Winston Churchill and the third front 1

The premise of most Western thinking on counterinsurgency is that success depends on establishing a perception of legitimacy among local populations. The path to legitimacy is often seen as the improvement of governance in the form of effective and efficient administration of government and public services. However, good governance is not the only basis for claims to legitimacy, especially in environments where ethnic or religious identities are politically salient. Some experience in Iraq suggests that in environments where such identities are contested, claims to legitimacy may rest primarily on the identity of who governs, rather than on how whoever governs, governs. This article outlines the intellectual foundations of existing policy and doctrine on counterinsurgency, and argues that development and analysis of counterinsurgency strategy would benefit from a greater focus on the role of ethnic and religious identity in irregular warfare.     

Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: US Performance and the Institutional Dimension of Strategy in Afghanistan

It is not too soon to draw cautionary lessons from the inconclusive results of US performance during more than 11 years of Operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ in Afghanistan. As in Vietnam, fundamental difficulties persist in adapting enduring institutions to the requirements of strategy. At the heart of the matter is tension between the assumptions that underlie counterinsurgency as practiced in Afghanistan and organization of the US Armed Forces, State Department, and Agency for International Development. Knowledge of basic principles and necessary changes is available to answer the question, could the US have done better?     

Global counterinsurgency and US army expansion: the case for recruiting foreign troops

Given the nature of global counterinsurgency operations, the demands of military expansion, and the need for cultural, linguistic, and regional expertise, the United States Army should evaluate the establishment of US-led foreign troop units for its evolving force structure. This article proposes the creation of an American foreign legion based upon the recruitment of US-led, ethnically homogeneous tribal force units to meet the grist mill of counterinsurgency operations. This structured approach would be more beneficial than the current reliance on a de facto American Foreign Legion, represented by private military contractors (PMCs), many of them comprised of foreigners. These PMCs carry a number of oversight, accountability, and legal risks not found in a fully integrated, and US-officered foreign legion. The British Brigade of Gurkhas, the South-West African Police Counter-Insurgency Unit (Koevoet), and the Kit Carson Scouts serve as relevant historical examples where foreign troops were used to supplement national manpower resources.     

Controlled warfare: how directed-energy weapons will enable the US Military to fight effectively in an urban environment while minimizing collateral damage

US military operations are increasingly conducted within urban environments and with these operations come the risk of increasing the number of civilian casualties and infrastructure damage. The use of non-lethal weaponry, such as directed-energy weapons, is one method for minimizing collateral damage. This method enables US military forces to effectively fight within urban environments through force escalation capabilities. Using a series of historical examples and future scenarios for urban warfare, this article highlights deficiencies affecting military capabilities in military urban operations, addresses the consequences of collateral damage, assesses the effectiveness of directed-energy weapons in military urban operations and encourages further funding, research and integration of non-lethal weaponry, such as directed-energy weapons, within the US military.     

Winning hearts and minds: legitimacy in the Namibian war for independence

Efforts at winning hearts and minds (WHAM) impact on and are affected by perceptions of legitimacy. In the Namibian war for independence (1966–1989) efforts of the South African counterinsurgent forces at winning hearts and minds focused mainly on persuading the population to cooperate in exchange for material benefits and services. The article demonstrates that this successfully contributed to a dimension of legitimacy that is conceptualized as pragmatic legitimacy. However, other dimensions of legitimacy are identified in which the South Africans were lacking, that is in moral, legal, and identity-based legitimacy. Furthermore, in areas where control was contested and where the population could not be shielded from insurgent intimidation, it is argued that the effects of coercion outweighed legitimacy altogether.     

Counterinsurgency force ratio: strategic utility or nominal necessity

As a consequence of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, force ratio for counterinsurgency (COIN) has come under increased scrutiny. Reduced to its essence, the issue is simply, ‘How many troops does it take to get the job done?’ This answer has been sought by the US military, academia, and think tanks. There have been numerous responses, culminating in several ‘plug-and-play’ equations for minimum force ratios in COIN operations. Due to the impossibility of determining precisely how many insurgent forces there are, it has become common to base force ratios on the population of the country. In the realm of policy, the question above is posed as, ‘How many of our troops does it take to get the job done?’     

How the High North became Central in NATO Strategy: Revelations from the NATO Archives

From the late 1970s and until the end of the Cold War, the ‘High North’ constituted a central theatre for military forces. Extensive NATO preparations were made, a solid infrastructure developed in northern Norway, and frequent and large-scale exercises were carried out. These developments, from the late 1970s, were much discussed by scholars and strategists. However, the change of perception, laying the foundation for the military build-up, had actually occurred a decade earlier, in the late 1960s. This change has not yet been given its rightful attention, partly because the relevant documents have only recently become available. This essay takes the chronology of events back into the 1960s and to NATO's secret discussions between the national Ministers of Defence and Chiefs of Staff. The most significant turning-points were the Flexible Response strategy of 1967; SACLANT's concern over increased Soviet naval activity and his ‘Maritime Strategy’ studies of 1965 and 1967; NATO's awakening to the Soviet SSBN threat in 1967; and the concept of ‘External Reinforcement of the Flanks’ of 1968 – finally followed by the ‘Brosio Study’ (named after the then NATO Secretary-General) of 1969. As a consequence of these developments NATO's ‘tactical northern flank’ was set to become an independent strategic theatre.     

基于插件技术的人工免疫智能空间优化平台研究

采用人工智能方法求解空间优化问题已成为当前地理学研究领域的热点之一。研究目的在于通过设计一个开放的、可扩展的人工免疫空间优化模型框架,开发基于插件技术的优化工具软件,丰富空间优化决策支持的方法和技术体系。研究从空间优化问题的基本特点和计算需求出发,定义了面向空间优化问题求解的克隆选择优化模型框架。在此基础上,采用"插件-宿主平台"结构设计了人工免疫智能空间优化平台的总体架构,定义免疫算子插件与空间优化问题应用插件开发机制。实验结果表明,平台的架构和功能设计充分考虑了计算平台的开放性和扩展性,通过平台标准接口的功能扩展可实现对不同类型空间优化问题的求解。空间优化问题研究者或政府决策部门无需关系人工免疫优化方法的具体内涵即可基于本平台完成其具体空间优化决策支持任务。     

自补偿液体静压精密转台轴承设计与实验

设计了一种用于精密转台的新型自补偿圆锥形液体静压轴承,并完成了轴承的制造与性能测试。采用流量平衡原理推导了轴承设计公式,得到了轴向和径向的最优刚度及其优化条件,计入制造误差对轴承承载性能进行了仿真,并测试了轴承的刚度和回转精度。结果表明:轴承刚度受到节流间隙与承载间隙的流阻比以及油腔间内流系数影响,流阻比存在最优值,而内流系数越小,对刚度越有利;计入制造误差的仿真模型能够有效预测轴承刚度范围。     

一种新的星载高分辨宽测绘带SAR运动目标

本文针对星载多通道高分辨宽测绘带合成孔径雷达系统,提出了一种地面运动目标检测和参数估计方法,该方法首先利用空时自适应处理进行杂波抑制,然后采用传统SAR成像处理得到模糊的运动目标图像,接着利用恒虚警检测技术检测出所有运动目标,包括真实目标和由于多普勒模糊引起的虚假目标,再根据模糊图像的空间位置关系从所有成像目标中检测出运动目标的真实成像位置,最后根据运动目标的斜距历程得到因运动目标速度引起的图像位置偏移,由此估计得到运动目标速度。该方法具有运算量小、检测精度高等优点,星载仿真数据验证了本文方法有效性。