信息扩散模型的窗宽优化与鱼雷战术效能实验评估

针对海洋环境对鱼雷等武器装备战术效能影响的试验数据和案例样本匮乏等普遍性问题,引入信息扩和模糊映射思想,并基于遗传算法改进和发展了最优窗宽扩散模型。该方法可从有限的试验样本中客观拟合出数据结构信息,进而实现有限数据样本信息的合理扩散。利用该方法进行了基于小样本案例的潜射鱼雷战术效能的海洋环境影响评估的信息扩散建模和仿真实验和对比分析。结果表明,窗宽优化的信息扩散模型可有效改进常规信息扩散模型的评估效果,对武器装备环境影响评估中普遍存在的小样本或信息不完备困难有一定参考应用意义。     

Nothing fails like success: The London Ambassadors’ Conference and the coming of the First World War

During the July Crisis Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, focused on organising a conference through which differences could be reconciled. After the war, he maintained that Germany’s unwillingness to join this conference was one of the immediate causes of war. This essay disputes Grey’s contention, arguing that his plans for a conference, based on a misleading analogy to the previous Balkan Crises, actually helped facilitate the outbreak of war in 1914 by sanctioning inaction in the first phase of the crisis (28 June–22 July) and by tacitly encouraging Russian mobilisation in the second phase (23 July–4 August).     

The British army,information management and the First World War revolution in military affairs

Information Management (IM) – the systematic ordering, processing and channelling of information within organisations – forms a critical component of modern military command and control systems. As a subject of scholarly enquiry, however, the history of military IM has been relatively poorly served. Employing new and under-utilised archival sources, this article takes the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of the First World War as its case study and assesses the extent to which its IM system contributed to the emergence of the modern battlefield in 1918. It argues that the demands of fighting a modern war resulted in a general, but not universal, improvement in the BEF’s IM techniques, which in turn laid the groundwork, albeit in embryonic form, for the IM systems of modern armies.     

Of war plans and war guilt: The debate surrounding the Schlieffen Plan

This article outlines the controversy surrounding the thesis advanced by Terence Zuber that there never was a Schlieffen Plan and that German war planning in 1914, far from having the aggressive edge that historians have attributed to it for decades, was in fact designed to deal with a Franco-Russian attack on Germany. In addition to reviewing the debate precipitated by Zuber's thesis, this article also takes a closer look at how Germany prepared for war in the years 1906–14, and particularly how it ended up embarking on that war in August 1914. Such an investigation of German war planning, with particular emphasis on the war plans of the younger Moltke, will serve as a critique of Zuber's controversial thesis, and it will be shown that while Zuber maintains that there never was a Schlieffen Plan, Schlieffen, Moltke and their contemporaries were certain that such a plan existed. In 1914, Moltke did not shrink from implementing his own version of Schlieffen's strategic thinking when war broke out.     

When Peacekeepers Fail Thousands are Going to Die. The ETO in Rwanda: a Story of Deception

This study develops the concepts of fourth generation operations and the associated principles. First, the concept of fourth generation operations is introduced and defined. Fourth generation operations are the evolution and extension of third and fourth generation warfare based on a change of tactics, technology, and combatants. These operations are currently ongoing in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with the global war on terrorism. Based on the framework of US joint doctrine, the supporting principles of fourth generation operations are developed. This requires the introduction of the principle of Population Perception.     

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.