Defense Problem Research Articles

Re-Sovereignising Africa in the Context of the New World Order Formation

This article is devoted to an examination of both the theoretical and practical aspects of the strengthening of sovereignty on the African continent. The first part of the article comprises a critical analysis of the ‘conventional’ social sciences, concluding that there is no enough literature addressing the issue of sovereignty. The theoretical part of the article also provides a matrix of conjugations of concepts, both synonymous (sovereignty and security) and antonymous to the former (hegemony and neocolonialism). The article then goes on to present the main classifications of types of sovereignty, hegemony and neocolonialism as interpreted by leading Soviet, Russian, Western and African scholars. The theoretical framework of the study is based on the works of the prominent Russian intellectual V.L. Tsymbursky, who distinguished between ‘sovereignty of fact’ and ‘sovereignty of recognition’, and also divided the political and legal nature of sovereignty. This framework is used to examine both the current situation in the Sahel and the broader African context, and the unprecedented rise in efforts to strengthen sovereignty in Africa that took place in the 1970s and 1980s, coinciding with the peak of the Non-Aligned Movement’s and the UNCTAD’s activities. The author identifies the problem of sovereignty defense (ensuring comprehensive security) in the declarations of the BRICS summits in 2009–2022. Conclusions are drawn about the ‘double evolution’ of the external structures of ‘geopolitical recognition’ that took place immediately after the collapse of the USSR and in recent years, when the erosion of the Western-centric system is observed. The final part of the study draws parallels between the Russian and African approaches to the defense of sovereignty in the current world system and concludes that lessons of the previous attempt to consolidate the ‘Global South’ (1970s–1980s) should be taken into account.

Catch the Cyber Thief: A Multi-Dimensional Asymmetric Network Attack–Defense Game

This paper presents a novel multi-dimensional asymmetric game model for network attack–defense decision-making, called “Catch the Cyber Thief”. The model is built upon the concept of partially observable stochastic games (POSG) and is designed to systematically incorporate multi-dimensional asymmetry into network attack–defense problems. The attack agent is called a “thief” who wants to control a key host by exploring the unfamiliar network environment, and the defense agent is called a “police” who needs to catch the opponent before its goal is accomplished. The results indicate that the asymmetry of network attack and defense is not only influenced by attack and defense strategies but also by spatio-temporal factors such as the attacker’s initial position, network topology, and defense lag time. In addition, we have found that there may exist the “attack rhythm,” which makes “how to maintain a good attack rhythm” and “how to generate a robust defense strategy against different attackers” worth exploring. Compared with existing attack–defense game models, our game model can better generate a direct mapping relationship with real elements, enabling us to understand network attack and defense interactions better, recognize security risks, and design defense strategies that can directly serve real-world decision-making.

Factors of Political Participation of Beginner Voters Not Using Their Voting Rights in Elections in West Java

This study aims to examine the factors that influence the political participation of novice voters not using their voting rights in elections in West Java. The method used in this research is to use a qualitative approach, namely the descriptive method. This research will provide an opportunity for subjects (first-time voters) to answer the questions asked according to their own experiences, and not based on the benchmark answers that have been made by researchers. This means that first-time voters behave and act in such a way as to feel free to use their knowledge and experience of the topics offered. The conclusion of this research is that there are several factors that encourage students of Langlangbuana University to use their voting rights during elections. Some of the factors found are factors of political stimulation, in order to realize the importance of using voting rights. Then the second factor is the factor of the characteristics of the person, because those with a social character who have great social concern for social, political, economic, socio-cultural, and defense problems, usually want to be involved in political activities. The third is the factor of the social environment, and the last is the factor of political education that novice voters get. Most of the students of Langlangbuana University already have care and awareness about the importance of their voting rights in the election, and have desires and hopes for the people they will choose as leaders in this country.

Research on the Duty Lawyer's Function of Effective Advocacy in Misdemeanor Cases of Guilty Plea

In the era of misdemeanour, the contradiction between the increasing number of misdemeanour cases and the limited judicial resources is prominent. In order to realize the goal of diverging complex and simple cases and reducing the burden of prosecution, the role of guilty plea system in the management of misdemeanour should be fully brought into play. There are many problems in effective defense of on-duty lawyers in guilty plea cases in China. The position of on-duty lawyers is "a witness", the performance guarantee of on-duty lawyers is insufficient, and the supervision mechanism of on-duty lawyers is missing. In the future, China needs to clarify the functional positioning of duty lawyers, adjusts the provisions on duty lawyers' involvement time, litigation rights and defense duties, and improve the supervision mechanism of duty lawyers' performance.

Problems of civil protection of residential buildings in the cities of Ukraine in the context of sustainable development

The problems of civil defense (CD) of the population are relevant in the formation of new residential buildings and the reconstruction of existing residential areas from the point of view of urban planning organization of residential areas in the cities of Ukraine. The need to determine the compliance of the regulatory and legal provision of the civil defense process and the principles and techniques of the formation of residential buildings with protective structures in the conditions of military operations is one of the primary tasks. The largest number of defensive structures is being built in cities close to the existing front line. New requirements for the construction of protective structures form a new look of modern Ukrainian cities based on the latest research on threats of a military and terrorist nature. The existing methods of ensuring CD expose the lack of comprehensiveness in solving this problem. The need to provide residential buildings with protective structures exposes the need for rethinking their typology, implementing the latest scientific and technical achievements. The analysis of the existing situation of protective structures (shelters and storages) and the trend of building new ones indicates the problems faced by the spheres of architecture, urban planning and civil defense of Ukraine. Fragmentation and episodic nature in the provision of civil protection can be understood as a forced response to current challenges, however, in the future, this all-encompassing field must also be large-scale and take into account modern trends - sustainable development and the creation of a truly safe space for people and the surrounding environment.

Collective action problems in planetary defense

In recent years, growing awareness of potential threats posed by near-Earth objects (NEOs) has led to increased interest in developing and implementing planetary defense measures. International cooperation and public support are crucial to ensuring the long-term success of planetary defense initiatives. However, a number of economic, political, legal, and social issues stand in the way of effective large-scale cooperation in pursuing planetary defense. This article examines the major challenges to international cooperation in planetary defense. The article begins by considering the major types of collective action problems facing international collaboration toward planetary defense. The article then examines the way in which adjacent space-related aspects of international affairs influence the arena of planetary defense. The article then analyzes the legal aspects of these cooperation problems, focusing on sources of perceived uncertainty that interfere with effective development of norms for cooperation. The article then proposes various possible strategies for avoiding cooperation problems and increasing collective buy-in. Noteworthy examples include the use of treaties as pre-commitment devices (which parties agree to undertake in order to limit their future options and commit themselves to pre-established lines of conduct) and amendments to existing legal frameworks to decrease perceived uncertainty and promote objective standards of cooperation. The article concludes by reflecting on the importance of promoting a widespread cultural perspective that emphasizes the pursuit of collective planetary welfare over competing national interests.

Optimal Attack and Defense for Reinforcement Learning

To ensure the usefulness of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in real systems, it is crucial to ensure they are robust to noise and adversarial attacks. In adversarial RL, an external attacker has the power to manipulate the victim agent's interaction with the environment. We study the full class of online manipulation attacks, which include (i) state attacks, (ii) observation attacks (which are a generalization of perceived-state attacks), (iii) action attacks, and (iv) reward attacks. We show the attacker's problem of designing a stealthy attack that maximizes its own expected reward, which often corresponds to minimizing the victim's value, is captured by a Markov Decision Process (MDP) that we call a meta-MDP since it is not the true environment but a higher level environment induced by the attacked interaction. We show that the attacker can derive optimal attacks by planning in polynomial time or learning with polynomial sample complexity using standard RL techniques. We argue that the optimal defense policy for the victim can be computed as the solution to a stochastic Stackelberg game, which can be further simplified into a partially-observable turn-based stochastic game (POTBSG). Neither the attacker nor the victim would benefit from deviating from their respective optimal policies, thus such solutions are truly robust. Although the defense problem is NP-hard, we show that optimal Markovian defenses can be computed (learned) in polynomial time (sample complexity) in many scenarios.

Problematic issues of legal regulation of participation of an advocate in criminal proceedings for the provision of professional legal assistance to participants in such proceedings

The article determines that, at first glance, the legal regulation of the activities of an advocate in criminal proceedings is well regulated, complies with international standards and does not require any adjustment.
 The article determines that, at first glance, the legal regulation of the activities of an advocate in criminal proceedings is sufficiently regulated, complies with international standards and does not require any adjustment. However, as practice shows, many problems arise in the implementation of criminal procedural law based on conflicts and gaps in it. Among them, a major place is occupied by the problems of defense, representation and other types of professional legal assistance to participants in criminal proceedings by an advocate.
 The article examines the state of legal regulation of participation of an advocate in criminal proceedings to provide professional legal assistance to the participants of such proceedings. The authors analyze the absence of the right of the victim and his/her representative to engage an expert in criminal proceedings on contractual terms, other restrictions on the rights of the victim and his or her representative to collect evidence, the right to review the pre-trial investigation materials before its completion, no right to receive a copy of the notice of suspicion and indictment, no right to file a request to the investigating judge for temporary access to things or documents, as well as the right to appeal against a preventive measure applied to a suspect/accused on the grounds of its leniency, etc.
 The article also analyzes the rights of a representative of a civil plaintiff or a civil defendant in criminal proceedings in relation to the rights provided for by the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine, the author draws attention to the need to provide representation for another owner or possessor of property in legal relations regarding the right to file a petition to cancel the arrest of property in whole or in part, and considers the procedural status of a witness's advocate and a whistleblower's advocate.
 The article proposes amendments to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine in the context of legal regulation of participation of an advocate in criminal proceedings to provide professional legal assistance to the participants of such proceedings.

The role of heterogeneity in autonomous perimeter defense problems

When is heterogeneity in the composition of an autonomous robotic team beneficial and when is it detrimental? We investigate and answer this question in the context of a minimally viable model that examines the role of heterogeneous speeds in perimeter defense problems, where defenders share a total allocated speed budget. We consider two distinct problem settings and develop strategies based on dynamic programming and on local interaction rules. We present a theoretical analysis of both approaches and our results are extensively validated using simulations. Interestingly, our results demonstrate that the viability of heterogeneous teams depends on the amount of information available to the defenders. Moreover, our results suggest a universality property: across a wide range of problem parameters the optimal ratio of the speeds of the defenders remains nearly constant.

Extension Theorems for General Lotto Games With Applications to Network Security

The General Lotto game is a well-studied model where two opposing players strategically allocate a limited amount resources to multiple contests. In the classic setup, each contest represents an individual battlefield with an associated value, and the objective is to maximize the accumulated value by winning individual battlefields. In this paper, we consider scenarios beyond the classic setup, where (i) the notion of a battlefield is generalized to individual contests, (ii) success on a contest can depend on securing subsets of battlefields, and (iii) the winner of a battlefield can be based on alternate winning rules other than the classic winner-take-all rule. Our main results demonstrate that having an equilibrium solution to a single contest scenario can provide immediate equilibrium characterizations for two important generalizations: 1) the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">linear-count extension</i> , where performance is measured by the cumulative weight of the contests that are won. 2) The <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">weakest-link extension</i> (best-shot), where one player must win <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">all</i> (at least one) of the constituent contests in order to earn any value. We demonstrate the applicability of these extensions to a general class of network path defense problems. In particular, our results can generate exact solutions to series-parallel networks, as well as provide bounds on equilibrium payoffs bounds for arbitrary networks. To conclude, we provide equilibrium solutions to a novel class of contests with non-linear favoritism winning rules.

Prospects for improving the special physical training of the cadets of the Security Service of Ukraine

Abstract. The change in the military and political situation in the world, the appearance of new types of weapons, the latest approaches to the conduct of hostilities, the constant arms race - this requires us to constantly change approaches and improve the training of military professionals, increase the requirements for their physical and mental readiness to perform tasks as assigned . Carrying out a number of reforms in the training of military specialists of the security and defense sector requires us to analyze and fundamentally change the training programs of combat training, taking into account the latest approaches, forms and methods of using troops. The formation of the national security system of Ukraine takes place at the expense of the multi-vector work of all branches of government. The Security Service of Ukraine plays a significant role in the defense capability of the state in many areas of work, namely: it carries out information and analytical work in the interests of the effective conduct of internal and external activities by state authorities and management of Ukraine, solving problems of defense, socio-economic construction, scientific and technical progress, ecology and other issues related to the national security of Ukraine. One of the important factors is the training of qualified professionals, and especially the formation of important physical qualities for high-quality performance of assigned tasks.&#x0D; Physical training is organized and conducted taking into account the tasks assigned to the units and bodies of the SBU and the specifics of their official activities, geographical conditions, the level of preparedness of the personnel, as well as the experience of conducting special operations and exercises in the interests of ensuring the security of Ukraine. Special physical training plays a significant role in the training of military personnel. Implementation of tasks is achieved in classes by working out exercises in physical and fire training, educational and training meetings, training in shooting ranges and on training grounds, classes in sports sections, holding competitions in official and applied sports and other types of sports.

Increased the Role of Defense Human Resources in Facing of the Threats

National defense is all efforts to defend state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the safety of the entire nation from threats and disturbances to the integrity of the nation and state. The problems of national defense, which are increasingly varied in the development of the threat spectrum, certainly require reliable human resources for implementing or making national defense policies. Indonesia with a large population certainly has great potential in the procurement of defense resources. However, if the quality cannot keep up with current threat dynamics and technology then the number is meaningless. The purpose of this research is to find out how to increase the role of Indonesian defense human resources to deal with threats that occur to realize national security. The research method used in this study is a qualitative descriptive analysis method with data collection techniques through literature and library studies. The results of this study are that the government’s role is very important in increasing the superiority of defense human resources. Such as providing training, education, providing motivation, and synergizing with institutions and parties related to the defense industry to improve HR capabilities in dealing with technological advances

Construction of network access Layer security protection System based on zero trust architecture

In order to further solve the problem of weak attack defense existing in the traditional network architecture, improve the shortcomings of network architecture in processing capacity, hardware expansion, security protection and other aspects, and better cope with the security challenges under the new network architecture, this article aims to provide more secure computer information exchange and sharing services for enterprises. A network access layer security protection system based on zero trust architecture is constructed. At the same time, the zero-trust architecture evaluation algorithm based on fuzzy theory is used to construct the security protection model. System tests show that more than 100 hosts on the enterprise access layer network use switches that support SNMP, and the security protection system at the network access layer processes more than 1500 attacks. In addition, malicious IP address changes are effectively prevented and the security protection level is greatly improved.

Систематизация статистических данных о ликвидации пожаров и чрезвычайных ситуаций, возникающих в период специальной военной операции

Purpose. The article provides systematic data on the situation with fires in the Donetsk People's Republic occurring after air and missile strikes of the armed forces of Ukraine and for other reasons in 2022 and in the first half of 2023. The main objectives of the study are as follows: systematization of daily digital indicators of hazardous events during a special military operation in Ukraine and identification of the main types and scale of fires to which fire and rescue units respond during military conflicts. The relevance of the study is accounted for the lack of systematic data on the practice of actual solving modern civil defense problems. Methods. In addition to general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, the author used empirical methods of describing and comparing texts of the daily operational reports of EMERCOM of DPR on the composition and content of events, their digital indicators related to the real chronology of the military conflict events. Findings. The article assesses the number of fires caused by enemy ammunition strikes and other reasons. Systematized digital data for the considered period of the military conflict are summarized in a tabular form, which creates the possibility of their further scientific processing. Research application field. The outcomes of the study can be used when defining the composition and content of measures to combat fires occurring during military conflicts or resulting from them. Conclusions. The study allowed the authors to draw a number of conclusions. 1. Damage caused by fire in military conflicts must be taken into account independently – damage from attacks by enemy ammunition should be assessed separately from damage from non-military causes. 2. Means and forces of EMERCOM and other bodies are involved in eliminating consequences of emergencies and suppressing fires occurring due to military conflicts or resulting from these conflicts. 3. Statistical data on functioning the unified state system for alerting about emergencies and their elimination (RSChS) in the future must be analyzed with consideration of the data from the reports of EMERCOM of DPR, EMERCOM of LPR and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of DPR, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of LPR, considering them as valid empirical material reliable for scientific research.

New Electromagnetic Threat Protection Systems

The issues discussed in the article refer to a new category of military operations - electronic warfare (EW). In the context of EW, the high-power microwave (HPM) technology currently enables remote disturbances of operations lasting until the circuit is reset or the electronic system is destroyed. The article examines the problem of protection and defence against using HPM pulses. The research used a compact HPM generator developed at the Polish National Centre for Nuclear Research. It has a power of 3MW, an operating frequency of 2.9 GHz and a 3 μs pulse duration, emitted with a repetition rate of 1, 50, 100 and 250 Hz. The developed HPM pulse protection systems were subjected to intense field exposure in the open space of the training ground, in its land and sea sections, and in the circuit with a reverberation chamber. The distribution of the generated field on each measurement station was tested using a high-power D-dot probe, from which the data was transferred to the recording system via an optical fibre link. In all cases, this distribution turned out to be repetitive. The field probe with a logger was used for measurements inside composite structures. Unprotected electronic systems in hobby drones, mobile phones, cameras and systems using sensors based on micro-mechanical units were exposed. An analysis was conducted to check the operation of electronic circuits, effects caused and phenomena occurring during exposures to intense microwave radiation. It was found that the developed system meets the design assumptions in conditions similar to actual exposure to HPM weapons. Screening efficiency has been determined for various spatial configurations of radiation beam incidence. The presented systems for the protection and defence against the effects of HPM weapons implemented in the technology of composite hybrid absorbers enable effective elimination of electromagnetic pulse effects.

Destabilizing Attack and Robust Defense for Inverter-Based Microgrids by Adversarial Deep Reinforcement Learning

The droop controllers of inverter-based resources (IBRs) can be adjustable by grid operators to facilitate regulation services. Considering the increasing integration of IBRs at power distribution level systems like microgrids, cyber security is becoming a major concern. This paper investigates the data-driven destabilizing attack and robust defense strategy based on adversarial deep reinforcement learning for inverter-based microgrids. Firstly, the full-order high-fidelity model and reduced-order small-signal model of typical inverter-based microgrids are recapitulated. Then the destabilizing attack on the droop control gains is analyzed, which reveals its impact on system small-signal stability. Finally, the attack and defense problems are formulated as Markov decision process (MDP) and adversarial MDP (AMDP). The problems are solved by twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (TD3) algorithm to find the least effort attack path of the system and obtain the corresponding robust defense strategy. The simulation studies are conducted in an inverter-based microgrid system with 4 IBRs and IEEE 123-bus system with 10 IBRs to evaluate the proposed method.

Indonesia's Sea Defense Strategy in the IKN Nusantara: Smart Defense and Dual Strategy

The relocation of the new capital city (IKN) of the archipelago to the East Kalimantan region has a national development plan in which there are defense problems. The development of defense and security is very necessary to pay attention to strive for protective measures to anticipate external threats, one of which is reviewing from the side of Indonesia's sea defense. Indonesia's sea defense in the construction of the new capital city provides a view to improve defense strategies, especially in Indonesian sea waters. This research uses qualitative by describing with a good structure through descriptive analysis which is obtained from the study of qualified and current literature. The results of this study show that Indonesia's sea defense strategy in IKN Nusantara with efforts to implement smart defense and dual strategy is able to provide a good solution for Indonesia's sea defense.

α-Terpineol affects social immunity, increasing the pathogenicity of entomopathogenic nematodes to subterranean termites (Isoptera)

Biocontrol of subterranean termites is largely impeded by their social immune responses. Studies on biocontrol agents combined with natural insecticides and their possible effects on the immune defense mechanisms of termites are limited. In this study, we investigated the effects of a combined biocontrol strategy using a plant-derived insect ATPase inhibitor, α-terpineol, with the entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) Steinernema carpocapsae against the subterranean termite Coptotermes formosanus Shiraki. Survival assays showed that even a low lethal concentration of α-terpineol significantly increased the EPNs-induced virulence in C. formosanus. α-terpineol treatment majorly inhibited the activity of Na+- K+- ATPase, which disturbed the EPNs-induced enhancement of locomotor activity and grooming behavior in termites treated with the combined strategy. Furthermore, the combination treatment had a synergistic inhibitory effect on innate immune responses in C. formosanus, which were measured as changes in the expression of immune-related genes and activities of immune system enzymes. In conclusion, α-terpineol can weaken the immune defense of termites against EPNs at low lethal concentrations, and is a suitable non-synthetic insecticide to prove the biocontrol efficiency of EPNs on C. formosanus. This study provides a theoretical basis and technical reference for a novel biocontrol strategy that promises to overcome the problems of host immune defense in termites.

Equipment classification based differential game method for advanced persistent threats in Industrial Internet of Things

This paper is dedicated to solving the problem of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attack and defense in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Due to the diversity of IIoT equipment and the inconsistency of protection capabilities, it is difficult for the existing uniform defense strategy and the random defense strategy to achieve ideal results. Considering that both attackers and defenders aim to achieve maximum benefits by paying the minimum cost, as well as the differences between devices, this paper proposes an equipment classification based differential game method for APT in IIoT. Firstly, all equipment is divided into two categories according to their protective capabilities. Secondly, the APT attack and defense process is mathematically described, and the corresponding differential game problem is formulated and analyzed theoretically. Finally, the theoretical results of this method are verified by various experiments, including the comparisons with the uniform defense strategy, the random defense strategy, and the latest model.

Research on game strategy of underwater attack and defense process in typical situation

Aiming at the problem of underwater attack and defense in typical situations, a mathematical model of three-party attack and defense problem composed of torpedo, submarines and anti-torpedo torpedo is established. Under the condition of considering three-party game confrontation, the three-party game problem is transformed into the pursuit and escape game problem between the submarine and torpedo, and the interception and evasion game problem between the submarine launched ATT and the torpedo. Based on the optimal control theory and differential game theory, the three-party optimal game problem is studied, and the three-party game performance evaluation function is designed based on the optimal performance of the two parties of pursuit and escape and the two parties of interception and evasion. According to the optimal necessary condition of the bilateral extremum, the strategy of pursuing, escaping, blocking and avoiding in the three-party game is deduced. The effectiveness of the game strategy designed in the underwater attack and defense process is verified by simulations. The results show that the game strategy can improve the effects of submarine escape, anti-torpedo torpedo interception and torpedo attack.