Buy now,pay later: American military intervention and the strategic cost paradox

This paper explores the notion that US efforts to evade the political costs of war paradoxically contribute to the subsequent exacerbation of costs over time. Leaders seek to purchase political capital in the short term by limiting the costs and requirements of military operations, but in doing so cause strategic and political liabilities to mount in the long run. While identification of such behaviour is not new, insufficient attention has been devoted to explaining its causes, dynamics, and manifestations in relation to key decisions on and in war. Evidence derived from studies of recent American discretionary campaigns is analysed to advance an argument with respect to this pattern of self-defeating strategic behaviour.     

The Gravity of Arms

The aim of this paper is to investigate the determinants of international arms transfers in a gravity model framework. By distinguishing between the decision to export arms (extensive margin) and the value of the arms exported (intensive margin), while also considering its interdependence, is what differentiates this paper from previous research. A theoretically justified gravity model of trade augmented with political and security motives is estimated using a two-stage panel data approach for 104 exporting countries over the period from 1950 to 2007. In addition to the usual gravity variables related to the economic mass of the trading countries and the trade cost factors, the model is extended with political and security factors. The level of democracy in both trading partners, political differences between trading partners and voting similarity with the United States in the UN General Assembly of the countries engaged in trade are the main political factors, whereas the existence of conflicts, military pacts, and embargoes are taken as security motives. The key result indicates that both political and security motives are an important determinant of an arms trade, but their effects on the extensive margin of exports (the decision to order a transfer) differs from their effect on the intensive margin (average value of exports). Moreover, the relative importance of the factors under study has changed since 1989. In the post-cold war period, countries that are less democratic are more likely to export arms, military pacts are less relevant and embargoes play a role.     

On the roles of free play in army exercises and the Russians

The article outlines the essential role of free play elements in various types of exercises for the development of in-depth and practical military professionalism. It thereafter argues why such use of free play contradicts the military science founded Russian Way of War.     

Estimating failure time distribution and its parameters based on intermediate data from a Wiener degradation model

Instead of measuring a Wiener degradation or performance process at predetermined time points to track degradation or performance of a product for estimating its lifetime, we propose to obtain the first‐passage times of the process over certain nonfailure thresholds. Based on only these intermediate data, we obtain the uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator and uniformly most accurate confidence interval for the mean lifetime. For estimating the lifetime distribution function, we propose a modified maximum likelihood estimator and a new estimator and prove that, by increasing the sample size of the intermediate data, these estimators and the above‐mentioned estimator of the mean lifetime can achieve the same levels of accuracy as the estimators assuming one has failure times. Thus, our method of using only intermediate data is useful for highly reliable products when their failure times are difficult to obtain. Furthermore, we show that the proposed new estimator of the lifetime distribution function is more accurate than the standard and modified maximum likelihood estimators. We also obtain approximate confidence intervals for the lifetime distribution function and its percentiles. Finally, we use light‐emitting diodes as an example to illustrate our method and demonstrate how to validate the Wiener assumption during the testing. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2008     

基于结构光的柱体工件直径测量

为实现柱状工件直径的实时快速非接触测量,利用结构光原理,对柱体直径的视觉测量方法进行了研究.详细介绍了结构光法测直径的原理和步骤,以及激光平面的标定和坐标变换求解空间二次曲线方程及特征参数的方法.实验证明该方法测量速度快,精度适中的特点,适用于大批量产品在线测量,亦适用于恶劣环境下的测量.     

坦克火控系统自动跟踪功能关键技术

结合现代军事发展,分析了现代坦克火控系统发展自动跟踪技术的必要性;根据我军现装备的坦克火控系统所具有的自动跟踪功能,分析了自动跟踪的相关技术,电视跟踪技术的原理,图像匹配法的涵义;系统介绍了电视跟踪中图像匹配法识别和跟踪目标,介绍了目标自动跟踪系统对目标识别和判定的一种具体方法.     

一种应用于移动机器人的路径跟踪控制方法

针对移动机器人的路径跟踪复杂性问题,设计了一种易于实现的控制系统,其中的跟踪策略改进了传统的视线导航算法,使机器人光滑趋近到期望路径,控制器的设计采用基于模糊逻辑的变速度控制和角速度滑模控制,减小了角速度的抖振,并使控制具有一定的智能化特点.实验结果表明,设计的控制系统即可以保证路径跟踪的精度,同时避免了运动控制的不稳定性.     

车辆悬挂系统的主动优化控制器设计及仿真

基于特征结构配置参数化结果,提出了车辆悬挂系统的主动优化控制器设计方法。该方法直接基于车辆悬挂系统的参数矩阵,便于工程应用。车辆悬挂系统的仿真实例表明所提主动优化控制器设计方法简单且有效。     

一种基于条件概率的设备占用率修正算法

简要介绍了某型无人机维修级别分析中的组合方案法 ,针对传统分析法中设备占用率采用经验值 ,造成可信度低的问题 ,提出了一种基于不同故障模式发生时的条件概率求解设备占用率的算法 ,并给出了这种算法的适用范围。