THE REGIONAL ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF MILITARY BASE REALIGNMENTS AND CLOSURES IN GERMANY

We identify the causal effect of a reduction in military personnel on a number of socioeconomic indicators within the peripheries of military bases. The base realignments and closures in Germany are used as an exogenous source of variation that allows us to identify the effect of a demand shock on household income, output, unemployment, and tax revenue within a specified buffer zone around each base. The analysis covers 298 communities for the period 2003–2007. Consistent with evidence found elsewhere, we find that these base adjustments have only a marginal impact on the local community in which the bases are located.     

Syria and the perils of proxy warfare

The ongoing civil war in Syria is evolving into a ‘proxy war’, in which both the Baathist regime and its insurgent adversaries are becoming increasingly reliant upon support from external powers. Proxy warfare has a superficial appeal for sponsoring states, as it appears to offer a convenient and risk-free means of fulfilling foreign policy goals, which will not incur the financial and human costs of direct military intervention. Using Syria as a case study, this article shows that the conduct of proxy warfare has several potential political, strategic, and ethical consequences, which any democratic government in particular is obliged to consider before it resorts to this indirect means of foreign intervention.     

对策理论的防空作战决策级融合模型

随着防空C3I系统的发展,防空作战决策的过程较以往更为自动化,用于生成各种作战辅助决策方案的计算机模型也具备随着作战环境改变所表现出一定的自适应调整的特征.影响防空作战决策结果正确性的因素众多,表现这些因素的信息有些是冲突的,为得到更为准确、有效的决策方案,各类冲突信息的处理成为防空作战的核心问题.构造了一种在冲突信息环境下基于对策理论的融合模型,以对策理论的相关算法实现了融合中心各类信息的交互决策.实践表明,这一融合模型能有效地解决防空作战决策中各类信息的综合处理问题,具有一定的实用价值.     

系统动力学的C~4ISR系统信息优势价值链模型仿真

实现信息优势是网络中心战的核心,C4ISR系统是打赢网络中心战、夺取信息优势、决策优势和行动优势的客观基础。从C4ISR系统的工作流程出发,分析了C4ISR系统信息优势价值链,围绕战场态势感知信息优势价值链的生成过程,运用系统动力学方法建立了对抗条件下C4ISR系统信息优势价值链的SD模型,并结合作战背景对试验结果进行了仿真分析,验证了该方法研究复杂军事信息系统的可行性。     

A usable past: a contemporary approach to history for the Western profession of arms

The most effective way for the Western profession of arms to use history is to disavow the purism and narrow specialisation of today’s academia in favour of developing a contemporary approach to the subject. The latter aims to foster a range of applied diagnostic skills that transcend the temporal dimensions of past, present, and future. A contemporary approach to history for military professionals emphasises the use of inter-disciplinary war studies to enhance policy relevance. In any defense and security organisation, history must be usable in the sense of providing cognitive and interpretative skills for probing relationships between possibility and actuality, between experience and expectation, and between singularity and repetition. Using history to examine such dialectical interconnections is particularly valuable when military establishments confront their essential task of analyzing emerging trends in the future of war.     

基于网络中心战的C2BMC信息分发模型研究

美军导弹防御的C2BMC系统是应用网络中心战思想较为成功的案例之一.旨在通过建立其信息分发模型探索其成功原因,达到加深对网络中心战思想理解的目的.首先介绍了C2BMC系统的发展现状,然后对导弹防御系统信息流的类型、特点进行深入分析,提出了导弹防御作战信息分发系统的概念,并在此基础上建立了概念级、指挥结构级和描述级的C2BMC系统信息分发模型,为获取信息优势、建设信息化装备提供理论支持.     

A Typology of War Ethics

Interdisciplinary communication on war is impeded by doctrinal gaps concerning its morality, immorality, and amorality. Much is written on ad bellum ethical standards for military force by states, mainly in the fields of international politics and religious studies. However, a necessary first step in comparing these different approaches to war ethics with each other is to develop a system for classifying them. The classification system offered in this paper places war ethics on a grid with two scales. One axis of the grid ranges from permissiveness to restrictiveness. The other axis ranges from regard for self to regard for others. Twelve forms of war ethics are assigned points within the grid, including pacifism, just war, holy war, UN Charter obligations, several variants of realism, cost–benefit analysis, isolationism, and various ideological war ethics such as communist and fascist approaches. In doing so, this paper lays the groundwork for “quantifying” war ethics, to enable measurements of their effects against other state-level characteristics and outcomes of interaction.     

基于最优Morlet小波的全信息能量熵提取及其在滚动轴承状态监测中的应用

为利用振动信号中隐含的冲击特征成分来反映轴承性能退化趋势,综合利用小波变换技术和全信息技术,提出一种基于最优Morlet小波变换的全信息能量熵提取方法．以最小Shannon熵优化Morlet小波形状参数,通过多源振动数据的小波变换系数,利用信息熵综合反映冲击特征能量在不同频带分布差异．滚动轴承全寿命数据的应用结果表明,全信息能量熵的变化趋势能够监测轴承状态的劣化过程,而伴随的早期故障检测可以提高轴承使用的安全性．     

Problems with the Kurds as proxies against Islamic State: insights from the siege of Kobane

Abstract

The siege of the northern Syrian town of Kobane was lifted in January 2015. The Kurdish defenders there had triumphed against Islamic State (IS). The conflict then moved on. It moved on, though, with the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western powers having adopted, almost by default, the Kurds as proxy fighters in this conflict. The Kurds, however, are a divided and fractious nation spread across three states and historically famous for fighting among themselves. In employing the Kurds as proxies against IS, as this article shows, these Western powers must be aware of the unintended consequences that can result.