基于案例推理的指挥实体任务规划高维解空间适应性问题研究?

利用案例推理对指挥实体任务规划过程中决策问题求解方法的修正过程是该方法推理过程中最困难的阶段,尤其当决策问题解空间是多维的情况下。讨论了指挥实体任务规划过程中高维决策空间的修正问题,并提出了可行的解决方法。首先,利用自组织匹配法清晰展现问题空间与决策空间的映射过程,然后,利用反向传播神经网络分析匹配结果间的相关性问题,最后,选取一个简化的军事剧情对该方法的合理性进行验证。     

Military Innovation and Tactical Adaptation in the Israel–Hizballah Conflict: The Institutionalization of Lesson-Learning in the IDF

This article highlights a pattern of military adaptation and tactical problem-solving utilized by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) while engaged in protracted conflict with the Lebanese militant group Hizballah. It discusses the IDF’s recent attempts to institutionalize their historically intuitive process of ad-hoc learning by developing a formal tactical-level mechanism for ‘knowledge management’. The diffusion of this battlefield lesson-learning system that originated at lower-levels of the organization is examined, as well as its implementation and effectiveness during the 2006 Lebanon War. A nuanced analysis of IDF adaptation illustrates the dynamic interplay between both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processes of military innovation.     

The Rise of Special Operations Forces: Generalized Specialization,Boundary Spanning and Military Autonomy

The special operations forces (SOF) of the industrial democracies have suddenly and rapidly grown in numbers and resources during the past decades. Most explanations for this growth focus on factors external to the armed forces. We argue that the enlargement of SOF is also the result of internal organizational dynamics. First, we compare SOF to other units and military appendages that have grown over the past 30 years in order to delineate what is unique to their development and the special adaptive potential they bring to the armed forces: generalized specialization, boundary spanning roles, and enlargement of military autonomy. Second, we analyze the actions of internal military entrepreneurs and their organizational mentors to show how they use this adaptive potential to “sell” the use of SOF to key policy-makers and decision-makers.     

ORGANISING THE BLUES

While all governments in the region acknowledge the importance of the work of police officers, they seldom take a close look at their working conditions and the nature of police labour. While the situations in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho and Swaziland are different there are commonalities: police management has not changed significantly and neither has police legislation. Key concerns of the officers in the region centre on service conditions and wages. Communicating these concerns to the state is made difficult by the less than democratic approach taken by governments professing to favour democratization. A more democratic workplace for the police is of benefit to the broader community and is a crucial point to bear in mind when attempting to develop community-oriented professional policing.     

Belligerent beginnings: John F. Kennedy on the opening day of the Cuban missile crisis

This article – based on data that employs interviews conducted with British Army personnel – adopts a social theory of learning in order to examine how both formal and informal learning systems have affected organizational learning within the Army in relation to the counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan. It argues that while the Army has adopted new, or reformed existing, formal learning systems, these have not generated a reconceptualization of how to conduct counter-insurgency warfare. It, furthermore, argues that while informal learning systems have enabled units to improve their pre-deployment preparations, these have created adaptation traps that have acted as barriers to higher-level learning.     

Institutional Analysis and Irregular Warfare: A Case Study of the French Army in Algeria 1954–1960

This article proposes a case study to illustrate the usefulness of sociological institutional analysis as a method to uncover ‘blue force’ challenges to deal with irregular warfare. The French Army's adaptation to revolutionary warfare in Algeria, starting in 1954, is used to illustrate both the application of the methodology and how institutional forces can hinder as well as overwhelm transformation for irregular warfare. The analysis emphasizes three key dimensions of the French Army's institutional adaptation: the regulative, normative and cognitive. These empirical elements are used to show how they interacted and influenced the institutional implementation of the French COIN structures.     

From Civil War Victor to Cold War Guard: Positional Warfare in Korea and the Transformation of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, 1951–1953

This article analyses the impact of the Korean War on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), particularly the period of positional warfare from 1951 to 1953. In the war of movement between October 1950 and June 1951, the PLA relied on its civil war era weapons and experience, including the doctrine of ‘battle of annihilation’. Operations in early 1951 suggested that the civil war legacies of the PLA no longer applied to the realities of combat in Korea. Based on both Soviet aid and domestic mobilisation, the PLA managed to build the material foundation for positional warfare and rapidly improved its logistics. Operationally, on the defensive, the PLA developed combined operations integrating infantry, artillery, and armoured forces. The PLA learned the lessons of the Korean War and strengthened its ties with the Soviet armed forces in order to modernise itself. The Korean War thus transformed the PLA from Civil War victor to Cold War guard.     

French Military Adaptation in the Afghan War: Looking Inward or Outward?

ABSTRACT

For some, a specific feature of the French armed forces' adaptation process in the adaptation process would be the capacity to look inward instead of outward in order to identify relevant solutions to tactical/doctrinal problems. This article questions such a narrative, and argues that the French armed forces are as quick as any to borrow from other countries’ experiences. In order to do so, this article introduces the concept of ‘selective emulation’, and compares the French and German military adaptation processes in Afghanistan. The article argues that there is indeed something distinctive about French military adaptation, but it is not what the fiercest defenders of the French ‘exceptionalism’ usually account for.     

The Limits to Learning in Military Operations: Bottom-up Adaptation in the Norwegian Army in Northern Afghanistan, 2007–2012

This article – based on interviews with Norwegian Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) commanders and the lessons-learned database of the Norwegian Armed Forces – argues that what appear to be an inability or unwillingness to learn and adapt in war may have other explanations. The ambiguity of experiences makes lessons contested, contradictory, and fluid interpretations of confusing events. Consequently, they do not provide unequivocal guidance for adaptation. Even when lessons learned are fairly clear and agreed upon, adaptation does not automatically follow, as force autonomy may be quite limited, at least for small states in coalition operations conducted in partnership with indigenous forces.     

Military Maladaptation: Counterinsurgency and the Politics of Failure

Tactical learning is critical to battlefield success, especially in a counterinsurgency. This article tests the existing model of military adaption against a ‘most-likely’ case: the British Army’s counterinsurgency in the Southern Cameroons (1960–61). Despite meeting all preconditions thought to enable adaptation – decentralization, leadership turnover, supportive leadership, poor organizational memory, feedback loops, and a clear threat – the British still failed to adapt. Archival evidence suggests politicians subverted bottom-up adaptation, because winning came at too high a price in terms of Britain’s broader strategic imperatives. Our finding identifies an important gap in the extant adaptation literature: it ignores politics.