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Copyright of Electric Power Automation Equipment / Dianli Zidonghua Shebei is the property of Electric Power Automation Equipment Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The strategy of integrated deterrence is a repackaged version of Cold War strategies. The integration of assets to deter adversaries was part of both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations' overarching strategies that forced the military services to change their operating concepts, capabilities, and doctrine simultaneously. The US Army is an example of how national strategy forces organizational changes. This article assesses how the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations forced institutional change while considering the significance of integrating deterrence. These examples will assist US military and policy practitioners with adapting their organizations to existing national defense strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars focused on NATO nuclear strategy during the Cold War have devoted little attention to the dynamics of how the Alliance would decide to use nuclear weapons. This article aims to fill this gap by examining the internal debates about how a nuclear use decision would be taken, particularly balancing the desire to ensure adequate consultation of the non-nuclear members without undermining the credibility of NATO's nuclear deterrent by giving them a veto. To avoid undermining Alliance cohesion, the nuclear use decision process was kept deliberately vague, despite the problems that would almost certainly have arisen in a war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

About two decades after the signing of the Washington Treaty, through which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came into being, the reference strategic framework for the efforts to ensure the security and defence of member states has undergone substantial transformations. These were reflected in the adoption, at the end of 1967, of a new Strategic Concept, which had as its main element the development of the potential for crisis response on coordinates of flexibility, through the superior exploitation of NATO's potential. The implementation of this approach overlapped with a series of events having a profound impact on the security equation during the Cold War. One of the implementation formulas for Flexible Response Strategy would be applied in NATO's defence system including the development of innovative instruments and procedures. It focused both on the aspects of supporting allied forces and on strengthening the level of interoperability between them in order to meet higher requirements. The creation of an intensive training program (REFORGER), simultaneously with the expansion of the support potential through the prepositioning of equipment (POMCUS) are steps that have contributed to the maturation of the NATO planning process. For the entire duration of the Cold War, these instruments have been constantly used and improved, with beneficial effects in terms of strengthening political and military cohesion between Member States, while providing more coherence in ensuring an effective deterrence posture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this new round of power network development, the concept of coordinated and optimized operation of power network interconnection and smart grid "source network load" has gradually attracted attention. Based on the analysis of the impact of the flexible DC distribution network on the complex energy system with multiple data sources and large data volume under the big data platform, the coordinated dispatching of the source and load of the big data flexible DC distribution network is studied. Therefore, a source-load matching index that can evaluate the impact of different types of loads on the stability of the flexible DC grid is constructed and incorporated into the load recovery optimization model. First, use the scene reduction method to process all generated scenes; next, take the reduction technology and the scene generation method into account of the uncertainty caused by the prediction error and incorporate them into the multi-objective function optimization model; finally, the membership function of fuzzy numbers is used to model uncertainty. So as to construct a load recovery model that can coordinate the load recovery amount, importance and system dynamic response. The actual meaning of the matching index is explained through model solving and actual case analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deterrence is one of the most perennial concept in human history being conventionally associated with the capacity of a given actor to dissuade another actor from embarking into an aggressive action based on demonstrative potential to react decisively. This is only one of the existing definitions of the deterrence which is in fact the constant ingredient of every decision-making process. Deterrence become the main norm for generating efficient strategies with practical applicability developed in the aftermath of Second World War. Since then deterrence theory developed significantly, most often in support of the strategic decisions adopted during Cold War. In this framework, it represented the central recourse of supporting the stability of international system based on a mix of conventional and nuclear capabilities. The end of Cold War brought a new reality in which risks and challenges are more interconnected, thus, requiring more synergetic and multidisciplinary approaches in designing the right framework for deterrence. The most common area for implementing deterrence is defence being extensively tested in the last decade, especially within the framework of NA TO. But this is only one perspective from which deterrence could be perceived. Nowadays deterrence is common to various areas in our societies, becoming one of the main instruments in tackling the contemporary asymmetry. Ensuring the right formulas for having a comprehensive deterrence is a continuous process which has to be correlated with the undertaking of creating resilient societies. The necessary solutions could not be identified without implementing flexible approach and structuring practical cooperation formulas which can maximize the support for deterrence strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Security Strategies Journal / Güvenlik Stratejileri Dergisi is the property of Strategic Research Institute and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Security Strategies Journal / Güvenlik Stratejileri Dergisi is the property of Strategic Research Institute and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The India–Pakistan near war of February–March 2019 highlights India's ongoing evolution in strategic thought and practice since its emergence in 1998 as an overt nuclear-weapon possessor. These changes, involving an increasing willingness to engage in the intentional escalation of conflict with a nuclear-armed rival willing to be the first to use nuclear weapons, challenge certain academic assumptions about the behavior of nuclear-weapon states. In particular, they undermine the expectations of the nuclear-revolution theory—which anticipates nuclear and conventional restraint among nuclear-armed rivals through fear of mutual assured destruction—and the model of nuclear learning which underpins this theory, in which new nuclear-weapon states gradually absorb this restraint through policy-maker learning. This article explores how India's learning pathway since 1998 has deviated from these expectations. India is instead pursuing its own "revolution," in the direction of creating capabilities for flexible response and escalation dominance. It concludes by illuminating the similarities between Indian strategic behavior and contemporary practices of other nuclear-armed states, and suggests that New Delhi's emerging de facto nuclear doctrine and posture is part of a broader empirical challenge to our current conceptions of the nuclear revolution and of nuclear learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents different definitions of the term Anti Access/Area Denial (A2/AD), which has become more prevalent in military documents, articles and assessments over the past two decades. Moreover, it is shown that, despite A2/ AD being prevalent in current studies and discussions, it is principally not a new threat. Simply put, A2/AD is the response to Western force projection, precision strike, and highly-networked C2 capabilities. Since attrition warfare must not be the first option for NATO, technical solutions and creative concepts have to be found to assure future mission success. Also, NATO doctrine should be reviewed in order to reflect the highly integrated joint and combined processes needed in countering A2/AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents different definitions of the term Anti Access/Area Denial (A2/AD), which has become more prevalent in military documents, articles and assessments over the past two decades. Moreover, it is shown that, despite A2/ AD being prevalent in current studies and discussions, it is principally not a new threat. Simply put, A2/AD is the response to Western force projection, precision strike, and highly-networked C2 capabilities. Since attrition warfare must not be the first option for NATO, technical solutions and creative concepts have to be found to assure future mission success. Also, NATO doctrine should be reviewed in order to reflect the highly integrated joint and combined processes needed in countering A2/AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nuclear proliferation, lax security standards in the storage of fissile materials, and international apathy in the prosecution of terrorists make nuclear terror a serious threat to the United States and its allies, yet no doctrine of retaliation has been established. To decrease the probability of terrorist use of nuclear weapons, a doctrine of retaliation—a negligence doctrine—should be considered. If the United States can distinguish whose fissile material was used for a nuclear terror event, a negligence doctrine would prescribe retaliation against that state. Where the proximate cause—terrorists—is unavailable for deterrent retaliation, deterring an accessible mediate cause—a state that has failed to adequately secure its fissile material—is one of a few effective alternatives. In the absence of such a negligence doctrine, the United States and its allies are increasingly vulnerable to a nuclear terror attack and the ensuing negative consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political geography's contribution to the debate about war and peace should include re-examining traditional geopolitical concepts (e.g. heartlands, buffer zones), which apparently infuse the superpowers nuclear strategies. The latter contain dangerously mismatching geopolitical perspectives, which beget NATO's "flexible responses' vs. total retaliation by the Warsaw Pact and the latter's view of so-called "theater" weapons like Cruise as strategic. The research agenda also needs to consider whether new weapons technology may make traditional geopolitics and current nuclear strategies obsolete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ALLIANCE is a software architecture that facilitates the fault tolerant cooperative control of teams of heterogeneous mobile robots performing missions composed of loosely coupled subtasks that may have ordering dependencies. ALLIANCE allows teams of robots, each of which possesses a variety of high-level functions that it can perform during a mission, to individually select appropriate actions throughout the mission based on the requirements of the mission, the activities of other robots, the current environmental conditions, and the robot's own internal states. ALLIANCE is a fully distributed, behaviour-based architecture that incorporates the use of mathematically-modeled motivations (such as impatience and acquiescence) within each robot to achieve adaptive action selection. Since cooperative robotic teams usually work in dynamic and unpredictable environments, this software architecture allows the robot team members to respond robustly, reliably, flexibly, and coherently to unexpected environmental changes and modifications in the robot team that may occur due to mechanical failure, the learning of new skills, or the addition or removal of robots from the team by human intervention. The feasibility of this architecture is demonstrated in an implementation on a team of mobile robots performing a laboratory version of hazardous waste cleanup. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Blue monkeys ( Cercopithecus mitis nyasae Schwarz) were studied for a period of 15 months on the Zomba Plateau in Malawi, which experiences pronounced seasonality of climate. 2) As might be expected, the monkey's diet contained most protein per item, and least potential digestion inhibitors, during the warm rainy season of the Malawian summer. 3) During the period, however, from October to November, which constitutes the hottest time of the year when the greatest number of trees are flowering and fruiting, protein intake was relatively lower than at other times of year and digestion-inhibitor intake tended to be relatively higher. 4) In the same period, the monkeys ranged more widely than during the winter months, when suitable food was available on the fewest number of tree species. 5) During the winter months, which occur in the first part of the dry season, the monkeys were able to obtain a reasonably nutritious diet from foliar material and some flowers, without recourse to any significant amount of fruit. 6) It is suggested that poor quality of diet during October and November is related to increased chemical defences in edible plant parts which may be partly the result of climatic pressures, and that the monkey's flexible response reflects a high degree of sensitivity to the chemical makeup of such plant parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social monitoring of the actions of group members is thought to be a key development associated with group living. Humans constantly monitor the behaviour of others and respond to them in a flexible way depending on past interactions and the current social context. While other primates have also been reported to change their behaviour towards other group members flexibly based on the current state of their relationship, empirical evidence is typically linked to contextually specific events such as aggressive or reproductive interactions. In the cooperatively breeding meerkat (Suricata suricatta), we investigated whether subordinate females use frequently emitted, non-agonistic close calls to monitor the location of the dominant female and whether they subsequently adjust their response based on recent social interactions during conflict and non-conflict periods. Subjects discriminated between the close calls of the dominant female and control playbacks, responding by approaching the loudspeaker and displaying submissive behaviour only if they were currently threatened by eviction. Our results suggest that meerkats assess the risk for aggressive interactions with close associates depending on social circumstances, and respond accordingly. We argue that social monitoring based on non-agonistic cues is probably a common mechanism in group-living species that allows the adjustment of behaviour depending on variation in relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]