The subversion of the Bulgarian defence system – the Russian way

Russia has long been pursuing an intended and calculated policy of keeping enough influence in Bulgaria in order to have control over national decisions. Together with the economic, energy, political and information tools used by Russia in its hybrid war against Bulgaria and in its bid to achieve an enduring “state capture,” defence is also a distinct target of Russian subversion now. A list of noticeable subversive actions with tangible effects can be summarised, ranging from fuelling division and manipulating public opinion, preventing the strengthening of the NATO position in the Black Sea, sabotaging defence reform to various options of subverting the modernisation of the Bulgarian Armed Forces and seeking new ways to keep legacy Soviet military equipment in operation as long as possible. This issue must be urgently addressed both nationally and in NATO.     

Tangled up in rose? Theories of alliance entrapment and the 2008 Russo-Georgian War

Recent tensions between Russia and the United States have sparked debate over the value of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). One controversy surrounds the extent to which NATO raises the risk of war through entrapment—a concept that scholars invoke to describe how states might drag their allies into undesirable military conflicts. Yet scholars have advanced different, even conflicting arguments about how entrapment risks arise. I offer a typology that distinguishes between the mechanisms through which entrapment risks allegedly emerge on the basis of their institutional, systemic, reputational, and transnational ideological sources. I use the 2008 Russo-Georgian War to illustrate how the purported mechanisms of entrapment fare in elucidating that conflict. In analyzing why entrapment risks emerge, and thinking counterfactually about The 2008 War, I argue that scholars need to disentangle the various mechanisms that drive both alliance formation and war to make sure that entrapment risks do indeed exist.     

关于高技术力量平战一体国防动员的思考

坚持向科技创新要战斗力,落实到国防动员建设领域,就是要紧紧围绕党在新形势下的强军目标,积极适应现代战争形态新变化、世界军事变革新趋势、总体国家安全新要求和军队使命任务新拓展,加强高技术力量平战一体国防动员,搭建起高技术力量在经济与军事、地方与军队、潜力与实力、平时与战时的桥梁和纽带,全面提升国防动员战时应战、急时应急、平时服务能力,为保障军队能打仗、打胜仗提供强大科技支撑。     

分兵集火、凡船皆战——浅析美军“分布式杀伤”概念

通过梳理美军"分布式杀伤"概念的提出背景、提出过程、内涵意义,阐述了"分布式杀伤"的三条制胜之道,即符合海战客观环境、符合科技进步方向、符合战争演变趋势。此外,文章还分析了"分布式杀伤"实际执行过程中的几大难点和缺陷,包括指挥控制问题、舰船能力问题、成本和后勤补给问题、防御有效性问题。     

伊拉克战争美军后勤(装备)保障特点及启示

伊拉克战争中,美军采取多种手段和措施,成功地实施了后勤(装备)保障,在保障准备、保障方法、保障信息化建设等方面呈现出许多新特点,为我军做好新形势下的装备保障工作提供了有益的启示。     

核动力装置的(火用)分析

针对压水堆、沸水堆、气冷堆、钠冷堆核动力装置的实际过程,建立了最简单的热动力学模型.利用热力学第二定律建立的火用分析方法,对核动力装置中主要的热量传递、作功与受功过程的不可逆性进行了分析.文中以A型和B型电站压水堆核动力装置为实例进行的火用损失与火用效率的对比计算表明反应堆内裂变能从裂变碎片到燃料的传递过程是整个核动力力装置火用损失最大的地方,其次是堆内燃料元件导热过程,然后依次是汽轮机、蒸发器、冷凝器、管路、泵.而火用效率最低的地方是冷凝器,其次是汽轮机、堆内燃料元件、蒸发器.     

船用堆核事故状态下源项特性及计算方法研究

对船用堆核事故状态下的源项特性进行了描述,并对源项估算的数学模型和计算方法进行了研究和探讨;提出了快速估算法,进行了比对计算;在计算过程中对一些不确定参数用核电站的值代替,并采取适当的缩放,简化了计算过程.计算结果表明这样处理是可靠的.     

Beyond Just War: Military Strategy for the Common Good

The objective of this article is to move ethical discourse on military strategy beyond the confines of the established War Convention. This is achieved by utilising the common good, a concept found in political philosophy and theology. The common good acts as a positive organising concept for socio-political activity. With its focus on peace, development and the flourishing of the individual and community, the common good poses a significant challenge to strategy. This article constructs an approach to strategy that is compatible with the common good. Importantly, it does so whilst respecting the pursuit of victory as an indispensable component of strategy’s true nature. The theory presented in this article is then tested in relation to four different modes of strategy: regular war, irregular war, deterrence, and cyberwar.     

Justifying Cyber-intelligence?

The surge in threats aided by or carried out through cyberspace has placed significant pressure on the intelligence community to adapt or leave itself open to attack. Indeed, many in both political and intelligence circles argue for access to ever greater amounts of cyber information in order to catch potential threats before they become real. By collecting all our digital information, the intelligence community argues that it is not only able to detail what people have done or are currently doing but also predict what their next move might be. However, the ethical implications are unclear and the backlash following Edward Snowden’s revelations have shown that such activities are not without controversy. This leaves the debate stuck between the important, ethical role that intelligence can play and the potential for its unrestrained use to cause undue harm. This paper will resolve this by giving greater detail to cyber-intelligence practices, highlighting the different levels of harm that the various intelligence operations can cause. The essence of this paper is not that cyber-intelligence should be banned outright, but that it can be justified given the necessary circumstances. Therefore, the paper will develop a specialised set of Just Cyber-Intelligence Principles, built on the just war tradition, to outline if and when such activities are justified.     

Right Intention and the Ends of War

The jus ad bellum criterion of right intention (CRI) is a central guiding principle of just war theory. It asserts that a country’s resort to war is just only if that country resorts to war for the right reasons. However, there is significant confusion, and little consensus, about how to specify the CRI. We seek to clear up this confusion by evaluating several distinct ways of understanding the criterion. On one understanding, a state’s resort to war is just only if it plans to adhere to the principles of just war while achieving its just cause. We argue that the first understanding makes the CRI superfluous, because it can be subsumed under the probability of success criterion. On a second understanding, a resort to war is just only if a state’s motives, which explain its resort to war, are of the right kind. We argue that this second understanding of the CRI makes it a significant further obstacle to justifying war. However, this second understanding faces a possible infinite regress problem, which, left unresolved, leaves us without a plausible interpretation of the CRI. This constitutes a significant and novel reason for leaving the CRI out of the international law of armed conflict (LOAC).