“Made in China”: an emerging brand in the global arms market

Possession of a brand is a sine qua non for economic success, not least because it connotes trust in delivering the value promised. Although Western arms exporters offer branded systems whose sales are influenced by price, there is a plethora of other economic variables, such as offset requirements and life-cycle support. Entrants to the international arms market will struggle without such arms “packages.” China’s entry, however, goes beyond the traditional economic paradigm. A four-stage historical model offers the backdrop for identifying the drivers that have forged its market entry into 55 countries worldwide. The strategy initially focused on sales of rudimentary military equipment for political purposes, but recently it has begun to commercialize exports, repositioning them from a low- to a high-tech sales trajectory. A Sino “brand” is thus emerging, reflecting both competitiveness and diplomatic considerations, especially non-interference in client state domestic affairs.     

The underlying causes of military outsourcing in the USA and UK: bridging the persistent gap between ends,ways and means since the beginning of the Cold War

This article reappraises the two most-studied country cases of military outsourcing: the USA and the UK. It argues that the contemporary wave of military contracting stretches back to the beginning of the cold war and not only to the demobilisation of armies in the 1990s or the neoliberal reforms introduced since the 1980s. It traces the political, technological and ideational developments that laid the groundwork for these reforms and practices since the early cold war and account for its endurance today. Importantly, it argues that a persistent gap between strategic objectives and resources, i.e. the challenge to reconcile ends and means, is an underlying driver of military contracting in both countries. Contemporary contracting is thus most closely tied to military support functions in support of wider foreign and defence political objectives. Security services in either state may not have been outsourced so swiftly, if at all, without decades of experience in outsourcing military logistics functions and the resultant vehicles, processes and familiarities with public-private partnerships. The article thus provides a wider and deeper understanding of the drivers of contractualisation, thereby improving our understanding of both its historical trajectory and the determinants of its present and potential futures.     

The socialization of military power: security cooperation and doctrine development through multinational military exercises

Multinational Military Exercises (MMEs) are often viewed by states as opportunities to increase interoperability, improve cooperation, and solve common security problems. We argue that in addition to this, MMEs work as tools to shape the shared beliefs of coalition partners surrounding threat. Specifically, MMEs allow multinational forces to identify best practices, consolidate beliefs, and codify behavior through doctrine, typically by means of some institutional process. We examine our argument on MMEs through an analysis of various multinational and coalition partner efforts to identify security threats and cooperate through the development of common doctrine at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of warfare. Our analysis suggests that the use of MMEs for doctrine development does help to socialize states in terms of identifying common threats and subsequently sharing a process by which to address them.     

美军采办项目的采办策略分析

采办策略是美军针对具体采办项目强制规定的覆盖整个项目寿命周期的纲领性文件,对于保障在资源限制条件下达成项目采办目标具有重要的意义。本文首先分析了采办策略的概念,随后研究了采办策略的主要内容、与采办管理周期的匹配要求,最后提出了对我军装备采办改革的启示。     

Defense–Growth Causality: Considerations of Regime-Switching and Time- and Country-Varying Effects

This paper develops a panel smooth transition vector autoregressive model to investigate the economic growth–defense causality. This model simultaneously resolves the estimation problems of endogeneity, heterogeneity, and nonlinearity. Empirical results support that the causality is bidirectional, nonlinear, time- and country-varying. Economic growth has a negative impact on military spending and vice versa. The larger the HDI, the smaller the negative causality. Evidently, the increase in the level of country development can reduce the negative impact of military outlays on economic growth. Reducing the ratio of military spending to GDP is beneficial for countries with low HDI scores; however, moderately increasing the share of military expenditure is favorable for countries with extremely high HDI scores. Policy authority needs to set optimal education, health, and economic development shares of GDP for purchasing a maximum economic growth rate.     

美国地下空间作战运用及发展趋势分析

美国十分重视地下空间的作战运用,已建成了一批先进的地下指挥防护工程体系与军民结合的地下工程。美国地下空间的作战运用较晚,但发展较快,一些重要城市地下空间的大规模开发与利用,为战时地下空间的作战运用奠定了物质基础。文章研究了美具有代表性的战略指挥防护工程,深入分析美国地下空间的运用特点和发展趋势,对我国地下空间利用具有一定的借鉴意义。     

美军无人机集群项目发展

近几年来,无人机集群技术在美军多个方面的推动下,引起了全世界的热切关注。文章简要总结了美军无人机集群发展现状,梳理了美军开展无人机集群技术的初衷,并分析认为美军数量型无人机集群发展战略不完全适用于现阶段我军军情。文中给出了我国现阶段发展无人机集群的思路,这对全面认识无人机集群的优势、明晰我军无人机集群技术发展方向具有一定的参考价值。     

增强军校本科学员指挥谋略能力研究——基于计算机兵棋系统

对指挥谋略进行概念分析,确定基于计算机兵棋系统的指挥谋略训练内容;明确计算机兵棋推演的一般步骤和注意事项;以联军2004年11月"破晓"行动为例运用计算机兵棋系统进行指挥谋略训练。研究表明,基于计算机兵棋系统运用战例研究可以成为增强军校本科学员指挥谋略的训练模式。     

分布式计算环境下的栅格数据存储策略

针对传统的栅格数据存储策略不能满足分布式计算环境下粗粒度数据访问需求,应对海量栅格数据计算时效率低下的问题,结合分布式文件系统的存储特点,同时考虑地图代数算子在Map/Reduce阶段以栅格瓦片为单位的计算特点,提出一种基于Hadoop分布式文件系统的栅格瓦片存储策略。围绕栅格数据瓦片分割、压缩瓦片数据组织与存储、分布式文件输入输出接口改进等方面对该存储策略加以实现,并使用基于该存储策略的地图代数局部算子的分布式计算流程加以验证。理论分析与实验结果表明,该策略能够显著提高分布式计算环境下空间分析算子的运算速度。     

Flexible capacity strategy in an asymmetric oligopoly market with competition and demand uncertainty

This article studies flexible capacity strategy (FCS) under oligopoly competition with uncertain demand. Each firm utilizes either the FCS or inflexible capacity strategy (IFCS). Flexible firms can postpone their productions until observing the actual demand, whereas inflexible firms cannot. We formulate a new asymmetrical oligopoly model for the problem, and obtain capacity and production decisions of the firms at Nash equilibrium. It is interesting to verify that cross‐group competition determines the capacity allocation between the two groups of firms, while intergroup competition determines the market share within each group. Moreover, we show that the two strategies coexist among firms only when cost differentiation is medium. Counterintuitively, flexible firms benefit from increasing production cost when the inflexible competition intensity is sufficiently high. This is because of retreat of inflexible firms, flexibility effect, and the corresponding high price. We identify conditions under which FCS is superior than IFCS. We also demonstrate that flexible firms benefit from increasing demand uncertainty. However, when demand variance is not very large, flexible firms may be disadvantaged. We further investigate the effects of cross‐group and intergroup competition on individual performance of the firms. We show that as flexible competition intensity increases, inflexible firms are mainly affected by the cross‐group competition first and then by the intergroup competition, whereas flexible firms are mainly affected by the intergroup competition. Finally, we examine endogenous flexibility and identify its three drivers: cost parameters, cross‐group competition, and intergroup competition. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 64: 117–138, 2017