prominent among these reforms is the growing emphasis on space to enable long-range precisions strikes and on counterspace to deny space capabilities to an adversary. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has officially designated space as a new domain and established an organization to command space forces. With this increased focus on space, the PLA may begin to develop a doctrine to govern the use of space in military operations. The higher priority given to space, especially space control, by the PLA coincides with similar actions by the US military, increasing the possibility of warfare in space and the risks of escalation.     

Reclaiming the Party’s Control of the Gun: Bringing Civilian Authority Back in China’s Civil-Military Relations

ABSTRACT

Since emerging as China’s top leader following the 18th Party Congress, Xi Jinping has moved swiftly to consolidate his formal authority as Central Military Commission chairman over the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. In redressing the civil-military imbalance wrought by Dengist economic reforms, the commander-in-chief has combined institutional mechanisms with the use of fear to impose authoritative civilian control over the military. This paper proposes that a combination of changes to the Chinese strategic environment has contributed to Xi’s utility of the anti-corruption campaign to purge the regime’s coercive forces of its previous underpinnings, and advances that the war on military malfeasance has given rise to a new set of dynamics in civil-military relations in post-Reform China.     

Optimal staffing in nonstationary service centers with constraints

This paper considers optimal staffing in service centers. We construct models for profit and cost centers using dynamic rate queues. To allow for practical optimal controls, we approximate the queueing process using a Gaussian random variable with equal mean and variance. We then appeal to the Pontryagin's maximum principle to derive a closed form square root staffing (SRS) rule for optimal staffing. Unlike most traditional SRS formulas, the main parameter in our formula is not the probability of delay but rather a cost‐to‐benefit ratio that depends on the shadow price. We show that the delay experienced by customers can be interpreted in terms of this ratio. Throughout the article, we provide theoretical support of our analysis and conduct extensive numerical experiments to reinforce our findings. To this end, various scenarios are considered to evaluate the change in the staffing levels as the cost‐to‐benefit ratio changes. We also assess the change in the service grade and the effects of a service‐level agreement constraint. Our analysis indicates that the variation in the ratio of customer abandonment over service rate particularly influences staffing levels and can lead to drastically different policies between profit and cost service centers. Our main contribution is the introduction of new analysis and managerial insights into the nonstationary optimal staffing of service centers, especially when the objective is to maximize profitability. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 615–630, 2017     

Moving Beyond Population-Centric vs. Enemy-Centric Counterinsurgency

Historically, insurgency is one of the most prevalent forms of armed conflict and it is likely to remain common in the foreseeable future. Recent experiences with counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan offer many lessons for future counterinsurgents, but the discourse on the subject continues to be mired in a traditional dichotomy pitting population-centric approaches to counterinsurgency against enemy-centric approaches. Historical analysis suggests that this traditional dichotomy is not a sufficiently nuanced way to understand or plan for such operations. Instead, discussions of counterinsurgency should focus on two dimensions: actions (use of physical force vs. political or moral actions) and targets (active insurgents vs. insurgent support). This perspective divides the space of possible counterinsurgency efforts into four quadrants, suggesting that effective counterinsurgency campaigns find a balance of effort across the four quadrants that is well matched to the specific context.     

星间激光通信系统粗精复合扫瞄技术

星间激光通信系统主要分为捕获、瞄准、跟踪技术,其中捕获技术是星间激光通信系统实现通信的前提和保障。通过对星间通信捕获阶段信标光的粗瞄捕获原理、关键技术和工程应用等内容进行详细的研究,提出一种粗瞄与精瞄相互结合的螺旋-正弦复合扫瞄的方法。对该方法扫瞄过程中的数值分析表明,相比单一粗瞄扫瞄方式,粗精复合扫瞄方法的扫瞄漏扫区域比单一粗扫瞄漏扫区域小、捕获概率更高、捕获时间短。该方法为星间激光通信扫瞄捕获过程提供了一种新的扫瞄方式,具有重要的意义。     

Military expenditures,economic growth and spatial spillovers

The relationship between economic growth and military expenditure has been the subject of a large literature in defence economics. This study analyses the influence of military expenditures on economic growth in a global perspective for the time period 2000–2010 taking spatial dimension into account. The augmented Solow model is employed to investigate the defence-growth nexus using the cross-sectional data relating to 128 countries. Following a traditional regression analysis, spatial variations in the relationships are examined utilizing different spatial econometric specifications estimated by maximum likelihood. The regressions are compared with each other via likelihood ratio tests, and the spatial Durbin model is found to be the most appropriate one suggesting that the typical least-squares model is misspecified. Empirical evidence indicates that military expenditure has a positive effect on economic growth with a significant spatial dependence for the time period under consideration.     

Does Military Spending Explode External Debt in Pakistan?

This paper investigates the effect of military spending on external debt in case of Pakistan for the period of 1973–2009. For this purpose, the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to cointegration is used to examine cointegration among the variables. The ADF, P-P, and ADF-GLS unit root tests are applied to test the integrating order of the variables. The Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and error correction method regressions are used to investigate the marginal impact of military spending on external debt in the long and short run. Our findings indicate the existence of cointegration that confirms the presence of a long-run relationship among military spending, external debt, economic growth, and investment. Further, our results reveal that a rise in military spending increases the stock of external debt; an increase in investment also increases external debt; however, there is an inverse effect of economic growth on external debt. An implication of the findings reported herein is that there is a need to formulate a comprehensive economic policy for curtailing external debt in case of Pakistan.     

蜂窝网络中基于干扰控制的D2D通信联合资源分配方案

在蜂窝网络中部署D2D(Device-to-Device)通信能够有效提升频谱利用率,降低基站负载,但D2D用户与蜂窝用户共享无线信道时会产生信号干扰。提出了一种联合资源分配算法,通过综合考虑信道分配对网络中已有的蜂窝用户和D2D用户的信号干扰,并在小区范围内寻找具有最小干扰值的信道资源分配给用户,以实现有效的干扰控制。仿真结果显示:联合资源分配能够提升D2D链路、蜂窝链路的信噪比及系统总吞吐量,使得蜂窝网络的整体性能优于独立资源分配。     

基于层次分析法的坦克电台通信效能评估

坦克电台通信效能评估是检验电磁环境下坦克电台战术技术水平、适应复杂电磁环境下作战运用、发现电磁环境下坦克电台通信运用存在问题的重要途径。针对坦克电台通信效能评估的复杂性,运用层次分析法(AHP),确立了坦克电台通信效能评估指标集,构建了一种三层结构的指标体系,给出了通信效能评估模型与算法,实现了通过实验数据采集来定量分析坦克电台的通信效能。结合实例,通过分析采集各性能指标的实验数据,得出坦克电台通信的最佳方案,为复杂电磁环境下坦克分队作战训练提供依据。     

虚拟检测维修系统的设计与实现

结合实际装备维修工作的需求,开发了一套基于虚拟现实技术的具有一定通用性的虚拟维修训练系统。系统由界面层、应用层、对象层和技术支持层组成,运用OSG渲染创建逼真的场景,基于均匀网格和OBB树的混合碰撞检测算法解决碰撞问题,通过协同网络通信实现多人协作维修/检测操作。通过对某型装备手控台的虚拟维修训练系统的构建,证明系统能够快速开发相应的虚拟训练系统。训练过程中操作与场景变化实时同步,结果表明该系统能够有效提高操作人员的维修维护能力。