基于局域模板的STAP非均匀检测器

分析了STAP(Space Time Adaptive Processing)中强干扰目标影响传统非均匀检测器性能的机理,针对强干扰目标引起的非均匀检测器性能下降和传统自适应功率剩余(APR)方法运算量大的问题,提出了一种基于局域模板的非均匀检测器(Local Template NHD,LT-NHD)。该方法不需要进行协方差矩阵求逆的耗时运算,便能获得较高的运算效率;此外,其检测不易受训练样本中的强目标样本影响,能获得比传统方法更为鲁棒的检测性能。实测数据实验验证了本文方法的有效性。     

机载红外搜索跟踪系统探测性能评测标定

针对机载红外搜索跟踪系统(Infrared Search and Track,IRST)理论与实际战场探测能力之间的较大差异,提出了IRST系统探测性能评定的方法。对机载红外探测系统探测性能指标进行理论分析,选取探测点源目标的噪声等效辐照度作用距离模型进行分析改进;探讨作用距离与探测概率之间的关系;根据IRST系统工作方式,推导出系统物理扫描概率和目标发现概率计算公式;分析目标发现概率与系统作用距离以及载机速度之间的关系;搭建双余度反馈IRST系统探测概率测试平台,制定实验评测步骤,提出一种对探测系统性能进行评估的方法,该方法简单可靠。仿真实验结果表明,满足一定的探测概率下,系统作用距离极限可达到60km;通过半实物仿真平台的测试,实验结果较好地验证了所建模型的合理性。     

供电电缆磁场辐射的预测模型及优化设计

基于磁场叠加原理,建立了单相、三相、并联单相、并联三相供电电缆常见布局方式下的磁场辐射计算模型,并给出了降低电缆磁场辐射的优化布局方法。仿真与实验结果表明:该计算模型有较高的准确性,有助于把握供电电缆磁场辐射的决定因素,可用于快速指导供电电缆的优化设计,以避免反复的仿真或实验试探,缩短设计时间,降低设计成本。     

EXTRAORDINARY VISITS

North Korea has the bomb but not much of a nuclear arsenal. For fifty years, it pursued the plutonium path to the bomb in parallel with its pursuit of nuclear electricity. My visits to North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex provided a window to its plutonium capabilities. After having made six visits to North Korea, Pyongyang surprised me during my seventh visit last November by showing me a small, modern uranium enrichment plant, which I was told was needed for its new indigenous light water reactor program. However, the same capabilities can be used to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel. Following a pattern of having made poor risk-management decisions during much of the past twenty years of diplomacy dealing with the North Korean nuclear threat, Washington remains in a standoff with Pyongyang.     

POLITICAL SCIENCE,COMING IN FROM THE COLD

Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21st Century: The Role of Theory (vol. 1, 312 pages, $24.95) and A Comparative Perspective (vol. 2, 488 pages, $24.95), edited by William C. Potter with Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova. Stanford University Press, 2010.     

WHY IRAN WANTS THE BOMB AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR US POLICY

Understanding why the Iranian regime wants to possess nuclear weapons is essential to formulating the best policy to prevent (or perhaps to simply manage) the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran. Three general theories—realism, liberalism, and constructivism—provide a framework for looking at Iran's nuclear motivations. However, contrary to many analyses, the regime's desire to possess nuclear arms stems not from neorealist defensive concerns, but rather from offensive goals driven by domestic politics. The use of extremist Islamism by the Iranian regime to justify its autocratic rule is the primary motivating factor. Accordingly, the outlook for diplomatically addressing the Iranian regime's nuclear aspirations appears dim.     

EDITOR'S NOTE

This article offers a survey of risks that might arise for strategic stability (defined as a situation with a low probability of major-power war) with the reduction of US and Russian nuclear arsenals to “low numbers” (defined as 1,000 or fewer nuclear weapons on each side). These risks might include US anti-cities targeting strategies that are harmful to the credibility of extended deterrence; renewed European anxiety about a US-Russian condominium; greater vulnerability to Russian noncompliance with agreed obligations; incentives to adopt destabilizing “launch-on-warning” strategies; a potential stimulus to nuclear proliferation; perceptions of a US disengagement from extended deterrence; increased likelihood of non-nuclear arms competitions and conflicts; and controversial pressures on the UK and French nuclear forces. Observers in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states who consider such risks significant have cited four possible measures that might help to contain them: sustained basing of US nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Europe; maintaining a balanced US strategic nuclear force posture; high-readiness means to reconstitute US nuclear forces; and enhanced US and allied non-nuclear military capabilities. These concrete measures might complement the consultations with the NATO allies that the United States would in all likelihood seek with respect to such important adjustments in its deterrence and defense posture.     

CONTRIBUTORS

Russia holds the largest stocks of civilian highly enriched uranium (HEU) of any country, operating more than fifty research reactors, pulsed reactors, and critical assemblies using HEU, as well as nine HEU-fueled icebreakers. Russia's participation in international efforts to phase out civilian HEU is crucial if international HEU minimization efforts are to succeed. Individual Russian institutes and organizations participate in international programs to replace HEU with low-enriched uranium in Soviet-supplied research reactors, develop alternative fuels, and repatriate fresh and spent HEU fuel from third countries. However, an overarching national policy on HEU phase-out has yet to be adopted. There are many obstacles to obtaining such a commitment from Moscow. At the same time, the ongoing reform of the Russian nuclear industry and plans for expansion of domestic nuclear power generation and for increased nuclear exports create opportunities for securing such a commitment.     

INDISPENSABLE INTELLIGENCE AND INEVITABLE FAILURES

Preventing Catastrophe: The Use and Misuse of Intelligence in Efforts to Halt the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, by Thomas Graham Jr. and Keith A. Hansen. Stanford University Press, 2009. 300 pages, $35.     

CONTRIBUTORS

Conventional wisdom states that the stability-instability paradox does not explain the effect of nuclear proliferation on the conflict propensity of South Asia, and that nuclear weapons have had a different and more dangerous impact in South Asia than Cold War Europe. I argue that the paradox explains nuclear South Asia; that the similarities between nuclear South Asia and Cold War Europe are strong; and that conventional instability does not cause revisionist challenges in the long run. I develop and probe a psychological causal mechanism that explains the impact of nuclear weapons on Cold War Europe and South Asia. Following the ten-month mobilized crisis in 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may have adopted a more moderate foreign policy toward India after experiencing fear of imminent nuclear war, as Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev did forty years earlier. I argue that the stability-instability paradox explains Cold War Europe and nuclear South Asia and will, conditional on Iranian and North Korean revisionism, predict the impact of nuclear weapon development on these states' conflict propensities.