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.     

NUCLEAR STABILITY AT LOW NUMBERS

Chinese writings on the workings of nuclear stability, deterrence, and coercion are thin and politicized. Nevertheless, it is possible to glean, from direct and inferential evidence, rather pessimistic conclusions regarding Chinese views of nuclear stability at low numbers. While China has been living with low numbers in its own arsenal for decades, today it views missile defense and advanced conventional weapons as the primary threat to nuclear stability. More generally, China views nuclear stability as wedded to political amity. Because none of these would be directly addressed through further US and Russian arsenal reductions, China is unlikely to view such reductions as particularly stabilizing. While there is little in Chinese writing to suggest lower US and Russian numbers would encourage a “race to parity,” there are grounds to worry about China becoming more assertive as it gains confidence in Beijing's own increasingly secure second-strike forces.     

South Asia's Missile Expansion

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, contrary to declarations that they are pursuing “minimum” deterrence, India and Pakistan have considerably expanded their missile forces. India has developed eleven types of missiles while Pakistan has fielded nine. These missile forces have a mixed impact on deterrence stability. Both states' medium-range missiles strengthen their countervalue deterrent capabilities against the other, though India's China-specific missiles still have limitations. India's and Pakistan's short-range missiles and first-generation naval systems raise concerns about nuclear ambiguity, command and control, and escalation across the nuclear threshold, ultimately undermining deterrence stability on the subcontinent.     

潜艇水下回转运动稳定性分析

水下回转运动是潜艇常用的运动形式之一,属于潜艇转向运动的重要研究内容。回转运动过程中,潜艇受力复杂,容易出现分岔等非线性现象,潜艇运动稳定性变差。运用同伦延拓法、分岔理论和李雅普诺夫运动稳定性理论分析了潜艇水下回转运动稳定性,并通过数值仿真试验验证了分析结果的正确性和分析方法的有效性,为潜艇运动稳定性的研究提供了思路。     

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     

直接力/气动力复合控制系统的有限时间镇定

考虑到复合控制系统中,直接力的离散特性会使系统的设计复杂化。针对采用姿控式直/气复合控制的导弹,基于有限时间稳定理论,引入辅助滑模面,研究其控制系统的有限时间镇定,得到一个受控良好的复合控制系统。在此基础上,利用辅助模糊控制,对系统不确定性进行估计,进一步改善了复合系统的控制品质。最后以俯仰通道为例,对所提出的方法进行仿真,结果验证了该方法的有效性。     

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。     

Conflict dynamics and costs in the Greek Civil War 1946–1949

Using a new set of data from Greek Army sources, US military archives, and Communist Party documents, the paper provides a quantitative analysis of the armed confrontation that took place in Greece during 1946–1949. A dynamic Lotka–Volterra model is estimated, pointing to the existence of a conflict trap that explains the prolongation of the civil war and its dire consequences for the country. A regional analysis finds that the mobilization of guerrilla forces was crucially affected by morphology and the local persecutions of political rivals. Using neoclassical growth-accounting, the economic cost of the conflict is estimated to surpass an annual GDP, in line with similar findings in contemporary civil wars. The same framework is employed to assess the outcome in counterfactual situations discussed in this paper.