Military Audience Research Articles

КОММУНИКАТИВНЫЙ МЕТОД ОБУЧЕНИЯ РУССКОМУ ЯЗЫКУ В ВОЕННЫХ УЧЕБНЫХ ЗАВЕДЕНИЯХ КАК ЧАСТЬ ИННОВАЦИОННОЙ МЕТОДИКИ

In this article, an analysis of an innovative approach to the principle of comprehensive teaching the Russian language as a foreign in a military audience is given. The article presents widely revealed methods and methods of teaching the Russian language of military personnel through innovative material, namely: role-playing games, group projects, stimulants, training at the training ground. The importance of using interactive textbooks and multimedia materials is emphasized. Methodological recommendations are given on the training of military terminology on the material of these textbooks and videos, as well as the development of military teams in the language being studied. Work is interesting for its novelty and relevance.

Comrades in Arms? Rebel Leadership Roles and Coups in Rebel Regimes

Abstract Why do some winning rebel groups build loyal postwar militaries, while others do not? Surprisingly, though victorious rebel political and military elites cooperate successfully to seize sovereign power, they often struggle to share it. In roughly one-third of rebel regimes, military elites attempt to depose their leaders through military coups. I contend that postwar coup risk is primarily shaped by the wartime roles of rebel leaders. Rebel leaders that occupy a frontline role—exposing themselves to the hazards of the conflict theater—establish regimes less likely to suffer postwar coups. Frontline leaders win greater prestige and stronger legitimacy among military audiences. Further, frontline leaders’ greater proximity to their military commanders allows them to develop institutional structures that more effectively reduce military autonomy. However, remote leaders, who are absent from the conflict theater, exercise weaker postwar control over the armed forces, resulting in greater coup risk. I find support for this theory using original cross-national data on all rebel regimes and the wartime roles of victorious rebel leaders between 1945 and 2010. A controlled case comparison of civil–military relations in two rebel regimes—Guinea-Bissau and Uganda—further illustrates the mechanisms tying wartime roles to postwar coups.

Identifying appropriate scenario termination rules for squad-level simulations of warfighter lethality

Small arms combat simulations are emerging as a method to convert raw human performance metrics into quantifiable lethality outcomes. Specifically, speed and accuracy measures can be directly converted into a percentage chance of winning a gunfight using small arms combat modeling. Although the technique provides an opportunity to clearly communicate implications to a military audience, there are numerous assumptions to this modeling technique that require further exploration. One critical assumption involves the termination rule, or criterion to identify when the combat simulation should end. The termination rule must be clearly identified because it will impact the casualties inflicted and suffered by each side during simulation. Here, we discuss the implications of three broad categories of termination rules: (1) total victory, (2) retreat criteria, and (3) resource limitations. Each approach has different scenarios that might be more or less advantageous to use as a termination rule. Taken together, this information should help improve lethality modeling procedures using different simulation techniques to convert human performance metrics into quantifiable chances of winning a combat engagement.

Talking to the enemy...: the military phrasebooks by the litterateur Osip Senkovskii (1828) and Lieut.-General Nikolai Biasi (1941). Part 2

The article 1 offers a comparison between two military phrasebooks the "Pocket-book for the Russian soldiers on the Turkish frontline” (Karman-naia kniga dlia russkikh voinov v turestkikh pokhodakh) [St. Petersburg, 1828] by Osip Ivanovich Senkovskii (1800-1858) and the "The The Concise Russian-German military phrasebook for a private soldier and subaltern” (Kratkii russko-nemetskii razgovornik dlia boitsa i mladshego komandira) [Moscow, 1941] by Lieut.-Gen. Nikolai Nikolaevich Biiazi (1893-1973). The author argues that these types of scholarly and literary production cannot be considered as ‘phrasebooks’ par excellence, since such reference books could be hardly used on the battlefield. The research makes it evident that these "phrasebooks” were designed as "teach yourself" manuals of colloquial Turkish and German and adapted to the needs of a non-specialist audience. In the second part special attention is paid to the analysis of the "built-in’’ mechanisms as designed by Senkovskii and Biiazi, which enabled prompt language learning by the military audience.

Describing mRNA Vaccine Technology for a Military Audience.

Vaccine technology has improved substantially since the first smallpox vaccine, developed more than 200years ago. As technology improves, vaccines can be produced more safely and reliably for many different pathogens. A recent breakthrough saw the first full deployment of mRNA vaccines to fight a pandemic. Despite the technological and logistical feat of developing a viable vaccine in an abbreviated time frame, there have been many questions about this new approach to vaccine development. The current review will provide descriptions about different types of vaccines as well as answers to some common questions about mRNA vaccines. The purpose is to provide military medical professionals with the information needed to better convey the importance and function of these new vaccines to service members. There were no explicit inclusion or exclusion criteria for articles describing mRNA vaccine technology. References included here were intended to illustrate important principles or empirical evidence in demonstrating the safety, efficacy, and function of mRNA vaccines. The review describes three different types of vaccines: whole-pathogen, subunit, and nucleic acid. Each vaccine type has different implications for the development and production of a vaccine line. For example, whole-pathogen and subunit vaccines often require growing significant amounts of the vaccine sample in laboratory before the material can be incorporated into the vaccine. Nucleic acid vaccines instead provide cells the opportunity to produce key proteins without needing to reproduce the virus and attenuate it in a laboratory setting. This approach has a notable advantage of speed in moving from genome sequencing to vaccine production, but it also creates some potential confusion. The discussion covers three questions with regard to this confusion. First, was the vaccine developed too quickly? Speed here is a byproduct of the new technology and unprecedented government interdepartmental cooperation. No steps were skipped in development or production. Second, does the vaccine modify DNA? No, the mRNA vaccines never enter the cell nucleus and therefore cannot modify DNA. The discussion clarifies how mRNA enters cells and produces the key proteins required to stimulate an immune system response. Third, how long will immunity last? Because mRNA vaccines are new, long-term immunity cannot be projected without significant further study. Still, the discussion does cover issues in determining vaccine efficacy in clinical laboratory trials versus field effectiveness in the real world. These mRNA vaccines are the newest and most sophisticated defensive tool military medicine has against emerging biological threats. Evolving dangers, such as synthetic biology and engineered pathogens, further enhance the importance of having defensive countermeasures that can be rapidly deployed in response. Current evidence suggests high safety and effectiveness for a biological countermeasure, decades in the making, and military medical personnel should feel confident using and recommending this technology to ensure force health protection.

Teaching Anticommunism: Fred Schwarz and American Postwar Conservatism

Teaching Anticommunism: Fred Schwarz and American Postwar Conservatism

How to enhance military research using mathematical psychology

Military research encompasses a wide variety of topics that would benefit from the advanced analytical techniques of mathematical psychology. This tutorial provides important context and guidance on how to best prepare and present experimental findings for a military audience. The first discussion points cover how decisions are made by end users and funders in the military. Next, several simple approaches are described to convert inferential statistics and effect size information into data more readily appreciable by military end users. Finally, the tutorial concludes with simple guidance that should help anyone interested in military research better convey their findings to funding agencies and for practical applications.

Crew endurance training in the united states navy: Lessons learned from senior leadership, prospective commanding/executive officers, and department heads

The Crew Endurance Team at the Naval Postgraduate School led a 3-year project to develop and deliver crew endurance and sleep hygiene training to support the US Navy’s implementation of circadian-based watchbills. As part of this effort, 16 training sessions were delivered to 362 active-duty service members (ADSMs) of the USN, including senior Navy leaders (n=249), prospective commandingIexecutive officers (PCOIPXOs) (n=30) at the Surface Warfare Officers School (SWOS) and students (n=83) attending SWOS Department Head School. Overall, responses from all audiences were positive indicating a high level of satisfaction with the training. We identified the need to expand two parts of the training: stimulants and sleep-promoting medications, and tips for sleeping in military environments. We will continue to tailor the training to the specific needs of ADSMs. We continue to train military audiences to increase awareness of the critical importance of sleep for operational performance and resilience.

Crew Endurance Training in the United States Navy: Interim Assessment of a 3-year Project

This project was designed to support the US Navy’s (USN) implementation of circadian- based watchbills by providing guidance on sleep management and shipboard practices which support crew endurance. In the first two years of the three-year effort, we identified specific training needs and developed instructor-led materials. We delivered the training to two audiences all active duty members of the US Navy or US Marine Corps: senior leaders and entry-level to mid-level personnel (N=353 participants; 15 training sessions total). Following the training, we administered a short questionnaire to obtain individual feedback. Responses from both audiences showed a high level of satisfaction with the training. Future efforts will focus on improving the training materials, further assessing training, and developing additional materials designed for specific military audiences at increased risk of insufficient sleep.

Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects at the Margins of Empire. By Montgomery McFate (New York, Oxford University Press, 2018) 487 pp. $45.00

McFate came to prominence as an early advocate of U.S. military engagement with anthropologists in order to grapple with “adversary culture” after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She was an architect of the “Human Terrain System” that embedded social scientists within the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2006 and 2014. She has deplored and sought to reverse what she sees as a historical anomaly of estrangement between the military and academia in the post-Vietnam era. She continues to advocate for this approach as a professor at the Naval War College and as an author of books like this one, which seeks to develop practical lessons for military anthropology from various historical episodes—ranging from Donald Barrows’ ethnographic work for the U.S. military in the Philippines from 1901 to Don Marshall’s in Vietnam in the 1960s and a half-dozen other examples drawn mostly from British imperial experience. In this way, this book resembles a more sober and extended version of John Nagl’s Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago, 2002), which sought counterinsurgency lessons from Malaya and Vietnam; Nagl and McFate were in fact both contributors to David Petraeus’ Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago, 2007), another quasi-anthropological product of the Iraq War.Although McFate’s avowed intent is to build bridges between academia and the military, she admits that this book, as “written primarily for a military audience,” is unlikely to contribute much to the bridge-building goal (11). The book is peppered with military acronyms and insider observations; it is also full of capsule lessons in basic social science for those presumed to be unfamiliar with, or indeed hostile to, such an enterprise. It has a military tone, too, given McFate’s technocratic approach to social science, which often feels decidedly less anthropological than reminiscent of economics or quantitative sociology. She regrets anthropology’s failure to develop “a scalable, adaptable theory of society that could be used operationally by the military” (38, 328). In an essay on Ursula Bower’s “military leadership” of the Naga during World War II, she yearns for a neat formula such as Fisher’s “fifty-seven key findings pertaining to cross-cultural military leadership” (106–107).1 She commends Gregory Bateson’s highly scientistic ideas about the manipulation of cultural pattern as he applied them in service of the Office of Strategic Services. She even inscribes Tom Harrisson’s idiosyncratic unconventional warfare in Borneo as a sophisticated species of “qualitative, inductive pattern recognition” (172).More comfortably for most anthropologists, McFate acknowledges that these unified field theories nearly always break down in practice and that there is no replacement for deep cultural knowledge, a necessary complement to, or often replacement for, “firepower,” and thus alien to the American “way of war.” But although McFate, like any good ethnographer, pays close attention to this kind of context, she gives relatively little credence to the radically different contexts in which military ethnography takes place. She equates anthropologists’ feelings of responsibility for their subjects with the military’s concern for the “host nation,” without taking much account of what being the “host” of a violent military intervention by another nation actually means. When she says that “the social conditions of the host nation must be considered as part of national strategic objectives,” readers can only wonder which nation’s objectives are in question (323)—assuming that a unitary nation is to be considered in the first place. Because she deliberately eschews case studies of Iraq and Afghanistan, though constantly seeking lessons for those enterprises, McFate is not able to reflect much upon U.S. military intervention in deeply divided societies.McFate may or may not be correct to imagine that the military’s objectives would be better achieved with more anthropological awareness. It is at least arguable that deeper cultural engagement in a complex and fractured (not to mention war-torn) society might exacerbate rather than resolve the “morasses” to which recent U.S. military interventions have led. But what is even more puzzling is why she imagines that anthropologists outside the military ought to embrace these objectives. In her view, anthropologists have a role “analogous to that of professional soldiers”; they have “an obligation as citizens to reduce the errors caused by a lack of socio-cultural knowledge and thereby improve their execution” (39–40). Her book shows some anthropologists behaving in just such a way. But apart from the major changes in the culture and politics of academia since the 1960s, which have driven academia and military further apart, her own narrow, technocratic account of what “socio-cultural knowledge” can do, without a proper consideration of the military and political contexts of its application, is unlikely to draw them back together. Quite the contrary.

Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects at the Margins of Empire by Montgomery McFate

Reviewed by: Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects at the Margins of Empire by Montgomery McFate David H. Price Montgomery McFate, Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects at the Margins of Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 352 pp. Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects at the Margins of Empire provides historical summaries of ten 20th century anthropologists' engagements with military operations. Montgomery McFate's telling of this history seeks to identify positive outcomes of these anthropological contributions and argues for increased future uses of anthropology by the military. Each chapter evaluates the effectiveness with which anthropological knowledge was incorporated into operations and analyzes recent military situations where US forces used, or could have used, anthropology in similar ways. With each historical vignette, McFate champions militarized forms of anthropology that connect the discipline to campaigns of violence and occupation, advocating for the development of a type of militarized anthropology which will trouble many anthropologists. McFate is perhaps best known to many anthropologists as the architect of Human Terrain Systems (2007–2014), the almost three-quarters of a billion-dollar failed Pentagon program that tried to embed ethnographers with soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Human Terrain System was widely condemned by the international anthropological community, and by the American Anthropological Association, for not considering basic ethical principles of anthropological engagement (CEAUSSIC 2009). Beyond these ethical concerns, many anthropologists also critiqued the political project of militarizing anthropology (NCA 2009). Military Anthropology was written for a military rather than an anthropological audience (11), but because this book is published as an academic book, drawing upon anthropological knowledge, it deserves [End Page 969] anthropologists' critical attention. Written at the Naval War College, funded by a Department of Defense Minerva Fellowship, Military Anthropology exemplifies the sort of work many critics of the Minerva Program predicted these fellowships would produce. It draws on a limited subset of social science and includes little substantial engagement with the critical peer reviewed literature found in mainstream academic writings. McFate's reading, and writing, of this history differs from the work of many anthropologists (including my own), most significantly in her refusal to address the political and ethical issues raised by using anthropology for warfare, but also in the simplification of these complex relationships. Where many scholars find cautionary tales, McFate finds blueprints for improved means of using anthropology for militarized ends. I suspect that most anthropologists will find this book not only highly problematic in its historical representations, but also fundamentally flawed in its claims about the ease with which culture can be weaponized and for refusing to engage with the core political and ethical issues raised by military anthropology. But anthropologists are not the book's target audience. Its representations of how culture can be instrumentalized for conquest provides much for its military audience to like, and Military Anthropology may well become a classic work within military circles as a foundational text for the military training their own "anthropologists." The ten anthropologists whose stories are recounted in individual chapters are: Gerald Hickey, Robert Sutherland Rattray, Ursula Graham Bower, Gregory Bateson, Tom Harrisson, John Useem, Jomo Kenyata, Louis Leakey, Don Marshall, and David Prescott Barrows. The military engagements discussed range from colonial occupations, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Mau Mau Rebellion. The operations include a mixture of combat, counterinsurgency, insurgency, and occupations. In order to advocate for specific types of future anthropological collaborations, McFate shapes the telling of these incidents in very specific ways. She simplifies the complexities of the military anthropologists' stories appearing in her pages. Her Gregory Bateson has fewer reservations than the Bateson other scholars have found in archival and FOIA documents; and her version of Hickey writes RAND reports that had a greater impact than other scholars have found. Ursula Graham Bower's World War II success in directing Naga warriors' military and intelligence operations is shown to reveal key traits of successful transformational leadership skills. Robert Rattray's early 20th century use of anthropological knowledge to [End Page 970] help impose indirect rule in west Africa frames arguments for adapting similar tactics in other post-conquest situations. Many anthropologists will likely not share the general admiration of the effectiveness of Rattray...

The difficult return: The arts and social health of returning military personnel

The rich history of arts, mental health and military work dates back to the First World War. The article describes an arts-based four-year research project focussed on work with returning military personnel and their families dealing with mental health issues. The Difficult Return, funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery grant, consisted of three distinct interventions: an online mental health awareness campaign; a documentary-play designed to motivate military audience to seek help; and a ten-day intensive psychotherapeutic program utilising enactments. The paper will outline key concepts used, methods, approach and the implications for further research. In the paper, I argue that arts-based mental health projects need to combine multi-disciplinary approaches that embrace complex paradigms, and that a variety of integrated arts approaches may be efficacious in building communities of interest, that in turn can interact, contribute and collaborate together to build good mental health.

Selling Stabilization: Anxious Practices of Militarized Development Contracting

ABSTRACTThis article examines how post‐9/11 US military trainings have conscripted development as a weapon of war. The post‐9/11 years saw the increasing dominance of for‐profit international development contractors (IDCs), who, by 2010, were winning more valuable contracts from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) than non‐profit organizations, UN agencies, and the World Bank. This article describes financial, administrative and bureaucratic shifts in the integration of development and defence that have fed into the increasing dominance of IDCs. In the mid‐2000s, USAID developed an instructional framework to translate development for military audiences. The framework speaks to the rejection in this period of the language of ‘hearts and minds’ and the adoption of a technical language of ‘stabilization’ amenable to private contracting. Drawing on ethnographic observations of private civilian contractors teaching the USAID framework on military bases, I examine the contradictions of ‘stabilization’ as a concept sold in private militarized development markets, and as a lived practice of military learning that often conflicts with other dimensions of soldiering.

Representing Soldiers to Soldiers Through Dance: Authenticity, Theatricality, and Witnessing the Pain of Others

Representations of war recur throughout art, whether celebrating the glories and heroism of conflict, or depicting its horrors and follies. This paper uses qualitative audience research to examine soldiers' own responses to the representation of soldiers in choreographer Rosie Kay's dance performance 5 Soldiers: The Body is the Frontline. This article explores how for military audiences the satisfaction of an internalized sense of authenticity allowed them to accept the performance as a legitimate representation; at the same time the presentation of war in a choreographic language meant that the performance was also abstracted, with theatrical and stylized elements that were far from authentic as a documentary. This paper proposes that it was the combination of authenticity with theatricality that generated empathetic investment and made 5 Soldiers an articulate witness to the military experience.

Watching War Movies in Baghdad: Popular Culture and the Construction of Military Policy in the Iraq War

This article investigates the use of popular culture films by the United States military during the Iraq War. We first examine why the 2003 mission to capture Saddam Hussein was named after Red Dawn, the 1984 film about the Soviet invasion and occupation of the American heartland, and how it helped define U.S. soldiers’ understanding of their mission in Iraq. We then consider how and why in 2006 military planning groups screened films, including Meeting Resistance, whose narrative centers of gravity tilt toward Muslim Arab populations resisting the occupations of Western militaries. We argue that the circulation of these movies encouraged military audiences to critically reconsider their aims and mission in the midst of the unanticipated emergence of an Iraqi insurgency. The broader purpose of these investigations is to demonstrate the ways in which popular culture can shape individuals’ understanding of their political problems and possibilities, even in times of war.

“A word from man to man”. Interwar Venereal Disease Education Films for Military Audiences in France

In the 1910s, in the wake of the glorious decade of syphilography (1900-1910), the early health education films lay the groundwork for a pragmatic approach to the containment of venereal diseases combining (early) diagnosis, treatment and prophylaxis. Realizing that WWI was turning into a durable military conflict, the French Army created a Cinematographic Section (SCA) in 1915 for the purposes of war propaganda and documentation. In 1916, secretary of war Justin Godard declared syphilis a "national public danger" and initiated information campaigns in military and civilian spheres. Conferences accompanied with film screenings were organized for all new military recruits, resulting in the production of a series sex hygiene films for military audiences characterized by a short, evocative and precise documentary style, contrasting with the romantic sex hygiene films aimed at the general public. This contribution examines the cinematographic origins of the instructional films for the military, as well as their evolution up to WWII and their influence on public sex hygiene films for civilians in the interwar period in France.

Scripture, Setting, and Audience in the RAF Talks of C. S. Lewis

It is difficult to connect individual sermons by C. S. Lewis with specific scripture texts. The wartime talks Lewis gave to RAF officers, NCOs, and airmen provide a new lens for examining this puzzle. Through biblical allusions and paraphrases, both colloquial and literary, Lewis was able to translate Holy Writ for live military audiences. Sometimes he spoke on the prescribed scripture text from the Book of Common Prayer. On other occasions, he chose a different text. When addressing committed believers, he delved deeper into explaining particular biblical passages. More often, he sent up an intellectual barrage, answering preliminary questions regarding faith, reason, and imagination. Lewis undertook an exhausting travel schedule visiting RAF stations, units, and camps throughout Britain. His creative approach to the use of scripture was one of the ways he sought to encourage military chaplains and to engage RAF aircrews and ground crews with the Christian message.

Bringing in the Bystander In-Person Prevention Program to a U.S. Military Installation: Results From a Pilot Study

This pilot study describes an evaluation of the Bringing in the Bystander (BITB) in-person program conducted with United States Army Europe personnel. The sample was comprised of 394 soldiers (29% participated in and 71% had not participated in the BITB program). Data were analyzed 4V2 months after the program was presented. Compared to the soldiers who did not participate in the program, soldiers who participated in the program were significantly more likely to report that they had engaged in one or more of the 117 behaviors, that they had helped an acquaintance or a stranger, and that they had taken action when they saw sexual assault or stalking occurring, about to occur or after it had occurred. The results indicate that with thoughtful and appropriate modifications, the BITB in-person prevention program, initially developed for a college audience, can be transferred to a military audience.

‘THIS IS REALITY’

Restrepo stands amongst the very best documentaries of military conflict in the twenty-first century. It sheds revealing light both on the oft-overlooked US Army presence in the Korengal Valley and, more generally, on the lives and actions of soldiers in conflict. For a military audience in particular, the film may serve as a catalyst for reflection upon a broad array of strategic issues.

Homer's War Experiences Resonate With Today's Troops

Homer's War Experiences Resonate With Today's Troops