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This paper deals with the study of the challenges that disruptive technologies represent for industrial defence strategies and procurement policies. It focuses on the incorporation of drones into military arsenals and will be based on a study of the Brazilian Navy case. Drones are a disruptive technology both for the defence industrial base and for their implications for military tactics and the organisational structure of the armed forces. The analysis addresses the main difficulties encountered in incorporating these technologies into traditional military structures and acquisition systems. We explore the ways in which defence procurement adapts (or fails to adapt) to the emergence of disruptive technologies: are traditional military organisations and procurement structures capable of introducing disruptive technologies and engaging in the organisational and operating practices required to do so? Some lessons are drawn from this experience: even when the military relevance of drone technology is widely acknowledged and even officially recognized, procurement strategies and practices have not been able to shift from their focus on incumbent suppliers and conventional systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2015, the Chinese government initiated an important reform program targeting the defense industry, namely civil–military integration (CMI), with the objectives of introducing military technologies to the civilian market and infusing private capital into military enterprises. On examining this unique exogenous shock in a 2007-2017 sample of Chinese A-share listed firms, we identify the following effects of CMI on military firms' performance. (1) The market value of military firms significantly increases after the establishment of the CMI policy in 2015 and the market value of military firms is on average 6.682% higher after 2015. (2) This effect is robust to propensity score matching, instrumental regression, alternative measures of corporate market value. (3) The positive impact of CMI on military listed firms' market value is stronger for firms with lower innovation ability and weaker corporate governance, suggesting that the CMI policy can improve the research and development abilities and ease the agency conflicts of military firms. (4) After 2015, military firms with weaker financial constraints and those located in provinces with lower marketization levels perform better. Overall, offering a micro-perspective on military firms, this paper complements the growing literature on defense economics and clarifies how CMI improves military firms' performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a comparative study of Israel and Singapore to understand the national security policies of geographically smaller states. These states are militarily powerful, geographically small, and in close proximity with much larger potential adversaries. These states are also different in terms of their relationship with that much larger state as well as their independence narratives. Israel remains in a state of conflict with Iran through Syria and through terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel was created through war. On the other hand, Singapore has a complicated relationship with Malaysia based on suspicious cooperation. Malaysia also allowed Singapore independence given differences in the voting behavior of Singaporeans. Both states share a military strategy of preemption or prevention. Since these states are geographically small, striking first may offer Israel and Singapore a better chance at avoiding annihilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper frames Morocco as a settler state in order to map how the structural logic of settler colonialism persists through the transformation of the built environment in contemporary Casablanca. Rather than focus on commonly-referenced settler states, such as Israel or America, this paper analyzes Morocco, where formal decolonization occurred through the end of the French Protectorate 1956, but there has been an ongoing settler colonial project in Western Sahara since 1975. The logic of elimination of Indigenous populations and territorial expansion of the settler polity endure through urban planning, documentation of the built environment, and architectural preservation. I argue that the structural logic of settler colonialism was produced by the convergence of French military strategy of domination during the Protectorate era was adapted through forms of knowledge and institutions shaping urban space through architectural preservation in contemporary Casablanca. I map the production of knowledge by French academics, then show how this knowledge shaped the preservation agenda that reproduced the structural logic of settler colonialism. The entanglement of institutions, forms of knowledge, and the applications of that knowledge by preservationists highlights how the structural logic of settler colonialism adapts to the changing conditions for settler colonial theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political economy impacts and influences a state's military strategy. This article focuses on how the integration of the US political economy in the Indo-Pacific drives US Navy officers and the broader national security state to establish the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). Investigating the strategic thought of senior Naval officers shows that they think far beyond military threats and engage with the United States and the Indo-Pacific political economy. Even as the US Navy competes with China's military, its FOIP strategy benefits corporate elites in both China and the US, whose cooperation creates a mutually supportive economic relationship. This argument leads to the finding that the US hegemony in the region is a strategy that avoids a bipolar 'New Cold War' of an entirely de-coupled US and China. The FOIP supported by the US Navy continues to integrate China into regional and global economies, even as it attempts to push back against China by gathering allies and partners. The emphasis on international political economy highlights how the region is a network of 'patchwork' relations, where states rely on one another for economic prosperity. Through investigating speeches and strategic papers from US Naval officials, this paper demonstrates how the US competes and cooperates with China in the context of relations in the region that are in constant flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian military strategy has tended to neglect the link between the conventional and nuclear domains in a nuclear weapons environment. We argue that this anomaly is evident in two broad areas: the conception of "war," and the complexity produced by new technologies that span the two domains. First, we show with empirical evidence that "limited war" in a nuclear environment is misnomer: the reality is more appropriately called "marginal conflict" owing to its extremely restricted nature. It follows that strategic planning and posture must be tailored accordingly. We then highlight the risk of escalation produced by conventional technologies that carry potential cross-domain nuclear effects, noteably with respect to cyber, artificial intelligence, missile defence and space. We note that the complex strategic effects produced also complicate military-strategic interactions traversing geographic domains, noteably South, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia. The paper concludes with some reflections on the reasons for these lacunae in Indian strategic thinking and what might be done about them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Errors in ancestry prediction for historical military casework result in soldiers unable to be interred to the country they fought and died for. Australian WWII soldiers with varying degrees of European and Asian heritage are expected in the remains recovered in the Asia-Pacific, representing the greatest risk of error for Unrecovered War Casualties-Army (UWC-A). Previous research using the Ghaiyed population-specific panel (GPSP), on a modern British sample, demonstrated less variation in family-level admixture compared to four global ancestry panels. This suggested that the targeting of specific populations of interest may improve accuracy, although an evaluation using a sample of WWII-era European-Australians (W2A) with varying degrees of family-level admixture was required. This paper outlines the development of an ancestry prediction strategy using a W2A sample (non-admixed), and simulation of 4,000 genotypes representing Australian pedigrees with one Japanese ancestor (great-great-grandparent, great-grand-parent, grandparent, and parent). All great-great-grandparent to grandparent profiles were accurately predicted as W2A individuals, and although admixture at the parent level could not be resolved, no profiles were incorrectly assigned Japanese ancestry. The GPSP provided more informative predictions in contrast with the mitochondrial DNA/Y-chromosome lineage approach currently used by UWC-A as the GPSP provides an approximately 75% improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the significant change that has occurred in the balance between offense and defence in Israel's 'hybrid' military strategy in recent decades. Relying on fresh materials concerning the organizational, doctrinal, and procurement processes of Israel's military, we identify a shift from offense towards defence as the preferred way to protect Israel in the face of new security threats. We also show that due to rapidly changing security challenges, limited resources, and the military's organizational culture, this change has been gradual, incremental, improvised, and largely informal. We propose that similar changes may characterize other states facing new security challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to underline the Russian's new role in the Mediterranean region and it is divided into three sections. First, it takes into account the notion of hybrid warfare as it, according to NATO and westerner scholars, represents the new military strategy that Moscow devises to achieve its goals. Consequently, the paper studies the current use of the term "hybrid warfare" and then, using a more historical standpoint, it will show how this concept is neither new nor useful to understand current Russian politics toward the Mediterranean region. As a consequence, the paper's second section elaborates on the notion of gray zone warfare that seems to be more appropriate to describe both Russian military operations and its tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]