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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to design an integrated guidance and control design for a formation flight of four unmanned aerial vehicles to follow a moving ground target.Design/methodology/approachThe guidance law is based on the line‐of‐sight. The control is optimal. The guidance law is integrated with the optimal control law and is applied to a linear dynamic model.FindingsThe theoretical results are supported by the numerical simulations that illustrate a coordinated encirclement of a ground maneuvering target.Research limitations/implicationsA linear dynamic UAV model and a liner engine model were employed.Practical implicationsThis is expected to provide efficient coordination technique required in many civilian circular formation UAV applications; also the technique can be used to provide a safe environment required for the civil applications.Social implicationsThe research will facilitate the deployment of autonomous unmanned aircraft systems in various civilian applications such as border monitoring.Originality/valueThe research addresses the challenges of coordination of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles in a circular formation using an integrated optimal control technique with line‐of‐sight guidance.

Infrastructure development in South Asia is driven by competition for geographic control—to secure resources and markets—and by fears of strategic encirclement. Two recently built ports, Gwadar in Pakistan and Chabahar in Iran, have respectively solidified strategic alliances between China and Pakistan and between India and Iran. These projects are creating an uncertain balance of regional power at a time when the United States is reducing its military role in the region. The competition for regional control could impede global shipping and exacerbate existing enmities. One solution is to develop a code of maritime conduct for the Indian Ocean that defines the process of communication between disputants in maritime territorial conflicts. However, the process of developing a code of conduct is one best initiated by the private sector, so all states can negotiate from equal positions.

This article explores Motti tactics, the key research topic in the Finnish art of war. The Finns have earned an international reputation for Mottis (encircled enemy units), which are often associated with winter warfare. However, Motti tactics were also used by the Finns in summer and autumn conditions, between 1941 and 1944 against the Red Army, and in late 1944 against the Wehrmacht. This article traces the origin of the Motti (encirclement) concept and examines how Motti tactics have been interpreted in Finnish military historical literature over more than 70 years. Contemporary interpretations of the topic, drawing upon officers’ own combat experiences, have dominated Finnish historiography until now. The phenomenon has been described as slicing off the road-bound enemy columns to allow their defeat in detail (dispersing the enemy’s forces and destroying it one unit at the time). The traditional view holds that the application of Motti tactics was largely based on the Finnish troops’ greater mobility, the element of surprise, the exploitation of harsh and difficult forested terrain and climatic conditions, as well as on the Finns’ ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Since the 1970s our knowledge of the topic has accumulated and become more nuanced due to the contributions of a younger generation of researchers, both military and civilian, working with archival documents. This generation, for example, has seen Motti tactics as a part of the evolution of manoeuvre warfare in Europe. Placing the topic in a larger context has led some authors to maintain that Motti tactics had foreign influences, in particular from Germany. They have also identified ways in which this method benefitted from military innovation and mission-type orders.

In the context of China's rapid rise, scholars still debate heatedly and always make contrasted predictions on China's use of force. This article seeks to identify the determining factors of a rising China's use of force and its varying levels. Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China's use of force has been shaped by its high external vulnerabilities. They consist of two major security concerns: the homeland encirclement by superpowers and the increasing support from the outside to domestic splitting factions. Consistency in China's use of force can be explained by the legitimacy of the party involved and the regional power position in East Asia. The level of the use of force has been determined by China's relative capability to its adversaries. Specifically, China will use high levels of force, such as wars or lengthy conflicts, if it enjoys the favorable relative capability. On the contrary, China will use low levels of force, such as blockade, artillery attacks and very short combats, if the opposite is true. Based on these findings and current regional trends in East Asia, the authors are optimistic about China's non-use of force in Taiwan and territorial or maritime disputes in East Asia over the next decade.

A multi-robot dynamic virtual potential point hunting strategy based on fuzzy inference system is presented. Considering the kinematic constraints of wheeled robots, hunting robots forecast the movement trend according to the position information of the evaded motion. A dynamic bounding ring for predicting positions is built. The hunting robots achieve enclosed formation and contraction trends of encirclement through rounding up the uniform distribution of potential. The fuzzy inference system is used to control the actions of multi-robot. Finally, the experiment results show the proposed algorithms can achieve the hunting of multiple mobile robots effectively.

In multi-agent system like the pursuit-evasion games(PEGs), when the pursuer tries to capture the evader by encircling it, there should be a method to determine whether the encirclement is situated and therefor form a feedback mechanism to direct latter tactics of pursuers. At present, problems of this kind are solved by the pursuer's “limbs contact” or “attack range ”, but these methods doesn't take the dynamic characteristic of participants in consideration, which lead no guidance of moving tactics. This passage propose a method based on geometric analysis, consider the velocity of both pursuer and evader, and obtain a method to determine surrounding situation. Present the necessary condition of the formation of encirclement situation, which can be successfully applied in pursuit-evasion games. Furthermore, a task allocation algorithm based on least tactical target point is proposed, which is also of great feasibility.

Welded full encirclement sleeve repairs are used frequently in petrochemical industries as repairs for piping and pressure vessels. This publication describes a proposed methodology for calculating the stresses on a welded full encirclement sleeve using a closed from solution derived from shell theory. The analytical results are compared with finite element results and are found to be in reasonable agreement.

Japan has been regarded by all mainstream International Relations theories as a status quo power intent on pursuing an immobilist international strategy toward China characterized by hedging rather than any move to active balancing. This paper challenges these assumptions and asks whether Japan will, or indeed already is, moving toward active balancing. The paper does so by reinterpreting the very assumptions of those theoretical perspectives that predict only hedging and by drawing on fresh empirical evidence. It argues that the conditions that are thought to encourage hedging behavior—the predictability of other states’ intentions, the malleability of intentions through engagement, domestic preferences that obviate balancing, and a favorable offense-defense balance—are now deteriorating in the case of Japan’s strategy toward China. Japanese policy-makers over the last decade have experienced an accelerated decline in their confidence to read China’s intentions and to mold these, to the point that China is now regarded as an increasingly malign actor. Japan’s own domestic regime change, paralleling that of China, has released Revisionist forces that favor the cessation of the “underbalancing” of China. Very significantly, Japanese policy-makers’ faith is eroding in the ability to maintain defensive superiority over China, either through its own internal capabilities or the U.S.-Japan alliance. The consequence is that the evidence is now mounting of Japan shifting toward active “soft” and incipient “hard” balancing of China through a policy of the active “encirclement” of China diplomatically, the build-up of Japanese national military capabilities aimed to counter China’s access denial and power projection, and the strengthening of the U.S.-Japan alliance. This shift has become particularly evident following the 2010 trawler incident and the return to power of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in 2012. The consequences of Japan’s shifting strategy are yet as not entirely clear. Japan may be moving toward a form of “Resentful Realism” that does not add to a new equilibrium to regional security but is actually more destabilizing and poses risk for China and the U.S., especially as Japan’s own security intentions become more opaque. In turn, these conclusions invite a reconsideration of the comfortable theoretical consensus on Japan as an eternal status quo power, and encourage Constructivism, Neoliberalism, but especially Neorealism, to be bolder in their assertions about the probability and degree of radicalism in Japan’s security trajectory.

This chapter examines how relations between the EU and China are influenced by the very different interactions that each of them has with the USA. For one, America is a longstanding strategic ally and preferred economic partner, for the other, the USA is seen as global hegemon and a regional competitor, as well as the prime mover underpinning a policy of encirclement or containment of China. The chapter analyses these inescapable attitudes and explores how the growing economic links between Europe and the Chinese are beginning to change some European countries’ response to US preferences, concluding that the EU has become operationally dysfunctional in handling this triangular complexity.

This paper presents a cooperative strategy to achieve evenly spaced circular formation of a group of unmanned aerial vehicles. The strategy is claimed to be fail-safe because the circular formation remains unaltered even if one or more unmanned aerial vehicles fail. We can also add more unmanned aerial vehicles without altering the formation. The control law uses only bearing angle information. We can pre-specify the centre of the circular formation of the unmanned aerial vehicles. The unmanned aerial vehicles will maintain the desired distance from the centre with bearing angle measurement only. We assume that the unmanned aerial vehicles are identical and can measure the bearing angle of all the other unmanned aerial vehicles. The strategy is analysed using unicycle kinematic and verified using six-degree-of-freedom model of the unmanned aerial vehicles. Extensive simulations are carried out for noisy measurement, presence of wind and moving target.

Composite repair systems offer the potential of changing the way engineers approach onsite pipeline repairs. Composite repair in pipeline and pressure equipment are a growing segment of the corrosion mitigation industry and have seen large expansions since the introduction of the technique in the early 1990s. Industry acceptance has widened since the initial products came on to the market and the capabilities of the repair have steadily increased. This chapter presents results comparing the performance of full encirclement repairs with patch-type repairs on 6-in. nominal diameter pipe specimens. Each pipe specimen has a 75 % wall loss defect simulating corrosion damage on a pipeline. Specimens were cycled from 0 to 75 % of maximum operating pressure until failure. Fatigue lives and substrate strain levels are compared for the patch and full-encirclement repairs. Design suggestions for patch repairs are also presented.

We present a control framework for achieving encirclement of a target moving in 3D using a multi-robot system. Three variations of a basic control strategy are proposed for different versions of the encirclement problem, and their effectiveness is formally established. An extension ensuring maintenance of a safe inter-robot distance is also discussed. The proposed framework is fully decentralized and only requires local communication among robots; in particular, each robot locally estimates all the relevant global quantities. We validate the proposed strategy through simulations on kinematic point robots and quadrotor UAVs, as well as experiments on differential-drive wheeled mobile robots., Accepted for Autonomous Robots - Springer

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs) are finding use in military applications, surveillance tasks, for environment monitoring, geological survey, etc. It is beneficial to use a team of coordinated UAVs rather than a single UAV, because multiple UAVs can complete the tasks with ease and more robustness than a single UAV. In this paper, a controller is proposed in optimal control framework for achieving any desired formation. By properly choosing formation vectors any formation can be achieved. A time varying formation vector is proposed which helps in achieving circular formation. In situations like loss of UAVs from formation group, the UAVs have to reconfigure for completing the task optimally maintaining the communication links. Reconfiguration has also been achieved in this framework. The controller is also capable of achieving encirclement of a target/ immobilization of the target. From extensive simulations, it is seen that the UAVs are capable of achieving any formation; the formation can follow any desired trajectory, can achieve reconfiguration and encirclement of a stationary and moving target as well.

Based on the definition of second order moment and the approximate three-dimensional analytical formula for probe detected laser beam passing through a cat-eye optical lens with center shelter and oblique detector, the analytical expression of the encirclement power ratio of the cat-eye effect reflected light under far-field condition has been deduced. Variable laws of light intensity at the return place and encirclement power ratio are performed by numerical calculation, and are analyzed physically. The results show that the light intensity at the return place decreases monotonically with the increases of the diameter, incidence angle, tilted angle of the detector and the center shelter ratio, but the relationships between these parameters and the encirclement power ratio are all nonmonotonic. The reasonable choice of the focal shift size would result in the largest light intensity at the return place and the largest erirclenent power ratio.

The Battle for Syria, 1918-1920, by John D. Grainger. Woodbridge and Rochester, The Boydell Press, 2013. viii, 261 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). The Battle for Syria, 1918-1920 is a sequel to the author's The Battle for Palestine, 1917 (Woodbridge and Rochester, 2006) that covers the British conquest of southern Palestine from the Ottoman Empire up to the Jaffa-Jerusalem line, which they reached in December 1917. Grainger, a prolific author of ancient and modem military history, continues here his examination of this campaign, and, contrary to the title of the volume under review, focuses again on the battlefields in Palestine and not in Syria, dealt with in only three out of the book's seventeen chapters. Although the Ottoman considered Palestine part of Greater Syria, along with Lebanon and Jordan, the misleading title cannot be dismissed as a mere technicality, as it might leave the reader with a substantively mistaken sense of the entire campaign. Historically, the operations conducted by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) under General Edmund Allenby in 1918 were aimed, first and foremost, at occupying northern Palestine and destroying the Turkish armies there. Their expansion into Syria proper was an evolving process in the form of "the appetite came with the eating" with neither prior political directive nor military pre-planning. According to Grainger (p. 73), Allenby's original final objective in what was later called the "Battle of Megiddo," was the Acre (Akko)-Tiberias line in northern Palestine. Only the dramatic success of his troops and the rapid collapse of the Ottoman armies west of the Jordan convinced him to advance northwards to Damascus and late to Aleppo (Halab). The book is a traditional military history, highlighting military aspects and chronologically examining the unfolding of the 1918 campaign. It first introduces the protagonists: Ottomans, EEF, Arabs and French. Then come separate chapters on the two failed British attacks across the Jordan in March and April (labeled post-factum as "raids" for face-saving purposes); the removal from the EEF of experienced divisions sent to reinforce the Western Front following the German Ludendorff Offensive and their replacement by untrained Indian troops (resulting in the postponement of Allenby's offensive for several months); British planning and preparations for the Megiddo offensive; the infantry breakthrough and the cavalry's deep penetration and advance; the encirclement and destruction of the Ottoman formations in northern Palestine; the occupation of Damascus (the controversy over who was the first to enter--Australians or Arabs--is still much alive); the advance to northern Syria (where the main enemy was not the Ottomans but epidemics of malaria and influenza); and the armistice in October 1918. The last four chapters are devoted to the nineteen-month period between the armistice and the French withdrawal from Cilicia in May 1920, examining the rebellion in Egypt, the tricky process of the EEF's demobilization, the problems created by the conflicting agreements made by Britain with France, the Arabs, and the Zionists, and finally with the status of France in the Levant. Grainger describes military operations in detail, often down to smallest tactical echelons, tediously specifying each of the many regiments and battalions that participated in every engagement. …

Confronted during the first decade of the twenty-first century with the rapidly burgeoning US-Indian security partnership and then by the emergence of the India-Japan security relationship, Beijing struggled to respond. After initially attempting to court India away from a too-close partnership with the United States in the first half of the decade, Beijing shifted to a more coercive approach around the end of 2005. One key mechanism used to pressure India was psychological war waged via the Internet raising the possibility of another Sino-Indian war. As China shifted from a soft to a hard-line approach toward India, policy toward Japan was moving in the opposite direction. After keeping relations with Japan in the freezer during the early part of the decade, around 2006, Beijing shifted gear and adopted a much more conciliatory approach. The authors hypothesize that these simultaneous shifts in Sino-Indian and Sino-Japanese relations were not coincidence but predicated instead on an understandin...

In the 1990s the Pakistani military has linked relations towards Afghanistan with the conflict with India over Kashmir. Afghanistan is perceived under the lens of strategic depth in order to prevent an encirclement by India. The strategy had been successful in the 1990s but has backfired after 9/11. The attacks of Taliban groups pose a growing threat to state and society in Pakistan. But Pakistan's foreign and security policy is still dominated by the military whereas the civilian government is not in a position to reformulate the foreign policy towards the neighbours that would favour closer economic cooperation.

The recent literature on China's relations with North Vietnam has given insufficient attention to the impact of the Sino-Soviet conflict. This article underscores the centrality of the Soviet factor in Beijing's relations with Hanoi and the importance of triangular relations during the 1964–1968 period. The article points to the Sino-Soviet conflict as the main cause of the fissures in the Sino-North Vietnamese alliance that emerged more fully after the Vietnam War.

The Kaliningrad region has developed from being a military bastion of the Soviet Union threatening the West to being an exposed Russian exclave with much reduced forces mainly serving defensive functions. Russia strongly resisted NATO's enlargement and encirclement of Kaliningrad, but had to accept it as Russia was weak and could not stop it. When Russia became stronger under Putin, Kaliningrad was again brought under central control and the conditions in the Baltic Fleet were improved. The protection of Russia's sea communications and of its energy exports became the most important tasks apart from defending the region. However, as an effect of the war in Georgia and the US base agreement with Poland in 2008, Russia threatened to use Kaliningrad as a staging area for new Russian missiles, and the problem of military transit across Lithuania was again exacerbated. At the same time the global financial crisis hit Russia. Kaliningrad well reflects the ups and down in Russian relations with the West in this ...

In the Middle East today, Iran is trying to upgrade its status to a dominant power by demonstrating an ability to penetrate and influence various regional theatres. Meanwhile, despite being the sole global power with considerable military presence in the region, America's strategic initiatives in the Middle East are frustrated by Iran's behaviour. This interaction is destabilizing the Middle East regional order. In this article I demonstrate that instability is mainly driven by the incompatibility ofthe two states' preferences, not their incongruence of capabilities. The regime in Tehran counters American encirclement by manipulating several foreign policy tools. Although its military capabilities are dwarfed by those ofthe United States, these tools still provide Iran with considerable ability to maneuver relatively freely despite international and regional constraints, enabling it to avoid a direct confrontation with the United States.The first tool is Iran's ambition to develop nuclear energy technology, largely within the confines of the international atomic safeguards for civilian technology, but enshrined in confrontational rhetoric. The second tool is Iran's hardened alliance with an increasingly isolated Syria. The third tool is Iran's support of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The fourth is Iran's leverage in Iraq through ties to S hute groups. Two potential tools that the Iranian regime can mobilize more effectively than it currently does are ties to groups in Afghanistan (such as the Hazara), and to Hamas in the occupied territories. Added to its considerable conventional military capability, Iran's advantages stem from the fact that the costs incurred for the manipulation of these tools have so far proven tolerable. In the interim it is willing to use them to destabilize a regional order that it sees as confining. These tools provide access to a wide theatre of operations, and their timed manipulation has proven Tehran's ability to exert formidable influence on other regional states as well as the US. In sum, Iran has been able to match or even overturn Washington's strategic initiatives and military interventions in the Middle East. Tehran would not have developed such resolve in isolation of the regional actors noted above. These state and substate actors are not passive recipients of Iranian influence efforts but have themselves been served through ties to Iran. Their interests coincide or overlap with Iran's own.To fully appreciate the effect of Iran's efforts to assume a higher regional status, we have to better understand the preferences of these regional actors. It is only after unpacking these two sets of preferences that we can better grasp the current sources of instability in the regional order. Embedding analysis in the logic of liberal international relations theory serves such an investigation.1 In studying Iran's behaviour and regional instability, emphasis shifts from focusing on the distribution of capabilities to unpacking the sources of prefer enees. Moreover, instead of asking only what policies should decision-makers (American or otherwise) pursue regarding Iran, we may be able to develop policies averting a regional confrontation between the US and Iran, as well as defuse a variety of potentially destabilizing regional issues.Two important factors are necessary for a full understanding of Iran's behaviour. The first is the nature of the Iranian regime itself. Unpacking Iran's domestic politics can help explain the timing and the reasons behind particular choices in foreign policy. The second factor is American policy in the Middle East. Along with the historic American presence in the Arabian Gulf states, placing US troops in Iraq meant replacing Iraq as a balancer to Iran; the costs of encirclement to Iran became too high to be ignored. What we are witnessing is Washington's regional standing being compromised by its under- appreciation of the role diplomacy can play in bringing Iran around. …

This article considers various security predicaments affecting relations between India and China. These Sino-Indian security predicaments include their territorial dispute, their nuclear arms race, their encirclement and alignment scenarios, their trade and energy issues, and their future prospects. International relations (IR) theory is deployed around these varied security predicaments, with power and perception particularly evident in IR realism, geopolitics, constructivism, and security dilemma dynamics. Balance-of-power theory is complemented by balance-of-threat considerations. India's hedging strategy towards China and China's own strategy of transition point to each country looking to their own respective rise for the mid century.

This research deals with the puzzle of why China intervenes militarily in its neighboring countries, and attempts to explain China's use of force. The paper will address four hypotheses related to China's geostrategic vulnerability, and test the hypotheses through two case studies of the Korean War and the Sino-Vietnamese War. Then, as a conclusion, theoretical implications and future prospects for China's use of force against its neighbors will be suggested. The author's argument is that China's geostrategic vulnerability caused its military interventions during the Cold War era. In geostrategic terms, its weakening capability to control a “crucial space”—i.e. a neighboring state or a traditional sphere of influence, both of which are imperative for national security—was the main factor increasing China's geostrategic vulnerability, because it resulted in antagonization of the neighboring states, the loss of its traditional spheres of influence, and the possibility of strategic encirclement by t...

This paper compares the cumulative abnormal returns and operating performance of Chinese listed firms which made seasoned equity offerings or right issues at different profitability thresholds. Results show that both the average long-term and short-term cumulative abnormal returns of these firms increase significantly after the setting of thresholds. Moreover, the accounting performances of these firms are also improved to some degree. It implies that regulations on new equity raising behavior of listed firms are necessary and effective in protecting the investors and restricting listed firms’s “money encirclement” behaviors.

The Japanese invasion of Rehe in 1933 proved to be a walkover, despite the intense rhetoric of resistance which had characterised statements by leaders in north China in early 1933. This article looks at the local context of the governorship of Tang Yulin, at the role of Zhang Xueliang and regional leaders, and at the central government's involvement, principally through Song Ziwen (T.V. Soong), in order to understand China's failure in Rehe. This failure strongly influenced the subsequent Tanggu truce and affected the careers of Song and Zhang in the short term, but did not deter Jiang Jieshi from continuing his anti-communist encirclement campaigns.

Several former chiefs of defence staff have expressed dismay about the ‘legal encirclement’ or ‘legal siege’ of the British armed forces. 1 Admiral Lord Boyce, Chief of Defence Staff at the time of...

The simultaneous rise of China and now India is a fundamental factor for understanding the twenty-first century. In rising as Great Powers, a relative term, they are coming up against each other across Asia and its surrounding waters. Traditional geopolitical models, Mackinder, Spykman and Mahan point to their spatial politics around Central Asia, South Asia, Pacific Asia and the Indian Ocean. Actual spatial settings are combined with perceived spatial outlooks. These powerful neighbouring states seek to continue rising, and constrain the other where necessary through mutual encirclement and alliances/proxies. This type of ‘Great Game’ is evident in the military-security, diplomatic and economic areas. Globalisation has not replaced regionalism, nor has geoeconomics replaced geopolitics. The stakes are high as is their need for securing access to energy resources for their economics-led rise to Great Power status. Some cooperation is evident, in line with IR liberalism-functionalism. However, geopolitical...

Toponyms are proper geographic names of longer historic-geographic continuation. Local population inherits them by generation, remember them and inform both descendants and population of their spatial encirclement. In science toponyms denoting concrete geographic objects are recorded and written on maps with certain spatial borders representing thus a very stable element in studying geographic area. Changes of toponyms occur in longer time, i.e. civilization epochs, and very rarely in shorter time periods, these are usually the cases of sudden change of population or changes of political-historical circumstances of a territory. However, as linked to human conscience, toponyms often get different internal spatial meanings as well as different territorial belonging, where, in dependence on causes, they get narrower or overspread as in the case of Zlatibor toponyms. Total economic development of Zlatibor in the last more than a hundred years has caused this toponym spatially spread and got new forms. It appeared as oronym (name of relief object) and it has kept the same meaning up today, although in one period it was recorded as horonym (regional name) on maps. In the last decade it also appeared as oikonym (name of settlement)-Zlatibor, the name for ex settlement of Kraljeva Voda, later Partizanske Vode, joined with Palisad, but also as the name for wider spatial-administrative region-Zlatibor Region. At the same time, by spreading Zlatibor toponym, the toponyms of Cigota, Tornik and Murtenica are narrowed territorially, while with similar continuation of economic development it may be expected that Zlatibor toponym will overspread on the territory of Tara and Zlatar Mountains in the future, while these ones will reduce on names of their parts-peaks.

The Israeli Air Force attack on a Syrian military base reportedly containing materials of strategic value supplied by North Korea, has shed some light on the largely concealed issue of the relations between the two countries. Considered “rogue states” and a part of the alleged “axis of evil,” both the DPRK and Syria are internationally isolated, economically backward and politically oppressive. Yet, their attempts to acquire strategic weapons should not only, or necessarily, be interpreted as an indication of strength and aggressive intentions, but could and perhaps should be interpreted as a reflection of a sense of vulnerability and persecution and subjective weakness rather than strength, as well as a response to perceived threats and actual encirclement. However, whatever their motivations, these measures—explicitly or implicitly supported by Russia and China—raise security concerns that are common to both Israel and the ROK. Facing a similar threat from the north, Israel and the ROK—both eco...

This paper is written from the perspective of a historian who is aware of the 20th century roots of current problems between the two Asian giants, as well as their tremendous contributions to world civilization and Asian prosperity in the past, and hopefully in the future. The paper analyzes issues troubling India-China relations, such as the unresolved boundary question, sensitivity on matters of international status, and mutual perceptions of threat arising from fears of encirclement. It shows how the two governments have made tremendous progress in overcoming or mitigating these problems, and in establishing strong human and economic ties between the two fastest growing economies in the world. Pakistan continues to be a wild card with a negative impact on India-China as well as India-U.S. relations, but its capacity to create trouble may have been reduced by its own internal problems, as well as progress in the India-Pakistan composite peace process. The United States remains the preponderant military and economic global power, despite recent damage to its moral influence, and all countries, including China and India, try to cultivate close relations with it. Both India and China are engaged with Southeast Asia and with other Asian countries, and each has close and complex relations with the United States. The author sees a low risk of military conflict between India and China and a high desirability of international cooperation among all three in tackling the many facets of human security in the 21st century.

Welded full encirclement sleeve repairs are used regularly in petrochemical industries as repairs for piping and pressure vessels. This publication describes a proposed methodology for calculating the stresses on a welded full encirclement sleeve using a simple analytical approximation. The analytical results are compared with finite element results and are found to be in reasonable.Copyright © 2015 by ASME

This chapter introduces the problems of encircling coverage and region termination for a moving and deforming planar region and a network of mobile sensors/actuators. A distributed randomized algorithm is proposed for these problems. Asymptotic optimality and convergence with probability 1 of the proposed algorithm are proved in the case of an arbitrary bounded region, which may be unknown to the mobile sensors/actuators a priori. The algorithm is decentralized, computationally efficient, and based only on information on the closest neighbors of each mobile sensor and the distance to the planar region. Illustrative examples show that the proposed algorithm encircles and terminates moving regions in a pattern similar to encirclement and annihilation of the Roman army by the Carthaginians.

The asymmetry of medium versus heavy operations creates a problem for the medium force. This problem is relevant because the strategic direction of the United States encourages the growth of medium forces. This means the study of medium versus heavy operations becomes a concern should a existential war occur. This monograph addresses the elements of operational art that are most critical during medium versus heavy operations. Section one uses an aggregate caliber calculation to compare US and German divisional combat power. Sections two and three use the contemporary US Army definition and description of operational art to analyze the American defense at Mortain and the Allied defeat of two German armies at Falaise-Argentan. The American success defending at Mortain and encircling the Germans at Falaise-Argentan illustrates the importance of tempo, transitions, and phasing. The Allied tempo all along the Normandy Front prevented the Germans from massing the required combat power to make an effective attack against the Americans at Mortain. Furthermore, the Allied tempo caused a deep salient to form around two German Armies extending from Mortain to Falaise and Argentan. However, the Americans reduced their tempo at Argentan and transitioned poorly to close the encirclement. This allowed the Germans to hold open the gap for an additional five days and gave the Germans the space required to conduct a breakout. Given these historical examples, the most critical elements of operational art are tempo, transitions, and phasing during medium versus heavy operations. Operational planners should use phasing to focus assets in a way that enables tempo.

This paper develops the distributed encirclement control problem of multiagent systems, in which each agent tracks multiple targets, each target can be tracked by one agent, and the numbers of the agents and the targets are the same or not. Firstly, an encirclement control protocol is proposed for multiagent systems, and this protocol contains some estimators. Secondly, some conditions are derived, under which multiagent systems can achieve encirclement control by circular formation. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the obtained results.

South Africa's transition away from being a U.S. ally toward being a neutral country was followed by the development and then rollback of a nuclear weapons program. In South Africa's case, paranoia that the United States was abandoning it was a significant motive for going nuclear. Realism does not fully explain South Africa's desire for nuclear weapons, since the country faced no major strategic threats. Paranoia about communists and the loss of the United States as a major ally increased South Africa's sense of insecurity, thus it began to develop weapons and missiles. U.S. pressure increased in the late 1980s, and in 1989 the apartheid government began the process of surrendering power. South Africa signed the NPT, and in 1990 and 1991, it unilaterally disarmed. Lessons from the South Africa case include the critical role played by leaders in setting the direction of a country's strategic policy, and the unintended consequences of Western programs to promote peaceful energy. Democratic reforms may prov...

This article explores two starkly contrasting analytic approaches to assessing the performance of U.S. security strategy in East Asia since 1991: a positivesum approach, emphasizing the danger of security dilemmas and spirals of tension, and a zero-sum approach, emphasizing power competition and the long-term dangers posed by China's rise. In the policy world, the differences between these apparently irreconcilable perspectives are not so clear. Certain policies—for example, maintaining a strong U.S.-Japan alliance—flow from either logic. Moreover, each approach sometimes counsels counterintuitive policy prescriptions that are generally associated with the other. Relatively assertive U.S. security postures apparently have furthered positive-sum regional goals by catalyzing China to adopt reassuring policies toward its neighbors as a hedge against potential U.S. encirclement. From a zero-sum perspective, the United States often competes more effectively for regional influence by cooperating with China than it would by seeking to contain China's economic growth and diplomatic influence.

It is a measure of China's vastness and its geographic dominance of east Asia that it shares land borders with 14 countries and maritime boundaries with several others. This article doesn't attempt to examine China's relations with all of its neighbours. Instead, it offers some preliminary observations about patterns and trends in its regional strategy and tactics, with an emphasis on those areas where we differ with the conventional wisdom on these subjects. Citing Chinese actions and statements, too often ignored, this article argues that that we must assess Chinese regional strategy and tactics with much more wariness and skepticism. Indeed, given a Chinese strategic culture that emphasizes secrecy, deception, and surprise, there is really no alternative.This article draws on our current ongoing research project that assesses China's dealings with its continental neighbours as well as on more general research on China's "grand strategy" and on its ever-evolving tactics in pursuit of its strategic goals.BACKGROUNDIt is widely acknowledged that, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, China's relative power vis-a-vis its regional neighbours soared. Instead of confronting Soviet bloc encirclement along most of its land borders from the Russian far east to Indochina, China found itself suddenly unchallenged in continental east Asia. This surge in strategic latitude coincided with the resurgence in the early 1990s of China's unprecedented economic take-off. This was a giddy period for China's ruling elite, all the more so because it had successfully weathered the post-Tiananmen political crisis. It felt free to cast off its balance-of-power strategy of the previous two decades and adopt instead a new highly ambitious strategy that aimed at nothing less than regional domination that recalled the traditional tributary state system.Most notably, China turned its attention in the early 1990s to maritime east Asia, where it belligerently pursued its maritime claims and took a confrontational approach towards Japan and Taiwan in particular. Its adventurist and aggressive tactics during that period included demanding ever more "sincere" apologies from Japan for its actions in the second World War, punctuating its legal stance that the South China Sea is a Chinese lake by seizing Mischief Reef from the Philippines, and then, most dramatically, staging massive military exercises in 1995 and 1996 that were openly labelled a rehearsal for an invasion of Taiwan.CHINA'S CONTINENTAL POLICIESDuring that same period, China was employing a very different set of tactics towards most of its neighbours on its land borders. Seemingly gracious in unearned victory, China declared its good will and its friendship toward countries that, only months ago in some cases, had played their parts in the Soviet Union's efforts to militarily encircle China. China backed its friendly stance with conciliatory proposals to several neighbours to settle longstanding border disputes on terms so reasonable that subsequent negotiations soon yielded several agreements."Soft borders"Many analysts have cited those agreements as evidence of China's sincerity when it asserts that it seeks peace and stability, especially along its borders, because they are necessary if China is going to continue its rapid economic development uninterrupted. Be that as it may, what western analysts almost universally overlooked was that China secretly demanded a strategically significant quid pro quo for its border concessions. In interviews, two senior government officials in Kazakhstan and two senior provincial government officials in the Russian far east recounted, in virtually identical terms, how China had demanded that their jurisdictions, as part of the border demarcation package, agree to eliminate most restrictions on the movement of people and trade across the borders in both directions. With large populations and a thriving economy near these borders, China stood to benefit much more than its neighbours when measured in terms of influence. …

This article examines Ireland's strategic and diplomatic importance for foreign continental European powers in the early years of the twentieth century, a subject much neglected by historians. It focuses on how Austria-Hungary, France and Germany analyzed the Irish crisis between 1899 and 1914. It shows how the pattern of alliances in Europe changed these powers' outlook on Ireland. After the signing of the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France in 1904, the French lost all interest in their relations with Irish separatists. The Germans took over their role as they saw a possibility to break the encirclement of the Triple Entente countries. The article argues that there was a definite ‘Irish factor’ in the events leading to the outbreak of the First World War, notably in Germany and Austria-Hungary's decision-making process.

Spotted dolphins in the eastern Pacific Ocean associate with yellowfin tuna. During the chase and encirclement phases of purse-seining for tunas, dolphin attempt to evade encirclement with the purse-seine net. We used data on evasive behavior (1982-2001) and numbers of purse-seine sets (1959-2001) to study the relationship between evasion and fishing effort. Results show that in nearshore areas first exploited by the fishery in the early 1960s, dolphins exhibited high evasion, but with a limited correlation between evasion and cumulative effort. In areas farther offshore next exploited in the mid- to late-1960s, dolphins showed high evasion and a significant correlation between evasion and cumulative effort. Dolphins in far-western and southern areas, first exploited in the late 1960s to early 1970s, exhibited low evasion, with little relationship to cumulative effort. We hypothesize that this spatial pattern is the result of two types of pressure from fishing: early effort in nearshore areas with a high risk of mortality that generated a lasting evasive response, followed by a longer period of even greater effort but with lower risk of mortality that generated evasion by longer-term learning.

Should the high growth rate of China's economy be sustained in the coming decades, ascending China will change the power configuration in Northeast Asia. Whether intended or not, there definition of the U.S.-Japan alliance in the 1990s is seen by Beijing as a measure to enhance America's managerial capacity for possible competition with China over influence in Asia. Relocation of the U.S. forces on the Korean peninsula is likely to exacerbate Beijing's concerns over America's potential encirclement of China through the U.S. alliance network. An interesting finding from in-depth interviews conducted in Beijing tells us, however, that Beijing intends to accept the rearrangement of America's alliances. As long as China's bilateral relations with the U.S. are good, the state of the U.S. alliances in the region would not be a matter of serious concern to Beijing. The two redefinitions, when completed, are highly likely to lead Beijing to choose its preferred stance between either opposing America's tw...

The Ottoman army after the 1 880s was modelled on the German army in its doctrine, administration, and training. It is however almost unknown in the west exactly how the German art of war was realized in the minds and plans of the Ottoman officer corps. This article seeks to provide an understanding of the importance of the German art of war in Ottoman Army offensive operations by demonstrating its attachment to the doctrine of encirclement battles of annihilation (ku~atma harekati).' Reflecting its German style of philosophy and thinking, the Ottoman Army routinely planned and attempted to execute encirclement operations during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and in the First World War. That the early battles were, for the most part, operationally unsuccessful does not diminish the importance of the military thought from which they originated. Later, in the War of Independence the consistent and successful application of the operational encirclement in campaign planning by the Turkish high command culminated in decisive victory. It is well known that the German army established and maintained a military mission in the Ottoman Empire from 1882 until 1918.2 Numerous distinguished and capable German General Staff officers were assigned to the mission during its tenure, including Wilhelm Leopold Colmar von der Goltz, Otto Liman von Sanders, Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, and Hans von Seeckt. The actions of these officers (and others) are well documented by memoirs and histories as is the growth and impact of the German Military Mission itself. The Ottoman army modelled itself on the German army during this period. Of particular significance was the institutionalization of an Ottoman general staff officer corps and war academy copied directly from the Prussian model in which Ottoman general staff officers received training in the German art of war.3 The Ottoman general staff officer selection process, war academy curriculum, and its operational planning process were direct copies of the Prussian system.4