Bush path to self-destruction: Charles Taylor and the Revolutionary United Front

This article explains the demise of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebellion. It argues that the main cause of this fate was the group's relationship with its primary sponsor, Charles Taylor. The RUF's dependency on Taylor's patronage, coupled with the rebellion's weak organisational endowments harmed the group's prospects of success. Based on original research, the article shows how Taylor used the RUF as a strategic instrument for his own regional interests, which led to the group's unravelling. More broadly, the article speaks about proxy warfare in Africa and how the relationship between resource flows and rebellion are not always beneficial to rebels as one might expect.     

Low-intensity conflict in Eastern Sudan: A comparative approach to the development of rebel groups

This article discusses the development of a low-intensity conflict in Sudan's eastern region between 1994 and 2006. Drawing on data collected in the region in 2009, recruitment processes within three different insurgent groups are analysed and compared, paying attention to the impact of these processes on insurgents' organisational development and military capacity. The peace process in Eastern Sudan is further discussed, focusing specifically on the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) programmes for former insurgents. The article finally discusses current developments and draws conclusions regarding the risk of renewed rebellion in Eastern Sudan.     

Institutionalizing supreme command: explaining political–military integration in the Vietnam War, 1964–1968

Under what conditions can leaders achieve wartime political–military integration? In the Vietnam War, political–military integration exhibited dramatic variation: in the air war, the US was able to tightly integrate its political objectives and military conduct, but in the ground war, the American military prosecuted a strategy that was both divorced from broader political objectives and was immune from Washington's influence. I argue that the nature of information management between the military and civilian leadership explains the pattern of political–military integration in the Vietnam War more completely than do explanations that focus on the organizational cultures of professional militaries.     

基于实战化条件下人民防空装备体系管理能力建设

基于实战化条件下人民防空装备体系管理能力建设应着眼国家安全利益拓展,人民防空转型建设需求和完成多样化任务需要,强化顶层设计,搞好储备,坚持信息主导,着眼＂能打仗、打胜仗＂,坚持＂战斗力这个唯一的根本的标准＂,建设与发展相适应的人民防空装备体系管理能力。     

我国军民融合深度发展的内涵研究

如何理解军民融合深度发展,做好军民融合这篇大文章,各方面尚未形成统一共识。文章从历史沿革角度回顾分析了我国军民融合演变的过程、民融合深度发展的内涵,并在此基础上对当前存在的主要矛盾进行了研究总结,从国家战略部署层面提出了下一步发展建议。     

土木工程中常见目标体的地质雷达图谱特征

将地质雷达技术应用于土木工程检测,具有速度快、效率高、准确性及分辨率高的特点。但土木工程范围甚广,且受多种客观因素的影响,使地质雷达探测到的目标体图谱千差万别,易得出错误的判断结果。通过对大量地质雷达检测图谱的分析和归类处理,找出了土木工程中常见目标体的地质雷达图谱特征,为地质雷达在土木工程中的应用提供了判别依据。     

Inventory management with advance capacity information

An important aspect of supply chain management is dealing with demand and supply uncertainty. The uncertainty of future supply can be reduced if a company is able to obtain advance capacity information (ACI) about future supply/production capacity availability from its supplier. We address a periodic‐review inventory system under stochastic demand and stochastic limited supply, for which ACI is available. We show that the optimal ordering policy is a state‐dependent base‐stock policy characterized by a base‐stock level that is a function of ACI. We establish a link with inventory models that use advance demand information (ADI) by developing a capacitated inventory system with ADI, and we show that equivalence can only be set under a very specific and restrictive assumption, implying that ADI insights will not necessarily hold in the ACI environment. Our numerical results reveal several managerial insights. In particular, we show that ACI is most beneficial when there is sufficient flexibility to react to anticipated demand and supply capacity mismatches. Further, most of the benefits can be achieved with only limited future visibility. We also show that the system parameters affecting the value of ACI interact in a complex way and therefore need to be considered in an integrated manner. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

Dynamic order acceptance and capacity planning on a single bottleneck resource

We present a tactical decision model for order acceptance and capacity planning that maximizes the expected profits from accepted orders, allowing for aggregate regular as well as nonregular capacity. The stream of incoming order arrivals is the main source of uncertainty in dynamic order acceptance and the company only has forecasts of the main properties of the future incoming projects. Project proposals arrive sequentially with deterministic interarrival times and a decision on order acceptance and capacity planning needs to be made each time a proposal arrives and its project characteristics are revealed. We apply stochastic dynamic programming to determine a profit threshold for the accept/reject decision as well as to deterministically allocate a single bottleneck resource to the accepted projects, both with an eye on maximizing the expected revenues within the problem horizon. We derive a number of managerial insights based on an analysis of the influence of project and environmental characteristics on optimal project selection and aggregate capacity usage. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007     

Lateral capacity exchange and its impact on capacity investment decisions

We study the problem of capacity exchange between two firms in anticipation of the mismatch between demand and capacity, and its impact on firm's capacity investment decisions. For given capacity investment levels of the two firms, we demonstrate how capacity price may be determined and how much capacity should be exchanged when either manufacturer acts as a Stackelberg leader in the capacity exchange game. By benchmarking against the centralized system, we show that a side payment may be used to coordinate the capacity exchange decisions. We then study the firms' capacity investment decisions using a biform game framework in which capacity investment decisions are made individually and exchange decisions are made as in a centralized system. We demonstrate the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium capacity investment levels and study the impact of firms' share of the capacity exchange surplus on their capacity investment levels.© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007