Military Infrastructure Research Articles

Law, Hybrid Threats and Counter-Terrorism

The article analyzes the concept of hybrid threats formed in recent decades. It shows that in many well-known documents there is a direct connection between hybrid threats and the concept of a hybrid war, which includes various asymmetric actions that are multifaceted, not crossing the certain threshold permitting to characterize them as a classic armed conflict. These may include fueling tension hot points; economic and information pressure; threat by force; increasing of intolerance and xenophobia; cyberattacks and cyber threats; formation of military infrastructure in the border zone; the use of transnational organized crime in all its manifestations; spread of extremist and terrorist ideology. The hybrid threat is also considered in the context of causing indirect damage to basic values (for example, the fight against it may in itself lead to the rejection of democratic values in the country). It is highlighted that terrorism is also being studied as a hybrid threat. It's due to the fact that the growth of terrorist influence and the use of network technologies by criminal organizations makes it possible to conduct a diverse offensive against basic democratic values. The globalization of terrorism leads to the fact that each state feels its influence, builds an appropriate legal policy based on the strengthening of the powers of law enforcement agencies and the introduction of additional restrictions on human rights. It is shown that for a long time in a number of European countries terrorism was not considered as an affirmative criminal offence (criminal liability came depending on the act committed, often without indicating terrorist goals). A significant step was the adoption of the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism (CETS No. 196, Warsaw, May 16, 2005), which clearly refers to the notion of a terrorist crime.

Dynamic Mechanical Response, Cracking Behavior, and Stress Intensity Factors of Cement Mortar Specimens with Open and Closed Flaws

Major civil and military infrastructures are usually located in mountainous areas with complex geological structures. When subjected to impact loads caused by operational blasting or seismic activities, the inherent flaws or joints in the hosting rock mass may grow irreversibly and eventually and cause the entire structure to collapse. It is, therefore, desirable to understand the mechanical and cracking behaviors of flawed rock structures under dynamic loads. In this work, the cement mortar is used to make the plate specimens, and two different types of flaws, i.e., the open and the closed (resin-filled) flaws, with different inclination angles from 0° to 90° with respect to the loading direction are prefabricated. The nominal strength, crack initiation, and failure characteristics of the specimens under different loading rates are investigated using the split Hopkinson bar (SHPB) system in conjunction with the digital image correlation (DIC) technique. The results indicate that the dynamic nominal strength of both two types of specimens shows similar loading rate and flaw angle dependency, specifically, monotonically increasing with the increase of the loading rate while increasing first and then decreasing with increasing the flaw inclination angle. The strength of specimens with an open flaw is obviously lower than that of the specimens with a closed flaw at a similar loading rate. Besides, the failure mode of specimens with an open flaw is mainly an X-shaped tensile or tensile-shear mixed form regardless of the flaw inclination, whereas the resin-filled flawed specimens always fail in the form of an atypical X-shaped shear pattern with obvious randomness. Moreover, the stress field around the crack tip is carefully extracted based on the obtained displacement field from DIC analysis; the stress intensity factors at crack initiation onset also show flaw inclination- and loading rate-dependent behavior. The strength, cracking behavior, and stress field around the tip during the dynamic loading are closely related to the friction effect between the flaw surfaces. The findings in this work provide some basic insights into the cracking mechanism of rock with open and closed flaws under dynamic loading conditions.

An Ecological Redoubt: Assisting the Migration of Sensitive Flora in the Central Swiss Alps

Switzerland’s alpine ecologies are uniquely affected by climate change. Many of the country’s plant species are migrating higher in altitude due to rising annual mean temperature with extensive habitat loss expected in as early as 2050. Given the compounded effects of the growing tourism economy and the expanding presence of aggressive pioneer plant species, regionally significant alpine meadows have been displaced before their sensitive and rare plant communities can adapt. This impending loss of biodiversity is quickly becoming a national ecological redoubt. Situated at the crossroads of the Oberalp, the St. Gotthard, and the Furka passes, the town of Andermatt lies at the eastern end of the Urseren Valley, a floristically diverse region of Central Switzerland. Abandoned military bunkers and fortresses (Fort Stöckli and Artillery Works Gütsch) overlook Andermatt as relics of the Swiss National Redoubt defence plan. This project investigates how specific military infrastructure integrated into the landscape can be repurposed into living archives for research, preservation, and propagation of alpine plant communities. Can this design strategy combining active and passive interventions mitigate anthropocentric pressures on these alpine ecologies while providing a new purpose to outmoded military infrastructure? Will a strategically managed ecological retreat preserve Swiss identity beyond the non-human?

«Морская составляющая» общественно-географических исследований в постсоветской России: основные тренды и приоритеты развития

Originated in the 1960s, the ‘marine branch’ of Soviet, and later Russian, economic and social geography contributed to the diversification of geographical science and expanded its scope. The new branch was a product of the rapid growth of the marine economy and the country’s military infrastructure and settlement system starting to gravitate towards the World Ocean. This article uses bibliographical and scientometric materials to explore the factors, features and priorities of the development of the Russian post-Soviet human geography of the World Ocean. Special attention is paid to path dependence in the evolution of this branch of geography (associated with the established professional community, the fundamental research themes and the basic concepts) and the emergence of new growth poles within the scope of marine human geography. Although this subdiscipline showed a high degree of resilience in the first years after the demise of the USSR, it became marginalised from the scientific mainstream. The interest in marine studies revived only in the early 2000s, gaining momentum after a decade of desolation. The renaissance was due to new transboundary marine research, the analyses of the geopolitical and geoeconomic aspects of the marine economy and close attention given to coastal border areas (particularly the prospects and risks of the socio-economic development of these territories within the continent-ocean dichotomy). The marine focus of Russia’s geostrategy will generate steady demand for a national human geography of the World Ocean, including its inevitable humanities component. Another trend is the involvement of marine human geography in cross-branch geographical synthesis. The study also identifies Russian research and publication centres excelling at marine human geography.

Novaya Zemlya Archipelago in the Defense System of the Soviet Arctic During the Great Patriotic War

This analyzes the significance of Novaya Zemlya in the course of military operations in the Arctic during World War II. Data on the deployment of troops in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago and nearby islands are provided based on an analysis of archive documents. The military history of the archipelago is examined from the creation of the Belomorskaya military flotilla in 1941 until its disbandment in April 1945. Minor importance of the region at the initial stage of the war is replaced by an increase in the activity of the German naval forces in 1942, especially submarines. The result of this was the expansion of military operations in the Arctic Sea theater, expressed in enemy attacks on polar stations and sea convoys. In response, the Soviet command created a naval base on Novaya Zemlya and increased the fleet’s ship composition. By the end of the war, there was a qualitative and quantitative increase in military infrastructure. The natural and climatic factor had a huge impact on the conduct of military operations, because of it the main combat activity of the warring parties directly depended on the polar summer and navigation period. The experience of the main Department of the Northern Sea route in the development of the region in the 1930s was taken into account. The author concluded that the possession of Novaya Zemlya was key both for the control of navigation and for the possession of the entire surrounding region. Despite all efforts, the enemy still failed to disrupt Maritime navigation in the Arctic, and to break the courageous resistance of military seamen and employees of the Main Administration of the Northern Sea Way.

Оборонные проекты PESCO и НАТО: координация или конкуренция?

The EU’s PESCO projects and NATO’s High Visibility Projects are aimed at strengthening the defence capabilities of the member states of these two structures, creating new military technologies, jointly purchasing equipment and weapons, optimizing countries' defence spending and coordinating the transformation of their armed forces structures in accordance with collective interests. At the same time, the projects of the EU and NATO have different tasks that align with the foreign policy goals of these different in nature structures. Due to the participation of various states in each of them, primarily the United States in NATO, a number of contradictions between them remain. However, most of them are offset by the EU–NATO cooperation. The latter has significantly intensified since 2016. Two bilateral declarations were signed and two packages of measures for their implementation were adopted. The parties have strengthened political cooperation, interaction during operations, coordination of defence planning, they jointly develop projects for the formation of military infrastructure, develop deepen military-technical cooperation in areas of common interest. The article analyzes the PESCO and High Visibility Projects projects, compares them and identifies the links and differences between them. It is substantiated that, despite the various tasks, in the conditions of the modern transformation of the world order and the evolution of threats to their member states, the EU and NATO are expanding coordination in defence planning and developing a division of responsibilities between the two. The PESCO and High Visibility Projects are being implemented in full synchronization with each other, with the participation of a number of EU member states, but not-NATO members, in NATO projects and vice versa. Rather, the projects complement each other, although the scope of PESCO is much broader due to the peculiarities of the nature of the European Union as a regional integration association. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is a spatial approach. It is substantiated that the EU and NATO, both being already transnational political spaces, form a superstructure space of EU-NATO cooperation, in which the actors of the first level – these two structures themselves – and the second level – the states – interact more intensively than with external actors, participate in the struggle for power, redistribution of resources, form the identity of this transnational space. It is concluded that in the future, coordination between the PESCO and High Visibility Projects, as well as between the EU and NATO in general, will expand.

Jugoslovenska narodna armija u Banjaluci (1945-1992)

In the military-territorial organization of Yugoslavia after the Second World War, Banja Luka was a part of the 6th Army, whose headquarters were in Sarajevo. In the beginning of 1948, from the former 6th Army, the 7th Military District was formed. The military area of Banja Luka was supposed to be the 5th Corps during the war. In 1983, 58 Yugoslav People's Army war units and 21 Territorial Defense war units were manned by conscripts and material and technical means from the territory of the Banja Luka municipality. As of 1990, the data on 50,624 conscripts in the municipality of Banja Luka were kept. A total of 4,568 conscripts or 2.28% of the total population of the municipality were engaged in all units of the Territorial Defense. For the needs of building the military infrastructure, the Roman Catholic monastery "Nazareth" was nationalized, and in several waves, thousands of Serbian peasants were evicted from the hilly and mountainous area of Manjaca. With the implementation of repressive measures, a wide area whose population belonged to the royalist movement during the Second World War was evicted, and the Yugoslav People's Army military training ground was built on it. Due to a combination of historical circumstances, Banja Luka has become an important center of military education. After the Resolution of the Inform Bureau, in September 1948, the Tank School Center (TSC) was moved from Bela Crkva in Banat, due to the proximity of the Romanian border, to Banja Luka. Over time, this institution developed into the Armored and Mechanized Units School Center "Petar Drapšin". Near Banja Luka, a significant demonstration exercise was performed as a part of the visit of the high US military delegation to Yugoslavia, which began in October 1951. During 1952, representatives of the US military mission visited two tank brigades and the Tank Officer School in Banja Luka. The Army played an important role in modernizing the undeveloped areas of the country, including the wider Banja Luka region, the Bosnian Krajina. Bosnia and Herzegovina benefited significantly from the establishment of the military industry in this republic, which was given strategic importance, due to the expected invasion from the East after 1948. A significant role in the military industry was played by the Aviation Institute 'Cosmos', which has been operating in Banja Luka since 1958. Most of the infrastructure and combat assets of the Fifth Corps of the YPA from Banja Luka were inherited by the First Krajina Corps of the Army of the Republic of Srpska, as the largest corps of the ARS, that played a key role in the defense of the Republic of Srpska during the civil war in the former SR Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Maribor med obema vojnama in vprašanje vojaške infrastrukture

Basing on the research of archival sources and newspapers, the article discusses the urban development of the city of Maribor from the perspective of construction and change of use of the existing military infrastructure, its influence on the city's development and its economic and everyday life in the period between the both world wars. For seventy years after the construction of the Southern Railway (1846), Maribor had been in the centre of traffic routes in the empire. Since one of the biggest military infrastructures in this part of Austria-Hungary was situated in Maribor, the city also had an important military-strategic position. With the downfall of Austria-Hungary and the creation of a new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, the geostrategic position of Maribor changed considerably. Nevertheless, with its position and military infrastructure density, it preserved its important military role even in the new state. The discussed period in the city was thus marked by negotiations between the civil and military administration considering the ownership of the military infrastructure and the paying of its rent.

Стратегия США в Индо-Тихоокеанском регионе и отношения с КНР

The aim of the research is to analyse the US strategy in the Indo-Pacific region and its impact on relations with the PRC. This article examines the basic principles of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy set out in the 2017 US National Security Strategy, in the 2019 report “Indo-Pacific region. Readiness, partnership and assistance of the regional network”, the 2020 US Strategic Approach to China. The balance of forces and the development of relations between the US and the PRC in the Indo-Pacific region are analysed. The originality of the research lies in the fact that the emerging competition between the two states for leading positions in the Indo-Pacific region can be seen in the proposed concept of China “One Belt, One Road” and in the US strategy of “free and open Indo-Pacific strategy”. As a result, it is determined that in recent years, there has been a significant increase in tension in the South China Sea due to the increase in military infrastructure in the disputed territories of the Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands. The Taiwan issue remains a controversial factor in the development of Sino-American relations.

Penal Slavery in Early Modern Scandinavia

Abstract In Scandinavia, a penal institution known as “slavery” existed from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Penal slaves laboured in the creation and maintenance of military infrastructure. They were chained and often stigmatized, sometimes by branding. Their punishment was likened and, on a few occasions, linked to Atlantic slavery. Still, in reality, it was a wholly distinct form of enslavement that produced different experiences of coercion than those of the Atlantic. Such forms of penal slavery sit uneasily in historiographies of punishment but also offers a challenge for the dominant models of global labour history and its attempts to create comparative frameworks for coerced labour. This article argues for the need for contextual approaches to what such coercion meant to both coercers and coerced. Therefore, it offers an analysis of the meaning of early modern penal slavery based on an exceptional set of sources from 1723. In these sources, the status of the punished was negotiated and practiced by guards and slaves themselves. Court appearances by slaves were usually brief—typically revolving around escapes as authorities attempted to identify security breaches. The documents explored in this article are different: They present multiple voices speaking at length, negotiating their very status as voices. From that negotiation and its failures emerge a set of practiced meanings of penal “slavery” in eighteenth-century Copenhagen tied to competing yet intertwined notions of dishonour.

IMPLIKASI UNDANG-UNDANG NOMOR 11 TAHUN 2020 TENTANG CIPTA KERJA BAGI KEMAJUAN INDUSTRI PERTAHANAN INDONESIA (Implication of Law No. 11 of 2020 on Job Creation for the Advancement of Indonesian Defence Industry)

The superiority of a country in defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity can no longer be directly measured by the amount of military infrastructure it has, however it should also be viewed from the aspect of a country’s ability to build a domestic defence industry that can be useful for meeting national and other countries’ needs. As an effort to develop the defence industry ecosystem in Indonesia, in 2020 the Government of the Republic of Indonesia and the Indonesian House of Representatives enacted Law No. 11 of 2020 on Job Creation (Job Creation Law), one of which regulates the opening of opportunities for the private sector to participate in the development of defence industry sector, thereby automatically changing previous arrangement in Law No. 16 of 2012 on Defence Industry. In this article, the author considers that the changes in the Job Creation Law provisions can bring four advantages to the improvement of the Indonesian defence industry in the future.

How rebel groups form in genocide: The Warsaw Ghetto fighters

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is emblematic of armed Jewish resistance to the Holocaust; it should also be emblematic of rebel organization formation and capacity building in the most extreme power asymmetry. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising happened because civilians who were directly experiencing a genocide formed rebel organizations that gained the capacity to hold territory. Drawing from video testimonies and memoirs of survivors, diaries of witnesses, and the work of historians, this study analyzes the formation and evolution of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) to create and begin to validate a generalizable theory on how rebel organizations form in genocide, and how they create the capacity to hold territory from the genocidal opponent. The ŻOB evolved from a violent resistance organization to a rebel organization with a military infrastructure that could hold territory against the Nazis; further, it was this capacity to hold territory that allowed the ŻOB to win the survival of many Jews. These findings offer important insights on the possibility of rebel group mobilization against genocidal persecution, and can be used to understand contemporary genocide resisters.

CONSOLIDATION OF US NATIONAL INTERESTS IN ASIA THROUGH ECONOMIC AND MILITARY AID AND ITS IMPACTS: CASE STUDY OF PAKISTAN, 1947-71

After 1945, the United States of America (USA) was worried about any possible harm to its interests within the Continent of Asia due to the ongoing rapid expansion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Peoples Republic of China (PRC) after 1917 and 1949 respectively. Therefore, as a result of its Russo-Sino-phobia, the USA made alliances with the Asian countries based on their mutual national interests. In those relations, the USA was mostly an economic and military aid donor while its allies were recipients of that US-aid. In return, the USA was utilizing the geo-strategic positions of its allies in Asia to counter the USSR and PRC. Pakistan came into being on August 14, 1947 with poor economic and military conditions at home having a conventional rival (India) on its eastern border. The USA offered friendship to it. Pakistan accepted the US-offer and the US started to utilize Pakistan's geo-strategic position against the USSR and PRC. In return, Pakistan got huge US-aid to improve its economic and military infrastructure. The central theme of this research paper is, 'how the US-aid played its role in economic and military development of Pakistan during 1947-71 and what were its impacts? Key Words: National Interests, Economic and Military Aid, Pakistan-US relations, SEATO, CENTO

Post-phenomenology, consumption and warfare on the urban leisure path, USA

The paper builds on recent literature on post-phenomenology to understand how politics suffuse the everyday experience of walking on an urban leisure path in Tucson, Arizona (USA). Beginning with non-representational accounts of affect, this paper then shifts to post-phenomenology to make sense of the findings on how walking the path is impacted by at least two other influences: the retail consumption infrastructure of shopping centres and advertising, and the military infrastructure of Air Force bases. Post-phenomenology helps us advance our understanding of how these power centers emit affective atmospheres while also situating their incompleteness and inability to fully control the production of subjectivity. By way of auto-ethnographic reflections, this paper displays (1) how retail spills into leisure space, and (2) how the materiality of warfare spills into civilian life. Post-phenomenology is a helpful approach for understanding a politics of affect in the absence of clear intentionality.

Self-sensing ultra-high performance concrete for in-situ monitoring

Owing to the excellent mechanical strength and durability, ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) has been used for ultra-high, large-scale and military infrastructures. Endowing self-sensing properties to UHPC is conducive to realize in-situ monitoring and improve the safety of infrastructures. Therefore, the mechanical, electrical and self-sensing properties of UHPC with stainless steel fibers (SFs) and copper coated steel fibers (CCSFs) were studied in this paper. The results show that the addition of 1.2 vol% CCSFs can effectively improve the deformability of UHPC, as reflected by the improvement in peak compressive strain of 33.7%. UHPC with stainless SFs and CCSFs exhibits good synchronization and repeatability of self-sensing property under three different cyclic loading amplitudes within elastic regime. The highest strain sensitivity of UHPC with stainless SFs under 37.5 MPa of cyclic compressive loading is 26.6. Strain sensitivity of 28.2 is obtained for UHPC containing 1.2 vol% CCSFs under monotonic peak load, along with the monitoring compressive stress ranging from 0 to 125.7 MPa. The electrical resistivity of UHPC with stainless SFs and CCSFs can be used to in-situ monitor the stress, strain and damage development of structures.

Russia and USA in their Rivalry for Arctic: New Stage

The article relates to the geopolitical rivalry in the Arctic unwound in the recent years between the United States and Russia. Both countries claim leading positions here considering the Arctic as a region where the commercial production of hydrocarbon resources is eventually possible. Climate change breaks new ground for the shipping development in the Arctic. It stands to reason that Russia and the United States have redoubled their attention to the Arctic merchant shipping development and are enhancing naval vessels commissioning. Russia and the United States have made significant progress in this regard. However, changes in world politics, growth of contradictions in the world economy have led to stepping up policy of Russia and the United States in the Arctic. To defend their interests, Russia and the United States adopted a series of documents indicating the Arctic policy avenues. The article examines both Russia and the United States approaches to the policy implementation in the Arctic, as well as the future challenges facing the countries. The author finds that the geopolitical rivalry between the leading Arctic states for the Arctic will continue. Being unable to establish commercial production in the Arctic, Russia and the United States will implement the increased focus on the military sphere. The creation of the necessary military infrastructure, the construction of new vessels will become a key objective for both states. In addition, Russia and the United States will expand support for Arctic shipbuilding, which is seen as the main instrument for promoting their economic interests.

AMERICAN ANTI-MISSLE SHIELD, EASTERN EUROPEAN ASSET TO DISCOURAGE BALLISTIC ATTACKS

Abstract: Air-missile defense is a mission of anti-aircraft missile troops known in the field as anti-missile shield. It describes an anti-ballistic area intended for research, discovery, interception and combat of surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles with ballistic trajectory. The existence of the anti-missile shield implies the creation of a security zone of allied states, institutional structures and population that can ensure their functionality and existence, deployed on an alignment (territories of several states), in order to maintain a state of normalcy and security. This defense system must include the threatened states, members of the politico-military alliance, regardless of their economic and military power. The security environment also concerns both the population of those countries and the objectives of great political, economic, strategic, critical and military infrastructure importance.

The image of the Russian Arctic through strategic projects and international events

The article looks into the process of shaping of the Arctic region’s image as part of the policy of modern Russia from the perspective of strategic development projects and international meetings: major international forums, conferences as part of international cooperation. Special attention is being given to the economic activity of the Russian Federation in the Arctic region. While conducting research the author came to the key conclusion that the ongoing strategic development projects and international events are able to influence and form the unique image of the Arctic region and also that there is more than just one image being formed in the politics of modern Russia. The first one (internal) is formed to involve human capacity that can ensure the development of extracting, trade and military infrastructure. The second (external) is based on social sphere and sustainable development of the region which is not being a first priority in the Russian Federation’s policy.

Evolution of the US Arctic Policy

The article examines the development of the US Arctic policy which is reflected in the US strategic documents. The author examines the evolution of doctrinal purposes from those focusing on environmental issues and regional cooperation to those focusing on logistics, security and military infrastructure. The evolution of the US strategic documents is considered in the context of the activities of such actors as Russia, Canada, China and a number of international organizations in the Arctic region. Contradictions and existing and prospective areas of cooperation are noted. The author shows the immutability of the US key strategic guidelines of the United States aimed at securing the status of an Arctic power for the United States and ensuring the promotion and protection of the US interests in the region.

Removal Statement

ABSTRACT Military power relies upon military capabilities, generated by organisations, infrastructure, and defence establishments. This paper highlights the importance of remote warfare to research on the transformation of military power in the contemporary world. It draws attention to the relationship between military capabilities that enable states to intervene in physically distant conflicts and their political legitimacy. It argues that remote warfare is best understood as a family resemblance of legitimacy problems associated with military capabilities, rather than a category of warfare, set of tactics, or strategy. It then identifies a framework for understanding the varied types of legitimacy problems associated with remote warfare: remote warfare consists of a set of problems that examine how military capabilities affect the ability of states to act without violating international norms, governments to act without violating domestic constraints, the ability of governments to control their exposure to interventions at distance, and their ability to avoid responsibility for the consequences. The importance of this approach is highlighted by the way that it helps to explain the importance of controversies over military infrastructure used to support interventions and therefore highlights the importance of work on remote warfare for the wider study of military transformation and military power.