Threats and civil–military relations: explaining Singapore’s “trickle down” military innovation

This article explains why Singapore, despite its small size and semi-authoritarian regime, retains one of the best military forces in the Indo-Pacific. It unpacks Singapore’s ability to continuously innovate since the 1960s – technologically, organizationally, and conceptually – and even recently joined the Revolution in Military Affairs bandwagon. Drawing from the broader military innovation studies literature, this article argues evolutionary peacetime military innovation is more likely to occur in a state with a unified civil–military relation and whose military faces a high-level diverse set of threats. This argument explains how the civil–military fusion under the People’s Action Party-led government since Singapore’s founding moment has been providing coherent and consistent strategic guidance, political support, and financial capital, allowing the Singapore Armed Forces to continuously innovate in response to high levels and diversity of threats.     

Towards a Humanitarian Military Ethics: Moral Autonomy,Integrity and Obligations in the British and German Armed Forces

Humanitarian operations may pose challenges to which armed forces prepared for warfighting seem rather ill-equipped. It is the aim of this article to examine in what way military ethics should be adapted to humanitarian tasks. Two ideal types of military ethics are defined here: warfighting and humanitarian. The warfighting ethic is supposed to maximise the utility of the military in war and combat and to that end utilises the virtues of loyalty and honour. In contrast, humanitarian obligations require to a larger extent the development of personal integrity and an ability to follow one’s own conscience. The adaptation of military ethics is demonstrated in the case studies of the UK armed forces and the German Bundeswehr. Whereas the moral code of the UK armed forces remains anchored in the principles of the warfighting ethic, the case of the Bundeswehr presents a military ethic closely approximating the humanitarian ideal type.     

阈下听觉技术研究及其应用

从网络空间侦察能力、指挥控制能力、精确攻击能力、防御能力和评估能力等五个方面,对网络空间支援力量的核心支援能力进行了系统论述,提出建设军队网络支援力量、应对网络空间安全威胁的新思考和新观点。研究认为,当前我军在网络空间的安全意识、核心技术、均衡发展等方面面临严峻困难。为实现网络强国的奋斗目标,需要加强国家网络安全的顶层设计,增强网络技术自主创新能力,强化军民融合式建设和系统常态的攻防训练等。     

美军军官职业军事教育政策探析

美军在军事人才培养的体系构筑、目标设定、课目设置等方面有着众多独到之处。《军官职业军事教育政策》是美军规范军官职业军事教育的指导性文件,研究掌握其核心内容的发展演变,从中提取美军职业教育改革的先进理念和成熟做法,可为我军军事职业教育建设提供经验借鉴。     

论重建抗御火灾意识的必要性

通过分析抗御火灾的客观事实 ,从抗御火灾的公共配套设施、专用装备和人员保证三个方面揭示人类控制火灾的观念需要更新 ,指出人类控制火灾必须从人的观念上实现根本性转变 ,重建抗御火灾的意识。     

Transforming the Spanish military

The article analyses the Spanish military transformation. This process started in 2004 as a means to adapt the force structure, organization and capabilities of the Spanish military to meet present and future threats in compliance with NATO’s initiatives, thus ensuring the continuity of the equipment modernization, professionalization and the adjustment of the country’s defence architecture to the post-cold war environment. A decade later, although transformation is still a priority for the Ministry of Defence, limited political will, a lack of strategic guidance, poor resource management and the effects of the economic crisis are compromising its development. This article describes the Spanish military transformation and assesses its value in adapting the country’s armed forces to the current and prospective security environment.     

EU armed forces and social media: convergence or divergence?

This article explores how armed forces in EU member states work with and view social media in national and international settings, and what the patterns of convergence/divergence are on these issues. To that end, a questionnaire targeted at EU armed forces was constructed. An index of qualitative variation was calculated to explore the relative convergence among respondents (n = 25) on issues of risks and opportunities with using social media nationally and internationally. Consistent with previous research on European armed forces, we found higher levels of divergence than convergence. Contrary to our expectations that similar challenges, joint international standards, and membership in international organizations would foster convergence with regard to social media use in areas of deployment, we found that convergence appeared foremost pertaining to the domestic level. Policy divergence was strongest in areas of deployment.     

Explaining the security paradigm shift: strategic culture,epistemic communities,and Israel’s changing national security policy

The paper’s main argument is that Israel’s security policy, which traditionally focused on defending its territorial integrity against regular Arab armed forces, was, by the 2010s, transformed into one that focuses on facing a variety of state- and non-state-based threats. Neo-realist explanations could neither account for the contested nature of the security debate during this period, nor the inconsistent evolution of the policy. The present study aims to solve this conundrum by introducing an alternative approach known as 4th generation strategic culture research. The paper is comprised of four parts. First, the origins and evolution of strategic culture are reviewed, with emphasis placed on the commonly accepted weaknesses that, to date, have prevented it from being used as a testable theoretical concept, and subsequently as an explanatory factor for security policy changes. The second part presents the “modernist constructivism” approach that bridges the gap between traditional constructivism and hypothesis-driven research design. Next, the paper introduces the emerging fourth generation in strategic culture literature, followed by a conceptual framework designed to resolve the inherent weaknesses of the more traditional approaches. Finally, this conceptual framework is applied to analyse the transformation of Israel’s security policy between 1982 and 2014.     

Human conflict and universal ethics (part 2)

This second part of the review article begins with a definition of military power, when and how it should be used. From a large number of authors, “moral forces” are linked to “codes of conduct”, and the fundamental understandings about the “profession of arms”, based on “fiduciary trust”, “covenanted” service and professional and personal “conscience”. The article covers what authors have written about “culture” and the ethics of “technology” devices and systems, including “cyber” warfare. It concludes with recognition of the increase in ethical sensitivity in this century which is characterized by a phenomenon, the crises of “identity”, personal, national and global.     

防空兵群指挥所配置方案优化分析

防空兵群指挥所配置是兵力部署的重要内容,它从根本上决定了指挥所的指挥效能和野战生存能力。多年来,指挥所的配置多是根据防空兵战斗的相关战术原则,由作战参谋提出数个配置方案,然后由指挥员做出决策。这种仅凭主观决策的做法与现代防空作战的要求不相适应。结合模糊多指标评判方法与优化理论,从发挥指挥效能与提高生存能力两个方面出发,对防空群指挥所的配置进行了分析,并建立了配置方案优化的模型,从根本上改变了指挥所配置完全依赖主观判断的做法。最后应用模型分析了一个实例。