British operations among the people and civilian risk

ABSTRACT

Debates on military intervention and small wars often include the claim that soldiers should operate among civilians in order to avoid civilian casualties and to protect civilians against third-party violence. This article, by contrast, points at negative unintended consequences of military operations taking place in close proximity to local populations: it argues that also risk-tolerant militaries cause civilian casualties and that their presence triggers third-party violence against civilians. The British military, in particular the British Army, exported risk-tolerant practices from Northern Ireland to the Balkans, with sporadic success. But in southern Iraq and in Helmand, British ground operations harmed civilians. The findings suggest that the chances for protection are better in operations where levels of violence are relatively low than in counterinsurgency where troops face ruthless and well-endowed enemies operating among civilians.     

The Zimbabwe people’s revolutionary army military operations in Makonde district and the attack on Salisbury’s fuel storage tanks, 1965-1979

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army operations in Mashonaland West province with particular reference to Makonde District during the country’s war of liberation. Despite the growing literature on ZAPU and ZPRA in Zimbabwe’s war of liberation there is little that has been written concerning the operations of ZPRA guerrillas in Mashonaland provinces. Guided by evidence drawn from secondary and primary sources the article further asserts that ZPRA adopted a four pronged strategy in Makonde District. This strategy in part was hinged on the politicization of the population on the one hand and annihilation of the enemy forces, attrition and manoeuvre warfare on the other. Again, the article argues that ZPRA guerrillas attempted to capture Salisbury (Harare) in order to conquer the Rhodesian Security Forces’ centre of gravity. It was hoped that the capture of the capital city would Makoni District was of strategic significance to the conduct of ZPRA operations and arguably hastened Ian Smith’s decision to attend the Lancaster House Conference negotiations that led to the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980.     

探析美国新军事战略

奥巴马政府2011年以来发布的一系列军事文件,标志着美国新军事战略的形成。文章依据这些文件,结合三年来美军在世界范围内尤其是亚太地区的实际动向,从战略威胁判断、战略指导方针、战略部署调整、作战指导思想和军事力量建设五个方面对新军事战略的内容及实施情况进行了分析。     

航炮对地攻击弹道研究

以Ｃ语言为工具,采用四阶龙格—库塔法（Ｒｕｎｇｅ－ｋｕｔａ）代替常用的近似解法,用逐步回归法代替常用的迭代法来计算和拟合弹丸的弹道问题,从而为机载计算机和机载平显计算弹丸弹道提供了一种新的、更精确、更具实时性的工作式     

用有限元法优化高射机枪结构设计

以某高射机枪为研究对象,采用有限元法对该枪进行建模,并用实验研究的结果检验和修改了理论模型。计算了该枪的结构动态特性和枪口动力响应,从改善射击精度的角度出发,通过对若干结构修改方案的模拟计算,提出了该枪结构修改的参考意见。     

Measuring the Impact of Military Spending: How Far Does a DSGE Model Deviate from Reality?

Dunne, Smith, and Willenbockel (2005) argue that the mainstream growth literature has not found military spending to be a significant determinant of economic growth, yet much of the defense economics literature has noted significant effects. This paper revisits this issue by using a DSGE-VAR approach, combining both theoretical and empirical methods. We present that the DSGE approach (estimated with the Bayesian technique) and the Bayesian VAR with the Minnesota Prior both lead to worse in-sample fit than our proposed DSGE-VAR framework. The DSGE-VAR approach reveals that a positive military spending shock boosts the U.S. economy, increasing per capita real GDP growth, consumption, inflation and interest rate. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications. Future investigations such as exploring an optimal military spending policy could adopt the approach in this paper to determine the best model – empirical, theoretical, or a combination of the two.     

Dangerous work: Terrorism against U.S. diplomats

The goal of diplomats is to represent their countries’ interests through diplomacy, not arms. Because they are not military personnel, they may be perceived as at lower risk of being the target of terrorists. However, recent events have called this perception into question. Despite this danger, there has been little research on terrorist attacks against diplomats. Drawing on the terrorism studies literature, this article argues that diplomats are targeted more than non-diplomatic targets in countries where certain U.S. foreign policies are implemented. An empirical analysis of 471 attacks against U.S. diplomats from 1970 to 2011 reveals that while U.S. alliances and foreign aid increase the likelihood of attacks against diplomats, U.S. military intervention and civil war, on the other hand, increase the risk of terrorism against non-diplomatic targets. This finding is relevant because it shows terrorist attacks against diplomats result from certain types of foreign policy.     

A Portrait of a Helmet: A Funerary Helmet from the Northern Netherlands

This paper describes a seventeeth-century helmet, which was found in a church in the Frisian village of Schettens. Not only the type, but also the context in which this helmet was found, made the find exceptional. The presence of tombstones in the church made it possible to trace the object to a Frisian colonel from the Dutch States Army. What makes the helmet even more special, is the fact that it was prominently depicted on the tombstone of the deceased Frisian colonel. The find of the helmet and its ‘portrait’ on the tombstone are unique for the northern Netherlands. It gives cause for further study of the Dutch funeral tradition, in which elements of armour played an important role. In this regard, it is very interesting to draw a comparison with the same tradition in England.     

Exact analysis of (R,s, S) inventory control systems with lost sales and zero lead time

We study an (R, s, S) inventory control policy with stochastic demand, lost sales, zero lead‐time and a target service level to be satisfied. The system is modeled as a discrete time Markov chain for which we present a novel approach to derive exact closed‐form solutions for the limiting distribution of the on‐hand inventory level at the end of a review period, given the reorder level (s) and order‐up‐to level (S). We then establish a relationship between the limiting distributions for adjacent values of the reorder point that is used in an efficient recursive algorithm to determine the optimal parameter values of the (R, s, S) replenishment policy. The algorithm is easy to implement and entails less effort than solving the steady‐state equations for the corresponding Markov model. Point‐of‐use hospital inventory systems share the essential characteristics of the inventory system we model, and a case study using real data from such a system shows that with our approach, optimal policies with significant savings in inventory management effort are easily obtained for a large family of items.     

近期美国陆军旅战斗队建设发展

美军认为,近年来中俄等大国的军事实力不断增强,成为美国的主要安全威胁,长期的反叛乱作战也使美国陆军应对正规战争的能力有所下降,必须推进面向大国竞争的转型建设以适应未来的作战环境.随着美国陆军转型建设的大幕拉开,提升大规模作战能力成为其建设发展的焦点.本文认为,旅战斗队作为美国陆军的主要合成兵种部队与实施近距离地面作战的...