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When considering drones’ impact on modern conflict, strategic studies scholars typically focus on the most sophisticated systems in states’ arsenals: costly and hard-to-acquire military drones, which are necessarily few in number. This article questions this conventional emphasis, proposing in its place that easy-to-produce and cheap(er) one-way attack (OWA) drones hold underappreciated war-shaping potential. Through analysis of recent and ongoing conflicts, we argue that OWA drones’ complementary characteristics are yielding tactical gains and can, under certain circumstances, generate strategic effects when employed against an adversary’s homeland. The findings show a need for scholars to further study the implications of innovative low-tech developments in drones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractJoint naval exercises (JNEs), an increasingly prominent sub-set of joint military exercises (JMEs) between states, vary across a range of dimensions. Yet insufficient attention has been given to comprehending their underlying purpose and the perceived advantages that states, along with their representatives, believe they gain from organizing or taking part in such exercises. This article delves into the objectives and perceived advantages of Japan’s JNEs in the Indo-Pacific to shed theoretical light on why states jointly exercise. With great power rivalry intensifying in the Indo-Pacific, the findings contribute to policy and issues related to the region’s emerging security dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gulf, a little-studied theatre of the Second World War, grew in importance to the area's leading power, Britain, as well as the Allies, as war progressed. All three Axis powers at one time or another tested Britain's ability to discharge its defence obligations, which included the protection of tiny Arab shaikhdoms and guarding nearby waters. With Britain's strategic imperatives lying elsewhere, British officials on the spot received scant resources to enact a scheme of defence for the Gulf and instead largely relied on makeshift measures. This article provides the first account of Britain's ad hoc defence arrangements in the region, and, in doing so, offers a window into the organisational, manpower and materiel attention major powers with overseas possessions give peripheral theatres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's decision to convert two helicopter-carrying ships into fixed-wing aircraft carriers has generated criticism on two fronts. Military analysts question the military sense of carriers in the age of long-range precision missiles, while other domestic critics decry the move as a flagrant breach of Japan's constitutional constraints on possessing senryoku (war potential) and one likely to provoke Japan's neighbors, most notably China. Against this backdrop of criticism, why did the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe take Japan back into the difficult business of carriers? This article argues that contrary to stated criticism, the carrier conversion program does provide Tokyo with tangible military benefits but these on their own are insufficient to explain the decision. Instead, we show the move is motivated in part by the desire to leverage carriers' symbolic value for political ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been speculation for some time that unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are poised to revolutionize military land operations. These expectations have amplified with recent developments, not least the reported deployment and testing of Russian weaponized UGVs in Syria. Yet when it comes to the operational use of mobile ground-based robots – armed or otherwise – the recent history of the technology can be described as one of promise so far unfulfilled. By tracing past and present efforts to develop and field UGVs – and the enduring challenges that lie therein – this article attempts to gauge the likely impact of such systems in future conflict, as well as their effect on international security more broadly. The article concludes that although UGVs will almost certainly become a major – if not indispensable – feature of future military land operations, they will, similar to other promising militarily relevant technologies before them, continue to produce unrealistic expectations about their impending revolutionary effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses articles in the issue on topics including the use of unmanned combat aerial vehicles in the Middle East, the U.S. drone campaign in the Pashtun "tribal" areas in Pakistan, and the operational use of unmanned ground vehicles.

International relations scholars and military historians episodically observe that emerging military technology can generate ‘hype’, that is, excessive expectations about the near-term impact of emerging technologies. Yet there has been little attempt to conceptualize hype, enquire as to why it occurs, or study its impact on military innovation. As decisions concerning new military technologies are highly significant for states’ military capabilities, lack of attention on hype is a non-trivial shortcoming. This article provides a framework for better understanding what hype is and examines how it effects the choices states – or more to the point, those acting on their behalf – make about which military technologies to pursue in a world where war is an ever-present possibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various polities have imported soldiers to compensate for a lack of manpower, to reduce costs, or to avoid the risk of arming potentially disloyal citizenry. However, importing soldiery is not without dangers. Foreign soldiers may carry with them subversive ideas, continue homegrown conflicts in their employer’s territory, be unreliable, or, worse, revolt. How importers of foreign soldiers might mitigate these risks is little studied. This case study reveals the repertoire of measures Britain used to mitigate the risks posed by one group of imported soldiers—the Dhofaris from Oman’s restive southern province who served from the late 1950s to 1973 in the British protected Trucial States, which became the United Arab Emirates in 1971. It concludes that intelligence collection measures were hampered by an inability to penetrate the Dhofaris’s linguistic and sociocultural world, and that threat analysis failed to accurately consider the impact of the conflict in their homeland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]