Combating nuclear smuggling? Exploring drivers and challenges to detecting nuclear and radiological materials at maritime facilities

International concern over nuclear terrorism has grown during the past few decades. This has driven a broad spectrum of efforts to strengthen nuclear security globally, including the widespread adoption of radiation-detection technology for border monitoring. Detection systems are now deployed at strategic locations for the purported purpose of detecting and deterring the smuggling of nuclear and radioactive materials. However, despite considerable investment in this area, few studies have examined how these programs are implemented or the operational challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. This article seeks to address this with a focus on radiation-detection efforts at maritime facilities. Utilizing practitioner interviews and a survey, this article identifies the factors that influence the planning and use of these systems in this fast-moving environment. The results clearly demonstrate that the implementation of these systems varies significantly across different national and organizational contexts, resulting in a fragmented global nuclear-detection architecture, which arguably undermines efforts to detect trafficked nuclear-threat materials. Greater consideration should therefore be given to developing international standards and guidance, designing and adopting tools to support key parts of the alarm assessment process, and broader sharing of good practice.     

India’s nuclear counter-revolution: nuclear learning and the future of deterrence

ABSTRACT

The India–Pakistan near war of February–March 2019 highlights India’s ongoing evolution in strategic thought and practice since its emergence in 1998 as an overt nuclear-weapon possessor. These changes, involving an increasing willingness to engage in the intentional escalation of conflict with a nuclear-armed rival willing to be the first to use nuclear weapons, challenge certain academic assumptions about the behavior of nuclear-weapon states. In particular, they undermine the expectations of the nuclear-revolution theory—which anticipates nuclear and conventional restraint among nuclear-armed rivals through fear of mutual assured destruction—and the model of nuclear learning which underpins this theory, in which new nuclear-weapon states gradually absorb this restraint through policy-maker learning. This article explores how India’s learning pathway since 1998 has deviated from these expectations. India is instead pursuing its own “revolution,” in the direction of creating capabilities for flexible response and escalation dominance. It concludes by illuminating the similarities between Indian strategic behavior and contemporary practices of other nuclear-armed states, and suggests that New Delhi’s emerging de facto nuclear doctrine and posture is part of a broader empirical challenge to our current conceptions of the nuclear revolution and of nuclear learning.     

Body armour – New materials,new systems

This is a very timely review of body armour materials and systems since new test standards are currently being written, or reviewed, and new, innovative products released. Of greatest importance, however, is the recent evolution, and maturity, of the Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene fibres enabling a completely new style of system to evolve – a stackable system of Hard Armour Plates. The science of body armour materials is quickly reviewed with emphasis upon current understanding of relevant energy-absorbing mechanisms in fibres, fabrics, polymeric laminates and ceramics. The trend in on-going developments in ballistic fibres is then reviewed, analysed and future projections offered. Weaknesses in some of the ceramic grades are highlighted as is the value of using cladding materials to improve the robustness, and multi-strike performance, of Hard Armour Plates. Finally, with the drive for lighter, and therefore smaller, soft armour systems for military personnel the challenges for armour designers are reported, and the importance of the relative size of the Hard Armour Plate to the Soft Armour Insert is strongly emphasised.     

停产雷达装备维修器材持续保障风险评估方法

针对停产雷达装备维修器材持续保障过程中存在的筹措断供问题,提出基于改进风险矩阵法和层次分析法相结合的风险评估方法。首先建立保障风险评估指标体系,然后采用改进的风险矩阵进行风险评估,利用采用层次分析法解决存在递归层次时风险因素的评估问题,最后得出装备器材持续保障风险的综合量化值,为提出保障风险规避策略提供数据依据。利用某型雷达器材保障风险评估案例进行数据分析,验证了该方法的有效性。     

矩形腔内相变材料上下加热时接触熔化的研究

本文对矩形腔内相变材料的紧密接触熔化过程进行了分析。矩形容器的上下壁面保持各自的温度对相变材料加热,且相变材料可以有不同的高宽比。应用Nusselt液体边界层理论,本文求得了传热过程的熔化规律与液体边界层厚度,并讨论了熔化温差与高宽比对熔化过程的影响,最后给出结论。