Longevity of the Military Hard Core: The Case of the Turkish Republic

The officer’s record consists of two hyphenated numbers, the first of which is the graduation-and-commission date. The second number reflects the academic standing: The more successful the graduate as far as his cumulative course average is concerned; the smaller is the second number.
In this research, the vast majority of the data involve graduates of the war colleges. It is namely those educative institutions which provide the officer corps to the armed forces. The army college is the equivalent of America’s west point. Gendarme officers come from the same source. The naval war college is the US air force academy located at Colorado springs. In Turkey the army is the biggest force and sometimes merely the word army comes to denote the entire armed forces.

Dominating the War Marketplace: A Case for Expanded Strategic Education in the US Army Acquisition Officer Corps

This article argues for expanding the Army Acquisition Corps’ traditional Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) focus of graduate education programs for its junior field grade and senior company grade officers to include National Security, and Strategic Studies programs.

Implementing this change will increase the acquisition corps’ intellectual capital to manage the evolving assumptions about future wars and adversaries inherent in the Army’s 30 year modernization strategy. Currently Army acquisition branch limits the scope of graduate programs for Army Acquisition Officers to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduate programs. While the latter programs are vital to the mission of the acquisition corps, expanding the educational scope to include Strategic and National Security graduate programs will grow a segment of junior acquisition officers that make cost, schedule and performance decisions with a more intimate understanding of increasingly complex strategic security environment.

Download PDF

Disappointing Doctrine

With the much-anticipated August 2011 release of Joint Publication, 5-0, Joint Planning, our hopes for greater clarity regarding “design” were immediately dashed. This latest iteration of JP 5-0 confuses rather than simplifies how design should be embraced by planners. As envisioned by political scientists such as Herbert Simon, design offers an approach for addressing ill-structured problems— those that cannot be successfully resolved using traditional linear, analytical approaches like that offered by the methodology of the U.S. military’s Joint Operation Planning Process (JOPP).

Unraveling ill-structured problems is perplexing because by their nature such problems are interactively complex and often have incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements; attempts to solve them often reveal or create other, even more challenging complications 1. Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, urban planners at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s, wrote about such problems in a 1973 article, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” observing that there was a whole realm of problems that could not be successfully treated with traditional linear approaches.

Selected Perspective Methods of Research of Barrier materials Resistance against Permeability of under interest Toxic Substances

Determination of resistance materials protection properties used for Armed Forces Chemical Corps (CCs) and any other Rescue Brigades specialists individual protection forms basic demands for their evaluation and possibilities of improvement within a respect of a reduced amount of financial resources which are detached into a nations Ministries of Defence budget.

A paper deals with selected methods used for study of the resistance against toxic compounds permeation within the Czech Armed Forces and marks possible trends of individual protection branch development with the application based on QCM (Quartz Crystal Microbalance) detection. Is this method suitable for testing of barrier properties of materials used in Individual protection or we can rely on the standard methods working on chemical detection principle?

Competency Model to guide the pre-requisite qualities of the senior military attaches

Diplomacy is one of the key components of the foreign and military policy of any nation. Diplomats are said to have high negotiating power to influence the fellow nations towards its national policies on defense, national development, agriculture, foreign trade etc. Superior level military diplomats are particularly expected to maintain certain characteristic features that differentiate them from the junior level diplomats. Building a competency model is crucial to enhance the capabilities of the senior level military attaches or diplomats to complete their military or diplomatic missions successfully.

Download PDF

Project Management in Defense - not for the Feint Hearted

Defense projects are complex. They are delivered against rigorous requirements, inevitable time constraints and constrained budgets. Moreover, they comprise not only the Equipment outputs that generally make the headlines – the weapon, the vehicle, the helicopter, the jet, and the ship – but also the coordination of other crucial aspects that collectively make up the capability.

In the UK, these are referred to as the ‘defence lines of development’ (DLODs) and comprise: Training, People,Infrastructure, Doctrine, Information and Logistics – hence the ‘TEPIDOIL’ acronym for military capability. Each and every one of these elements is essential for the successful delivery of a complete capability solution.

Lanchester Law, Shock and Awe Strategies

The American military was introduced to, and has mastered Decision Theory and the Theory of Games under a mathematical oriented Secretary of Defense: William Perry. One particular aspect is the application of the theory developed by the English engineer Frederick Lanchester. His theory is based on the study of air battles in the First World War. It was applied in the two “Shock and Awe” campaigns against Iraq, even though initially meant to be used against the Warsaw Pact nations during the Cold War; in which its efficacy was spectacularly demonstrated.

The strategy is worthy of investigation as it is being adopted by the USA’s world competitors which is leading to new multi-players Game Theory configurationxs, rather than a single player situation, as can beob served in new theaters such as the Syrian conflict. The application of the theory can be expanded from defense applications to business, sports, politics and other socio-economic realms such as, dare-we-say, survival entertainment TV shows.

Screening Methods for Monitoring the Radionuclides Contamination in Biological Materials and Live Animals

The presence of areas contaminated by anthropogenic radionuclides, such as 137Cs, requires the prompt analysis of a large number of samples. A sanitary intervention, together with traditional surveillance systems, are fundamental to detect and interrupt the transmission of radionuclides into the food chain throughout either the direct human consumption of contaminated vegetables or the indirect human intake through the animal feeding. Moreover, an increase in the radioisotopes bioavailability is likely to be observed over one or two links in the food chain.

To prompt and simplify the analysis process, the authors propose an initial preliminary radioactivity measurement by using either screening methods on the cow milk, such as the Liquid Scintilation (LSC), or radio-chemical gamma counters on muscles, blood cells or other animal tissues. The choice of cow milk as main indicator is justified by its simplicity in being sampled and analized, as well as by the widespread distribution of dairy herds (i.e. sheep, goats and cattle) over the territory in light of a better veterinary supervision on food of animal origin. 

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is on a Sustainable Trajectory

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is here to stay in its present or slightly modified format. CSR has been stable and growing since the 1960s. CSR has been defined in a multitude of ways over the years. In my ownframework, CSR is defined broadly to encompass the economic, legal, ethical andphilanthropic expectations placed on businesses by society. CSR’s progress in the 2000s may appear to be moderate in light of pressing economic pressures, but it also is contending with competing and complimentary frameworks and socially conscious nomenclature.

Some of the alternative concepts embracing CSR include corporate citizenship, corporate stewardship, business ethics, stakeholder management, conscious capitalism, creating shared value, and sustainability. These concepts represent the principal variations of CSR striving for worldwideattention and adoption. These frameworks are all interrelated and overlapping and are integral to some facet of CSR. Though there are slight nuances in the differing language of each, at heart they are all focusing on business firms helping to improve society and stakeholders while at the same time sustaining their own profitability.