Fighting on Their Own Terms: The Tactics of the Irish Republican Army 1919-1921

Abstract

The 1919-1921 Anglo-Irish War represents one of the earliest instances of a successful insurgent movement in the twentieth century. By combining a fluid organizational structure with effective hit-and-run tactics and accurate intelligence, the Irish Republican Army was able to defeat militarily the security forces of Great Britain. Combined with a successful propaganda campaign, these tactics allowed the IRA to drive the British to the negotiating table, where its representatives secured greater autonomy than Ireland had known in centuries. The outcome of the Anglo-Irish War demonstrates the success which a well-organized guerrilla campaign can achieve, and the tactics used by the IRA must therefore be understood by any serious student of small warfare.     

美军作战实验室的现状和发展

美军作战实验室建设走在世界的前列。从20世纪90年代初至今,美军已初步建立起从技术、战术到战役、战略,从兵种、军种到联合作战的完整实验体系。分析美军热衷于作战实验室建设的主要原因,概括介绍了美军主要的作战实验室及其主要技术手段与工作程序,分析了美军作战实验室的特点和发展趋势,在此基础上得出了组织管理与顶层设计、新技术研究与应用、需求牵引与研究成果有效应用、建设投入与重点等方面的启示,对于指导我军作战实验室建设具有重要的借鉴作用。     

The Joint Chiefs of Staff,the atom bomb,the American Military Mind and the end of the Second World War

ABSTRACT

The decision by the US government to drop the atomic bombs on Japan is one of the most heavily debated questions in history. This article examines one element of that debate, in many ways the most surprising. That was the different views of the top of the military hierarchy in the USA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The JCS was on the whole more sceptical about using atomic weaponry than the USA’s civilian leadership, for ethical and strategic reasons. As such they were willing to consider very different ways of ending the war.     

Attrition models of the Ardennes campaign

This paper revisits the modeling by Bracken [3] of the Ardennes campaign of World War II using the Lanchester equations. It revises and extends that analysis in a number of ways: (1) It more accurately fits the model parameters using linear regression; (2) it considers the data from the entire campaign; and (3) it adds in air sortie data. In contrast to previous results, it concludes by showing that neither the Lanchester linear or Lanchester square laws fit the data. A new form of the Lanchester equations emerges with a physical interpretation. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 45: 1–22, 1998     

试论孙子兵法对消防工作的指导

近年来,全国各级公安消防部门为有效防控重特大火灾事故、确保火灾形势稳定,发起了治理火灾隐患的战役。打好战役,必须讲方法、讲韬略。《孙子兵法》是一部伟大的军事著作,共分13篇,在其中选取部分精辟的观点,试述其对加强和改进消防工作的指导作用。     

启蒙·救亡·重建——抗日战争时期党的文化选择的三重功效

抗日战争时期中国共产党的文化选择具有三重功效：对广大民众、尤其是农民的现代启蒙;在民族危难关头的一场民族救亡总动员;指明了中国未来文化的重建方向。     

浅谈《孙子兵法》与竞争智慧

孙子有备无患的军事思想,早已成为现代竞争领域的指导原则之一。每个人都有非常强烈的成功欲望,这样的人生,是一个永不停息的决策过程。从事什么样的工作,怎样做才能使自己在竞争中立于不败之地。《孙子兵法》告诉我们：人生竞争有策略。     

伊拉克战争对国际政治格局的影响

美国凭借其强大的势力肆意出兵攻打伊拉克。这一结果虽不能使国际政治格局发生重大变化 ,世界多极化的趋势不能改变 ,但它进一步强化了美国的单边主义思想 ,使世界多极化的进程受到严峻挑战 ,同时也将改变中东地区的力量对比 ,重塑中东地区的政治格局 ,也使联合国的权威和地位受到了严重的挑战。     

MAD,not Marx: Khrushchev and the nuclear revolution

The revival of nuclear strategy in US policy and scholarship has been strengthened by arguments that the ‘nuclear revolution’ – the assumption that thermonuclear bombs and missiles had made major war too dangerous to wage – does not affect international behaviour as much as nuclear revolution advocates claim. This article shows that the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev indeed regarded nuclear war as too dangerous to wage, a decision which manifested itself not so much in foreign policy or military doctrine but in his determination to avoid war when the possibility arose. We argue that Khrushchev’s experience provides us with a more useful way to characterise the nuclear revolution and suggest some implications of this argument for contemporary debates about nuclear weaponry.     

“It would be impossible to estimate the value of these works...” Mass Production at Springfield Armory during the American Civil War

The U.S. Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts, rarely appears in Civil War histories except perhaps as an unexplained statistical wonder. By late 1863, the Armory was the largest single supplier of rifles to Union forces. Springfield Armory workers out-produced over thirty American contractors, making more Army rifles at less cost while providing contractors with gauges, inspectors, and models, even though there were significant wartime private-sector mechanical innovations. This article identifies and explains the factors in the Armory’s success, provides context on contemporary American arms production and rifle models, and argues that the Armory’s methods and performance were among the first if not the first example of mass production in American small arms manufacture. The relative brevity of the Civil War episode, and the fact that it was not repeated in any comparable way at the Armory until World War II, has obscured its significance in American manufacturing history.