Slow failure: Understanding America’s quagmire in Afghanistan

ABSTRACT

The United States government has no organised way of thinking about war termination other than seeking decisive military victory. This implicit assumption is inducing three major errors. First, the United States tends to select military-centric strategies that have low probabilities of success. Second, the United States is slow to modify losing or ineffective strategies due to cognitive obstacles, internal frictions, and patron-client challenges with the host nation government. Finally, as the U.S. government tires of the war and elects to withdraw, bargaining asymmetries prevent successful transitions (building the host nation to win on its own) or negotiations.     

智能搜救机器人在障碍地形的自主构型规划

为了解决带有辅助摆臂的智能搜救机器人自动规划构型以实现自主越障的难题,提出一种能够适应复杂地面形状的搜救机器人越障构型规划新方法,其核心是一种高适应性、高效率的机器人姿态预测算法。通过将地形表示为离散的点集,建立了搜救机器人的单侧姿态预测数学模型;进一步提出了快速求解该问题的算法,每秒可预测1 000～1 500个姿态。基于此,设计了机器人越障过程中状态、动作的评价指标,运用动态规划算法与滚动优化思想构建了具有优化能力的、能够实时运行的构型规划器。仿真与实物实验的结果表明,该方法能够使机器人自主调整构型穿越复杂地形,且相较强化学习算法和人工操作具有更平稳的越障效果。     

使用等效偏移角稀疏测量的面阵相机序贯图像几何校正

天基光学相机实际在轨对地观测成像的畸变需通过几何校正抑制。目前主流面阵相机对地观测获得的小尺寸、高帧频序贯图像很难满足传统几何校正方法逐帧解算对单帧图像控制点数量与空域分布的要求且计算量巨大。针对这一问题,提出一种使用等效偏移角稀疏测量的面阵相机序贯观测图像几何校正方法,将逐帧校正参数解算问题转化为时域稀疏测量条件下等效偏移角信号恢复问题,利用等效偏移角信号时频信息可有效降低对单帧图像控制点数量和空域分布要求。通过高分四号卫星面阵相机在轨实测图像数据验证了所提方法的可行性且其能大大降低序贯图像几何校正处理的计算量。     

集群搜索对策理论在搜索-规避对抗中的应用

使用对策论的观点和方法 ,结合搜索论的知识 ,建立了一类搜索 -规避对抗对策模型 .对模型的结论做了系统分析 ,考虑了对策双方的最优策略及使用 .     

What is the global landpower network and what value might it provide?

US national security guidance, as well as the US Army’s operational experiences since 2001, emphasizes the importance of working closely with partner countries to achieve US strategic objectives. The US Army has introduced the global landpower network (GLN) concept as a means to integrate, sustain and advance the Army’s considerable ongoing efforts to meet US national security guidance. This study develops the GLN concept further, and addresses three questions. What benefits can the GLN provide the Army? What are the essential components of the GLN? What options exist for implementing the GLN concept? By developing the GLN concept, the Army has the opportunity to transition the GLN from an often ad hoc and reactive set of relationships to one that the Army more self-consciously prioritizes and leverages as a resource to meet US strategic objectives.     

Performance analysis of queue length monitoring of M/G/1 systems

This study investigates the statistical process control application for monitoring queue length data in M/G/1 systems. Specifically, we studied the average run length (ARL) characteristics of two different control charts for detecting changes in system utilization. First, the nL chart monitors the sums of successive queue length samples by subgrouping individual observations with sample size n. Next is the individual chart with a warning zone whose control scheme is specified by two pairs of parameters, (upper control limit, d_u) and (lower control limit, d_l), as proposed by Bhat and Rao (Oper Res 20 (1972) 955–966). We will present approaches to calculate ARL for the two types of control charts using the Markov chain formulation and also investigate the effects of parameters of the control charts to provide useful design guidelines for better performance. Extensive numerical results are included for illustration. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

Periodic review inventory management with contingent use of two freight modes with fixed costs

We study a stochastic inventory model of a firm that periodically orders a product from a make‐to‐order manufacturer. Orders can be shipped by a combination of two freight modes that differ in lead‐times and costs, although orders are not allowed to cross. Placing an order as well as each use of each freight mode has a fixed and a quantity proportional cost. The decision of how to allocate units between the two freight modes utilizes information about demand during the completion of manufacturing. We derive the optimal freight mode allocation policy, and show that the optimal policy for placing orders is not an (s,S) policy in general. We provide tight bounds for the optimal policy that can be calculated by solving single period problems. Our analysis enables insights into the structure of the optimal policy specifying the conditions under which it simplifies to an (s,S) policy. We characterize the best (s,S) policy for our model, and through extensive numerical investigation show that its performance is comparable with the optimal policy in most cases. Our numerical study also sheds light on the benefits of the dual freight model over the single freight models. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

基于聚类算法的多无人机系统任务分配

针对现有任务分配方法在任务点较多时不易解算,且计算量大的问题,提出了基于模糊C-均值聚类算法的多无人机系统任务分配方法.首先,利用模糊C-均值聚类算法得到的隶属度矩阵对任务点进行初始分配;其次,针对基于空间划分聚类可能造成各UAV任务不均衡的问题,设计任务的局部优化调整规则;最后,结合单旅行商问题,利用Tabu Sea...     

Quantifying the performance effects of idle time utilization in multiserver systems

In many practical multiserver queueing systems, servers not only serve randomly arriving customers but also work on the secondary jobs with infinite backlog during their idle time. In this paper, we propose a c‐server model with a two‐threshold policy, denoted by (e d), to evaluate the performance of this class of systems. With such a policy, when the number of idle servers has reached d (<c), then e (<d) idle agents will process secondary jobs. These e servers keep working on the secondary jobs until they find waiting customers exist in the system at a secondary job completion instant. Using the matrix analytic method, we obtain the stationary performance measures for evaluating different (e, d) policies. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007.     

Technical note: Find a hidden “treasure”

This paper deals with a two searchers game and it investigates the problem of how the possibility of finding a hidden object simultaneously by players influences their behavior. Namely, we consider the following two‐sided allocation non‐zero‐sum game on an integer interval [1,n]. Two teams (Player 1 and 2) want to find an immobile object (say, a treasure) hidden at one of n points. Each point i ∈ [1,n] is characterized by a detection parameter λ_i (μ_i) for Player 1 (Player 2) such that p_i(1 ? exp(?λ_ix_i)) (p_i(1 ? exp(?μ_iy_i))) is the probability that Player 1 (Player 2) discovers the hidden object with amount of search effort x_i (y_i) applied at point i where p_i ∈ (0,1) is the probability that the object is hidden at point i. Player 1 (Player 2) undertakes the search by allocating the total amount of effort X(Y). The payoff for Player 1 (Player 2) is 1 if he detects the object but his opponent does not. If both players detect the object they can share it proportionally and even can pay some share to an umpire who takes care that the players do not cheat each other, namely Player 1 gets q₁ and Player 2 gets q₂ where q₁ + q₂ ≤ 1. The Nash equilibrium of this game is found and numerical examples are given. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007