South African defence policy: the rationale and impact of the SANDF’s primary role and conventional force design

The 2015 South African Defence Review set out to reverse the deterioration of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) capabilities. Within the South African Department of Defence (DOD) this deterioration is expressed mainly in terms of a decreasing defence budget, subsequent declining conventional capabilities and obsolete prime mission equipment. Contemporary research and defence expert debates on this theme, point out the disjuncture between policy ends and the available means, with scepticism for an increased defence budget given the DOD’s lack of internal reform and strategy adjustment. One question that remains largely unanswered in the literature regarding the decline of the SANDF, is why both the policy-makers and the SANDF have remained focused on the primary role of the military (defending territorial integrity) accompanied with an unaffordable conventional force design? This question relates to the aim of this paper and is explored by revisiting initial defence policy decisions and compromises that were made in the 1990s. It is argued that the primary role of the SANDF and its conventional force design suited the interests of both the politicians and the military, but that the drawbacks thereof have harshly caught up with the DOD.     

新时代与公共政策的创新

公共政策,既是时代的产物,又为时代服务。新时代要求公共政策的创新必须更加聚焦,一切以调动广大人民群众的积极性,增强民族的凝聚力、创造力为出发点;要求公共政策的创新以人民为中心,一切以人民是否满意,是否具有获得感、幸福感、安全感、自豪感为落脚点;要求公共政策的创新,应当以社会问题为重点,以推动解决主要矛盾、化解社会各领域的主要问题为根本要求;要求公共政策的研究应当提高定位、开阔视野,跟上时代步伐,多出系统性、前瞻性研究成果和高质量研究人才,为党和国家的科学决策贡献更多的智慧力量。     

电磁脉冲弹的杀伤能力

概述了电磁脉冲弹的组成和工作原理,通过对电磁脉冲波形的分析,以及对电磁脉冲能量在空中的传播规律的研究,建立了电磁脉冲武器杀伤能力的仿真模型.在此基础上选择六种最具代表性的电子器件,并根据其破坏阈值进行仿真计算,从而得出了电磁脉冲弹在采用定向天线时对这六种电子器件的杀伤距离.根据电磁脉冲弹的杀伤能力对其进行合理运用,这对以使用电磁脉冲武器为背景的战法研究具有非常重要的现实意义.     

When to commit in a serial supply chain with forecast updating

Negotiations between an end product manufacturer and a parts supplier often revolve around two main issues: the supplier's price and the length of time the manufacturer is contractually held to its order quantity, commonly termed the “commitment time frame.” Because actual demand is unknown, the specification of the commitment time frame determines how the demand risk is shared among the members of the supply chain. Casual observation indicates that most manufacturers prefer to delay commitments as long as possible while suppliers prefer early commitments. In this paper, we investigate whether these goals are always in the firm's best interest. In particular, we find that the manufacturer may sometimes be better off with a contract that requires an early commitment to its order quantity, before the supplier commits resources and the supplier may sometimes be better off with a delayed commitment. We also find that the preferred commitment time frame depends upon which member of the supply chain has the power to set their exchange price. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2003     

地缘政治危机与晚清政府边防政策的三次调整

摘要：鸦片战争后,中国边疆危机纷至沓来。晚清政府在不到30年的时间里,三次调整边防策略,相继形成了“郅治保邦”、“海防与塞防并重”和“保藩固圉”的边防政策,这在一定程度上遏制了帝国主义的兵锋战火。但又造成了“和”不能争主权、“战”不能取胜利的被动局面,加剧了清政府的民族危机、边防危机和统治危机。     

Competition under time‐varying demands and dynamic lot sizing costs

We develop a competitive pricing model which combines the complexity of time‐varying demand and cost functions and that of scale economies arising from dynamic lot sizing costs. Each firm can replenish inventory in each of the T periods into which the planning horizon is partitioned. Fixed as well as variable procurement costs are incurred for each procurement order, along with inventory carrying costs. Each firm adopts, at the beginning of the planning horizon, a (single) price to be employed throughout the horizon. On the basis of each period's system of demand equations, these prices determine a time series of demands for each firm, which needs to service them with an optimal corresponding dynamic lot sizing plan. We establish the existence of a price equilibrium and associated optimal dynamic lotsizing plans, under mild conditions. We also design efficient procedures to compute the equilibrium prices and dynamic lotsizing plans.© 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 2009     

Locational tying of complementary retail items

We study a selling practice that we refer to as locational tying (LT), which seems to be gaining wide popularity among retailers. Under this strategy, a retailer “locationally ties” two complementary items that we denote by “primary” and “secondary.” The retailer sells the primary item in an appropriate “department” of his or her store. To stimulate demand, the secondary item is offered in the primary item's department, where it is displayed in very close proximity to the primary item. We consider two variations of LT: In the multilocation tying strategy (LT‐M), the secondary item is offered in its appropriate department in addition to the primary item's department, whereas in the single‐location tying strategy (LT‐S), it is offered only in the primary item's location. We compare these LT strategies to the traditional independent components (IC) strategy, in which the two items are sold independently (each in its own department), but the pricing/inventory decisions can be centralized (IC‐C) or decentralized (IC‐D). Assuming ample inventory, we compare and provide a ranking of the optimal prices of the four strategies. The main insight from this comparison is that relative to IC‐D, LT decreases the price of the primary item and adjusts the price of the secondary item up or down depending on its popularity in the primary item's department. We also perform a comparative statics analysis on the effect of demand and cost parameters on the optimal prices of various strategies, and identify the conditions that favor one strategy over others in terms of profitability. Then we study inventory decisions in LT under exogenous pricing by developing a model that accounts for the effect of the primary item's stock‐outs on the secondary item's demand. We find that, relative to IC‐D, LT increases the inventory level of the primary item. We also link the profitability of different strategies to the trade‐off between the increase in demand volume of the secondary item as a result of LT and the potential increase in inventory costs due to decentralizing the inventory of the secondary item. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 2009     

Coordinated dynamic control of marketing and production

We study the dynamic profit maximization problem for a firm exercising control on both marketing and production. The firs marketing effort impacts the current‐period demand, which in turn affects future demand in a dissipating fashion. Under linear‐cost and zero‐leadtime assumptions, we show that the firm should follow base‐point rules for both marketing and production, whereas trends of the base points reflect a certain complementarity between marketing and production. We obtain comparable results when marketing costs are convex. Our computational study identifies conditions under which simple fixed‐marketing‐effort and fixed‐marketing‐target heuristics would perform well. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 2009     

Defence industrial policy – a sound security strategy or an economic fallacy?

This article explores whether it makes sense for national governments to employ defence industrial policies – such as offsets and discriminatory procurement practices – to support their domestic defence industries. This question has so far primarily been discussed by economists, who have argued strongly against the use of defence industrial policies. This article maintains that these economists fail to address the often complex motivation behind the introduction of these policies. It illustrates these shortcomings by contrasting their arguments against a case study of Norway, which accounts for the country’s use of defence industrial polices from the early post-Second World War era up until today. The article concludes that, depending on their objectives, defence industrial policies can be seen as either a sound security strategy or an economic fallacy.     

飞机发动机关键系统智能故障诊断方法

飞机发动机是一个非常复杂的大系统,由于其结构复杂,工作环境恶劣,对其关键系统的故障进行准确诊断始终是困扰业界的技术瓶颈之一。提出了采用EMD小波阈值降噪与主元分析相结合的方法,对飞机发动机气路系统故障诊断进行了深入研究。针对某型真实飞机发动机进行测试试验采集的气路多参量数据,首先采用经验模态分解(Empirical Mode Decomposition,EMD)对气路系统各参量信号进行EMD分解,然后采用软阈值函数对其进行降噪,并进行信号重构,从而可得到飞机发动机气路工作状态有效数据。在此基础上,设计了飞机发动机气路系统主元分析故障诊断模型,并结合预处理得到的飞机发动机气路有效数据,运用所设计的主元分析故障诊断模型对飞机发动机进行故障诊断技术研究。研究结果表明,所提出的方法能够很好地诊断出飞机发动机气路系统实际运行时所出现的故障,具有重要的实际应用价值,并有广泛的应用前景。