Military Decision Research Articles

Impact of Ukraine War on NATO Development. NATO Vision 2030

The aim of the article is to analyze potential scenarios for the outcome of the armed conflict in Ukraine and its political and military consequences for NATO, taking into account the political and military decisions associated with the NATO Summit in Madrid in 2022, the new NATO Strategic Concept (NSC) of 2022, and the NATO 2030 Agenda. The outcome of the conflict in Ukraine will unequivocally determine the political, institutional, and military capacity of the NATO Alliance. Furthermore, non-Western political and military integration platforms such as CSTO, BRICS, and SCO will enhance the level of political, economic, and military cooperation among their member states. Therefore, the strategic perspective of a possible decline in the political, economic, and military capabilities of the United States and NATO, and an increase in the political, economic, and military capabilities of BRICS and SCO, becomes plausible. Agenda 2030 presents strategic development proposals for NATO, including deeper political and military consultations among the Allies, strengthening deterrence and defense capabilities, upholding the rules-based international order, enhancing resilience, maintaining technological superiority, continuing the NATO Open Door Policy, increasing training and capacity-building efforts, addressing and adapting to climate change, investing in NATO's financial capabilities, and allocating resources to the defense budgets of member states within the Alliance. A political challenge that remains is the political coherence of the Alliance regarding NATO's Open Door Policy, including Ukraine's accession as a member state, as well as political, economic, and military cooperation between the Russian Federation and China.

Strategies of the Sides in the Russia-Ukraine War.

The research into the strategies of the sides in the Russia-Ukraine war is of great relevance, as it is one of the most intense conflicts on the territory of Europe since World War II. Further, the violent actions committed by the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine have had an unprecedented impact on the international peace architecture and international relations; they have caused a humanitarian, economic, and social crisis on a regional and global scale. The present research may, most notably, help understand the causes and consequences of the conflict. For this reason, this paper aims to analyze and cover the peculiarities of the main military and political strategies of Ukraine and the Russian Federation in the context of the 2022 war, as well as evaluate specific actions the enemies took against each other as international actors. The updating of the states’ strategies should be noted, as previously Ukraine was regarded only in the context of European integration and reforms, while the full-scale war increases Ukraine’s subjectivity, particularly in terms of planning and implementation of military decisions and more proactive diplomatic efforts. Russia’s strategies were considered in the context of Western theoretical models aimed at establishing it as a regional leader with extensive military potential. Moreover, the beginning of the full-scale war proved that in the situation of the military conflict against Ukraine and its allies Russia’s strategic resources are limited, which calls for further research. The results of this investigation provide a theoretical basis for further research in the field and are of importance for the understanding of security issues, and safeguarding of peace and stability not only in Ukraine and Europe but all around the world.

Optimizing Military Decision-Making: Application of the FUCOM– EWAA–COPRAS-G MCDM Model

Optimizing Military Decision-Making: Application of the FUCOM– EWAA–COPRAS-G MCDM Model

India’s Quest for Defence Indigenisation: A Case Study of the Indian Navy

India, like all major military powers, has been making sustained attempts at indigenously meeting its defence requirements. However, when one looks at the macro picture, it is apparent that the country has had limited successes in inducting defence platforms or weapon systems that are indigenously designed, tested, manufactured and inducted into the military. There have been some exceptions to this like the HF-24 Marut fighter jet, the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas, the Main Battle Tank Arjun, Leander class frigates, Indigenous Aircraft Carrier Vikrant, Kolkata and Vishakhapatnam class destroyers and the Arihant nuclear submarine. While these examples only prove the general rule, they also point out India’s relative success in creating domestic capacity to build naval platforms. As India embarks on the path of Atmanirbharta (self-reliance), it is crucial for the political and military decision-makers to understand what, why and how the above-mentioned projects, particularly the naval ones, became successful, so that their success can be replicated elsewhere. The article attempts to understand the reasons behind the Navy’s successes. These successes have been the result of an institutionalised—as opposed to an individual-centric—approach by the Navy to create in-house design capabilities, organisational structure, planning procedure, capacity building efforts and linkages with other stakeholders like naval Defence Public Sector Units, Defence Research and Development Organisation and other scientific establishments and industry. This has made the Indian Navy more successful as compared to the other two services of the Indian military when it comes to designing, testing, constructing and inducting indigenous naval platforms.

Two-stage stochastic programming model of US Army aviation allocation of utility helicopters to task forces

US Army aviation units often organize into task forces to meet mission requirements. The manner in which they allocate assets affects their long-term capabilities to provide aviation support. We propose a model to allocate utility helicopters across geographically separated task forces to minimize the total time of flight and unsupported air movement air mission requests (AMRs) by priority level. We model the allocation problem with a two-stage stochastic program, with the first-stage problem allocating a fleet’s helicopter teams to task forces. The stochastic demand for each task force is then revealed. The second-stage US Army aviation air movement operations planning problem is modeled as a stochastic mixed integer linear program (MILP). A practical application uses the air movement operations planning heuristic to solve the second-stage problem at scale and generate an optimal stochastic solution task force allocation. This paper provides evidence for the practical use of the proposed two-stage stochastic programming model for US Army aviation asset allocation by military decision-makers. Furthermore, this research provides a novel first formulation of a stochastic programming dial-a-ride problem with multinode refuel and a sound framework for military aviation asset allocation decision-making.

Zmierzch bogów. Przyczynek do poglądów i postaw arystokracji wobec upadku systemu dynastycznego w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej pod koniec I wojny światowej

Twilight of the gods: The contribution to the views and attitudes of aristocracy towards the fall of the dynastic system in Central Eastern Europe at the end of the First World War The Great War 1914–1918, irretrievably destroyed the political order in Europe, which had been maintained unchanged after 1871 with the conviction of the long duration extended into the Belle Époque. It left many traces – among others – in the memoirs and contemporary reports revealing on a micro-historical scale, some of the opinions and attitudes of the aristocracy, which become invisible on the macro-historical scale and are represented by considerable numbers of sources, which allows a reconstruction of important political and military decisions. This article is a contribution presenting – on the basis of a few examples – the end of the political influence of aristocracy in Central and Eastern Europe that coincided with the departure of monarchs from its political scene.

Romanian-French Contacts at the Level Of Military Decision-Makers

In 1932 and 1933 invitations to Generals Gamelin and Petin to visit Bucharest were declined on the basis of more or less objective reasons, this was not the case from 1934 onwards, when the frequency of such French visits to Bucharest increased. There was also a clear change in the level of representation, culminating in the visits of Generals Pétin, Mittelhauser, Georges, Gamelin and Weygand. Another significant moment for the development of the French-Romanian military relations was the presence in Bucharest of General Victor Pétin. It took place in a different context from that of General Gouraud's arrival, with different dimensions and connotations.The consequences of the visits, based primarily on the growing convergence of French and Romanian interests at that time, were felt. On the 8th of June, the Europe Sub-Directorate of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirmed the need to accept Romanian arms requests by means of a commitment to supply on credit and with annual instalments. One of the arguments put forward was that: 'As a faithful ally, Romania, like Yugoslavia, is part of the Small Alliance and the Balkan Alliance, whose policy tends to be in line with the direction of action decidedly favourable to the preservation of the established order, cannot but receive the approval of the Government of the Republic.

Human-AI teams in complex military operations: Soldiers’ perception of intelligent AI agents as teammates in human-AI teams

Military decision-making frequently involves complex problems in non-routine situations with minimal rule-based or automated solutions. As human information processing capabilities are limited, processing the required scale of information increases the decision-makers’ workload, impacting their situational awareness and affecting the quality of soldiers’ decisions. This study uses a route clearance task as a use-case scenario to understand the issues in team-level decision-making in military tasks, the challenges in successfully completing the mission, and the demands placed on AI teammates when working in a human-AI team. We interviewed eight subject matter experts with prior experience in route clearance operations. The themes generated by analyzing the interview transcripts provide insights into soldiers’ perceptions of AI teammates as well as recommendations for successfully integrating human-AI teams in military settings.

The Strategic Corporal, the Tactical General, and the Digital Coup d’oeil – Military Decision-Making and Organizational Competences in Future Military Operations

The Strategic Corporal, the Tactical General, and the Digital Coup d’oeil – Military Decision-Making and Organizational Competences in Future Military Operations

Convoy movement problem for combat supply distribution network on the battlefield

The convoy movement problem involves the routing and scheduling of military convoys. While existing research has focused only on the routing and scheduling of convoys, this paper proposes a novel convoy movement problem that incorporates the location-allocation problem, thus making it significantly more comprehensive and useful for real-world scenarios. Our framing of the problem also has a significant impact on military logistics, enabling the more efficient transportation of military supplies during wartime. Our problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model, and we develop a matheuristic algorithm consisting of two phases that are executed iteratively to solve it. In the first phase, an optimisation solver is used to generate an origin and destination pair for a convoy and the quantity of each supply type to be transported. In the second phase, we employ an ant colony optimisation algorithm to determine the final solution based on the results of the first phase. Computational experiments show that the proposed matheuristic algorithm outperforms a commercial solver in terms of performance and computational time. Furthermore, we analyse the impact of changes to the headway time, time windows, and network density on the problem, thus producing valuable insights for military decision-makers.

Reflexive Control as a Risk Factor for Using OSINT: Insights from the Russia–Ukraine Conflict

Special governmental services, security services of leading companies, and private researchers rely on open-source intelligence (OSINT). With the development of the Internet and social networks, open-data intelligence is increasingly turning from a subtle art into a “mechanical” process—the more data, the better. OSINT professionals’ competence enables verification of information and minimizes the chances of deception unless the intention of the investigation and the data’s locale are previously known to their adversary. In this very case, the hunter can get into a trap dexterously rigged by an adversary. This article discusses the risks of disinformation through open sources in the context of the Soviet concept of “reflexive control”; that is, imposing unfavorable decisions on the enemy through the introduction of incorrect premises, exemplified by the experience of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict since 2014. The article evaluates the influence exerted on the governmental and military decisions by disinformation through open sources, examining several reported cases. Systematization of data on previous attempts at reflexive control, such as Russian information operations, can increase the accuracy of assessing the depth of an enemies’ reflexion, which helps to reveal their operational plans and predict further actions because disinformation often precedes other forms of aggression.

Misunderstanding Myanmar

executive summary: This article examines how, in retrospect, the military coup in Myanmar in February 2021 was a foreseeable consequence of domestic political dynamics in the country and the misperceptions of the international community about the hybrid civilian-military government. main argumentOn February 1, 2021, the military in Myanmar deposed the civilian side of the hybrid civilian-military government to reassert direct military rule. The coup ignited a nationwide resistance against the new military junta, the State Administrative Council, involving many of the nation's decades-old ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), newly created People's Defense Forces (PDFs), and an opposition National Unity Government. Looking back, Myanmar's military saw the 2008 constitution and its hybrid government as the end point for political reform, not as the beginning of a transition. The military's actions during this decade reflect this. Attempts by Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy, and the international community to foster further political changes may have been contributing factors to the military's decision to stage a coup. Myanmar is now embroiled in a multifront civil war involving most of the country's largest ethnic communities, including the Bamar majority, with no end in sight. policy implications • Peaceful resolution of the conflict in Myanmar is not likely at this time. The U.S. and other nations should consider providing limited and targeted military assistance to the EAOs and PDFs. • The Biden administration should expedite implementation of the authorities provided in the BURMA Act, including the provision of nonlethal assistance to the EAOs and PDFs. The U.S. State Department should rekindle its ties to the EAOs to facilitate nonlethal assistance and efforts to form local governments in areas "liberated" by the EAOs and PDFs. • The U.S. Agency for International Development should shift the delivery of humanitarian assistance to local organizations operating in India and Thailand to more effectively provide aid to refugees and internally displaced persons from the civil war. • The U.S. and other nations should provide financial assistance for efforts to document possible war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the junta's military forces and coordinate this effort with the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, the International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice.

The Hazards of Noise in Military Decision Making and Strategies for Coping

The Hazards of Noise in Military Decision Making and Strategies for Coping

Lines of Efforts in Order to Improve the Military Supply Chains Performance in Military Operations

Abstract Supply chain resilience plays a critical role in maintaining operational readiness and effectiveness in military operations. However, the unique challenges faced by military supply chains necessitate tailored approaches to enhance resilience. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for optimizing supply chain resilience in military operations. The proposed framework incorporates key elements such as risk assessment, contingency planning, information sharing, and resource allocation. It leverages advanced analytics techniques, including simulation modeling, optimization algorithms, and real-time data integration, to support decision-making and improve resilience. Results demonstrate that the optimized supply chain resilience strategy significantly enhances the military's ability to respond to disruptions, reduce recovery time, and minimize operational downtime. Moreover, the framework identifies critical vulnerabilities and recommends proactive measures to enhance system robustness. By adopting this framework, military organizations can better prepare for and respond to a wide range of supply chain disruptions, ultimately improving operational efficiency and mission success. The findings of this study contribute to the emerging field of military logistics by providing a systematic approach to optimize supply chain resilience and offering valuable insights for military decision-makers.

Future Warfare and Responsibility Management in the AI-based Military Decision-making Process

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology for military use is growing fast. As a result, autonomous weapon systems have been able to erode humans’ decision-making power. Once such weapons have been deployed, humans will not be able to change or abort their targets. Although autonomous weapons have a significant decision-making power, currently they are not able to make ethical choices. This article focuses on the ethical implications of AI integration in the military decision-making process and how the characteristics of AI systems with machine learning (ML) capabilities might interact with human decision-making protocols. The authors suggest that in the future, such machines might be able to make ethical decisions that resemble those made by humans. A detailed and precise classification of AI systems, based on strict technical, ethical, and cultural parameters would be critical to identify which weapon is suitable and the most ethical for a given mission.

Technologies of Decision Support and Proportionality in International Humanitarian Law

Abstract What does proportionality reasoning mean for decision support in international humanitarian law (ihl)? We first consider contemporary ihl commentaries on proportionality as an analogue form of decision support through a paradigmatic example. Over time, proportionality in ihl has changed from being a rule-specific space for discretionary decision making to a much broader compromise-seeking within boundaries marked by law. Today, proportionality is a master norm in ihl, remaking rules by stealth and enabling the accommodation of novel master technologies as lawful. Artificial Intelligence (ai) support for military decision making is one such master technology that resonates particularly well with the inner structure of proportionality thinking: both build on cost-benefit analysis and engender the quantification of the world through data collection. We analyse how cost-benefit analysis and digitalization and algorithmic processing intersect in the U.S. legal context, to then proliferate into U.S. warfare and decision support systems, and onwards into ihl.

Exploring the role of virtual reality in military decision training

Introduction: Simulation methods, including physical synthetic environments, already play a substantial role in human skills training in many industries. One example is their application to developing situational awareness and judgemental skills in defence and security personnel. The rapid development of virtual reality technologies has provided a new opportunity for performing this type of training, but before VR can be adopted as part of mandatory training it should be subjected to rigorous tests of its suitability and effectiveness.Methods: In this work, we adopted established methods for testing the fidelity and validity of simulated environments to compare three different methods of training use-of-force decision making. Thirty-nine dismounted close combat troops from the UK’s Royal Air Force completed shoot/don’t-shoot judgemental tasks in: i) live fire; ii) virtual reality; and iii) 2D video simulation conditions. A range of shooting accuracy and decision-making metrics were recorded from all three environments.Results: The results showed that 2D video simulation posed little decision-making challenge during training. Decision-making performance across live fire and virtual reality simulations was comparable but the two may offer slightly different, and perhaps complementary, methods of training judgemental skills.Discussion: Different types of simulation should, therefore, be selected carefully to address the exact training need.

The utility of the psycholexical approach for identifying military core values: Illustrated in a sample of Swiss career officers and NCOs

ABSTRACT Values have always been a top priority in the military domains of leadership, training, ethical commitment, and psychological research. However, only a few studies have assessed value descriptors and their underlying dimensional structure in military organizations using an empirical psycholexical and factor analytical approach. This research project examined the structure of military values and derived core military values. Two studies were conducted in cooperation with the Swiss Armed Forces. In study 1, 25 military-specific value descriptors were identified based on a psycholexical analysis of military guidelines and in line with expert ratings by executive military leaders. In study 2, a questionnaire was filled out by a sample of 550 military professionals to capture their ratings of values as applied to everyday military decisions and actions. Principal component analysis in combination with Goldberg’s top-down approach delivered five military value categories that reflect the military culture in Switzerland, characterized as (I) freedom, (II) social cohesion, (III) good soldiership, (IV) mutual respect, and (V) military conformity. Results are discussed in light of introducing a novel research approach to assessing the value structure and culture in military organizations.

ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-АНАЛІТИЧНІ ТЕХНОЛОГІЇ ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ ПРИЙНЯТТЯ ВІЙСЬКОВОГО РІШЕННЯ ЗА СТАНДАРТАМИ НАТО ПІД ЧАС ВИКОНАННЯ ЗАВДАНЬ У СФЕРІ ДЕРЖАВНОЇ БЕЗПЕКИ

The military decision in the field of state security is taken by the government or the military command, which uses military force to defend the state from aggression. The military decision at the present stage is taken at different levels of military command (strategic, operational, tactical). Standardization of the military decision-making process according to NATO standards opens the way for the wide use of information and analytical technologies by the management bodies of the unit in the planning of service and combat operations in the field of state security. The presence of an information and analytical system for supporting management processes in the automated management system of the unit staff allows to accelerate the process of making military decisions by the brigade management body, as well as to ensure effective interaction and better implementation of the combat capabilities of subordinate units and subunits. The article discusses the issues of implementing information and analytical technologies in the process of making a military decision in accordance with NATO standards in the implementation of service and combat tasks. On the basis of the automated control system of the unit command post with the use of the Arc View GIS version 3.3 geographic information system, the sequence of work of the structural units of the management body at the stages of development, analysis and comparison of options for the method of performing the service and combat task is proposed. Standardization of the procedures of the process of making a military decision by the tactical command bodies leads to the use of automated control tools at the unit command post in order to improve the methods of work of the staff officers and leads to a reduction in its organizational and staffing structure.

ПРОБЛЕМНІ ПИТАННЯ СТВОРЕННЯ ТА ВПРОВАДЖЕННЯ АВТОМАТИЗОВАНОГО НАВЧАЛЬНОГО КОМАНДНОГО ПУНКТУ У НАВЧАЛЬНИЙ ПРОЦЕС ВИЩОГО ВІЙСЬКОВОГО НАВЧАЛЬНОГО ЗАКЛАДУ

The most important reserve for increasing the effectiveness of the military management activities of the commander and headquarters of the unit in the preparation of combined arms combat is to provide the command and control body with more complete, reliable and operational information about the situation and conditions of hostilities and, on this basis, conduct high-quality and quick analysis to form a plan of action, get ahead of the enemy and achieving surprise. A promising way to improve the process of military decision-making by command and control units is the introduction of a decision support system. The decision support system is the central component of the automated command and control system that adequately reflects the real conditions, means of armed struggle and takes into account the laws of their functioning and mutual relations between them. The article deals with the issues of creating and introducing into the educational process an automated training command post for command and control of troops and subunits. On the basis of the simulation class of the academy, a project of an automated TCP control unit (subdivision) was developed, which makes it possible to automatically reproduce the process of making a military decision by G/S-structural units of the headquarters of a military formation according to NATO standards in an automated mode using a PC-based workstation. It is proposed to build a local network using a mixed type topology: "ring" and "passive star". Such a network structure simplifies the procedure for increasing the number of workstations and facilitates the maintenance and operation of the TCP. The composition of the tactical control unit includes a server, workstations of officers of the structural divisions of the headquarters, multi-channel communication consoles and an interactive whiteboard. The minimum requirements for the proposed network architecture are substantiated. It is shown that a geographic information system is a necessary component of the automated workplace, which implements a full set of functions for working with geodata necessary for a military command and control body. This was done on the basis of the Arc View GIS software package version 3.3. The list of capabilities of the proposed hardware-software complex of the TCP allows us to assert that this complex meets the requirements of at least a class C2 automated control system. The benefits of the implementation of the TCP are in the growth of the volume of information that the staff officers analyze, the high quality and reliability of the data, the comprehensive validity of the conclusions and proposals made, the reduction in the time spent on assessing the situation and making informed rational decisions throughout all seven stages of the standardized MDMP process.