Dual Military Research Articles

Reporting for Double Duty: A Dyadic Perspective on the Biopsychosocial Health of Dual Military Air Force Couples

There are approximately 1.5 million active duty service members in today's military and approximately 726,000 (56.1 %) of these individuals are married. Therefore, healthy couple functioning is important for the military community. Although there is current literature on couple functioning in non-dual military couples, there is limited research on the marital health of dual military couples. This study explored the marital health (marital satisfaction, adjustment, and quality) and stress among dual Air Force couples in relation to length of time in service, rank, deployments, and level of physiological stress. Results indicated that husbands' deployments, rank, and time in service were related to his physiological distress, wives' rank was negatively related to her marital adjustment and marital quality, and husbands' marital satisfaction was negatively related to wives' rank. Future research recommendations and implications for using a biopsychosocial approach for assessing dual military couples are provided.

Architects of Empire: The Military-Strategic Studies Complex and the Scripting of US National Security

: This paper considers a key academic support of US geopolitics overseas, which I term the “military–strategic studies complex”. The paper begins by outlining the development of Strategic Studies in the US since the early 1980s. It then uses the example of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments to work through a discussion of the palpable agency of the military–strategic studies complex in advancing a dual military–economic securitization strategy for what it calls the contemporary American “leasehold empire”. This strategy is focused especially on the Persian Gulf and involves both an enduring US military presence and long-term neoliberal designs for the region. Finally, consideration is given to alternative military–strategic visions before attention is turned to the task of Geography in countering US geopolitical and geoeconomic scriptings of the Middle East, all expedited under a vernacular of “national security”.

Stalin’s Rocket Designers’ Leap into Space: The Technical Intelligentsia Faces the Thaw

Abstract This article explores the impact of the professional culture of rocket engineering in Stalin’s Soviet Union on the engineering and organizational practices of the space program during the Khrushchev era. The Stalinist legacy and the dual military / civilian character of rocket engineers’ work profoundly affected the identity of this elite part of Soviet technical intelligentsia. Focusing on such notions as control, authority, and responsibility, this article examines the role of engineering culture in shaping the Soviet approach to the automation of piloted spacecraft control. Through patronage and networking, rocket engineers were able to overcome the inefficiency of Soviet industrial management and to advance their agenda of space exploration.

The DoD: stewards of a global information resource, the Navstar global positioning system

In 1973, the US Department of Defense (DoD) began development of the Navstar global positioning system (GPS) and embarked on a journey that would take radio navigation and positioning to what were then unimagined levels of performance. From its inception, GPS was viewed as a revolutionary technology that would enhance the positioning capability of US and allied military forces throughout the world. The DoD has continued to upgrade and improve all of the components of the system to keep pace with technology advances and the requirements of an ever-expanding user community. The GPS user community includes an increasing number of civil, scientific, and commercial applications, ranging from precision scanning to pinpointing disruptions in electric power distribution networks. However, this dual military and civil aspect of GPS has posed significant challenges for the US government and DoD policy makers. Since the inception of GPS, the DoD has been confronted with the need to balance a wide range of different and sometimes competing national security, civil, foreign policy, commercial and scientific interests. The challenge has been to exploit the full civil utility of the system without jeopoardizing national security interests in the process. This challenge will become even more formidable for military leaders as US and allied forces become increasingly reliant on GPS for all types of military operations, and as the applications of the worldwide civil user community continue to expand.

Gender Effects and Marital Satisfaction: A Brief Report from a Sample of Dual Military Couples from the 1992 Department of Defense Worldwide Survey of Members and Spouses

Among 1,320 dual military couples who responded to the 1992 Department of Defense Worldwide Survey of Military Members and Spouses, female spouses reported lower marital satisfaction than male spouses (effect size = .14), a result comparable to previous research on sex differences in marital quality. However, no differences were observed for parental satisfaction, but female spouses were more satisfied with time their partners had available for family, although both spouses were much less satisfied with the latter than with either marital or parental relationships.

Trends in Dual Military Couples in the U.S. Army

Dramatic percentage increases in female soldiers, married enlisted soldiers, spouses in the labor force, female single-parent soldiers, and dual military couples have changed the demography of the Army substantially since the end of the Vietnam War and the institution of the All Volunteer Army. The presence of dual-career military families is one change that has shifted the traditional pattern of the unmarried male soldier led by a married male officer. This report documents the changes in dual military families since the early 1970s in the U.S. Army and discusses what effects, if any, there may be on family adaptation, retention, readiness, and use of services and what effects current downsizing initiatives might have on the prevalence of dual military couples in the Army.