利用动态综合作战能力指数筹划海战兵力需求

针对目前海军作战兵力需求问题,建立了海军作战的物理模型,并提出了用动态综合作战能力指数筹划海战兵力需求的数学模型和算法,采用战例统计法和专家打分法计算出战斗力系数.并且以航空兵空中争夺为例进行了因素分析、参数选取、效能计算并得出了明确结论.计算结果表明,采用动态综合作战能力指数作为海战兵力需求指标是可行的;信息作战能力在现代海战中具有极其重要的作用.     

The African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis: conceptual breakthrough or anti-imperialist phantom?

The creation of an African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis (ACIRC) is a sign of Africa's willingness to take its destiny into its own hands. Presented as a reaction to the slowness of the development of the African Standby Force (ASF), it is also a response to some of the ASF's conceptual weaknesses. This decision reflects a wish to establish an instrument better equipped to deal with the challenges Africa is facing. Departing from the (sub)regional logic of the ASF results from a desire to take into account the transnational nature of threats, while its enlarged mandate is meant to offer Africa the capacity to intervene in all kinds of conflicts, including by undertaking peace enforcement activities. But the obstacles on the road towards the actual creation and mobilisation of this capacity should not be underestimated. These include material difficulties, but also political tensions, between ‘small’ and ‘big’ states as well as between the African Union and subregional organisations. The risk then is high that the ACIRC, whose announcement came as a reaction to France's intervention in Mali, ends up joining the ranks of the many ‘anti-imperialist’ phantoms haunting the history of the Organization of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU). Confronted by events considered ‘neocolonial’ initiatives, African actors have indeed traditionally reacted by launching grand projects that never got off the ground. However, by actually establishing this new instrument, they may also demonstrate that times have definitively changed.     

The art of meddling: a theoretical,strategic and historical analysis of non-official covers for clandestine Humint

The building of reliable covers has always been of the utmost importance for clandestine Humint. Using both primary and secondary sources, this study seeks to examine how classical authors and modern scholars have dealt with this topic, and which kind of covers have been the most used throughout history in different sociopolitical contexts, and what are the new perspectives for today’s challenges. Findings suggest that a careful reading of the political milieu in which intelligence officers are required to work, and a certain degree of creativity, are the essential premises for the construction of a plausible cover; that some apparently outdated disguises such as merchants, itinerant monks and philosophers should be understood more broadly today to include business people, humanitarian NGOs and academics; that undercover practices have been theoretically and historically recognized as necessary and convenient by a great number of societies, often with scant regard for ethical considerations.     

‘Immediate redress’: USS Potomac and the pirates of Quallah Batoo

Maritime interests in the twenty-first century are not immune to the growing number of irregular challenges and hybrid threats that have come to dominate land warfare. In order to better understand these challenges a study of naval history can help provide a vital foundation. In the early 1830s the United States Navy dispatched the frigate USS Potomac to Sumatra to investigate a pirate attack on the spice trader Friendship. Potomac's crew of sailors and Marines conducted a landing at the village Quallah Batoo and fought a pitched battle. As the navies of the world approach naval irregular warfare in the new century, studying past examples like Potomac's mission can help illuminate the principles of successful naval irregular warfare.     

South Africa's threat environment: a guide for the National Planning Commission

Abstract

The mandate of South Africa's recently appointed National Planning Commission includes addressing ‘defence and security matters’. This article seeks to outline the central elements of the threat environment facing South Africa in the foreseeable future. It is argued that South Africa faces no meaningful existential threat from conventional military forces but that its security forces will need to be prepared to address possible raids and attacks by conventional military forces both on home soil and on vital interests beyond the nation's borders. Other threats highlighted include the threats posed by potential insurgencies, by terrorism, and by crime, social unrest and banditry. Also addressed is the danger of so-called hybrid threats, in which two or more of the single threat types outlined here are combined. Finally, the article challenges the National Planning Commission to rethink South Africa's policy on peace operations in the light of the need to ensure the safety and security of the nation's citizenry.     

‘Fighting for peace’

In Africa, most of the present conflicts are civil, intra-state wars where belligerent groups use guerrilla tactics to achieve various political, economic or ideological objectives. The atrocities and the effect of these on-going wars on innocent civilians, human suffering, poverty and development are beyond comprehension. Not surprisingly, the majority of current peace operations are in Africa, with more than 70 countries contributing forces to these conflict zones. On the continent, South Africa has come to assume a leading role in peace operations and is now a major troop-contributing country to UN and AU missions. In the past 11 years, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has taken part in no fewer than 14 peace missions. This article provides a brief background of the conflicts in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan, the different United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) mandates under which peacekeepers had to operate as well as their objectives, and the extent of South Africa's involvement in the various missions. In the last section, the major challenges, that these operations have posed are highlighted.     

航母综合作战区警戒兵力对潜警戒能力及配置

在定量分析综合作战区航母受敌潜艇威胁、警戒兵力对潜警戒能力的基础上,依据航母综合作战区警戒兵力配置的基本原则,提出了航母综合作战区对潜警戒兵力配置的方法,可为反潜作战指挥员优化航母综合作战区对潜警戒兵力的配置提供决策支持与参考。     

Proportionate flow shop: New complexity results and models with due date assignment

It is known that the proportionate flow shop minimum makespan $Fm/prpt/C_{\max }$ problem is solved optimally by any permutation job sequence. We show that the $Fm/prpt/C_{\max }$ problem is at least ordinary NP‐hard when missing operations are allowed and present some solvable cases. We then consider the standard proportionate flow shop problem (with no missing operations) and show that the solution algorithms for a class of single‐machine due date assignment problems can be extended/generalized to the corresponding proportionate flow shop problems. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 98–106, 2015     

舰艇作战指挥决策模型可信度评估流程分析

舰艇作战指挥决策模型的可信度是一项复杂的系统工程,而评估流程又是这项工程的基础性工作,直接影响到可信度评估的成败。运用了评估学的基本理论对舰艇作战指挥决策模型可信度评估流程进行分析,将可信度评估分为三个阶段,即评估准备阶段、评估实施阶段和评估总结阶段,研究和阐述了这三个阶段的具体工作、要求和标准等,最后,建立了专家评审流程图、可信度评估指标体系以及用于可信度评估指标的数据采集表,分析对比了数据处理方法的优缺点。     

The Damoclean sword of offensive cyber: Policy uncertainty and collective insecurity

Cyberspace is a new domain of operation, with its own characteristics. Cyber weapons differ qualitatively from kinetic ones: They generate effects by non-kinetic means through information, technology, and networks. Their properties, opportunities, and constraints are comparable to the qualitative difference between conventional and nuclear weapons. New weapons and their target sets in a new domain raise a series of unresolved policy challenges at the domestic, bilateral, and international levels about deterrence, attribution, and response. They also introduce new risks: uncertainty about unintended consequences, expectations of efficacy, and uncertainty about both the target’s and the international community’s response. Cyber operations offer considerable benefits for states to achieve strategic objectives both covertly and overtly. However, without a strategic framework to contain and possibly deter their use, make state and non-state behavior more predictable in the absence of reciprocal norms, and limit their impact, an environment where states face persistent attacks that nonetheless fall below the threshold of armed conflict presents a policy dilemma that reinforces collective insecurity.