Unconventional Weapons Research Articles

From anthropocentrism to network-centricity: Drones as a tool for transforming modern warfare

Modern wars are characterized by the widespread use of unmanned aerial vehicles, the main combat missions of which are performed by unmanned aerial vehicles. The practice of using drones has been widely studied within the framework of modern military science, at the same time, the specifics of conducting network-centric warfare using remote weapons are currently not fully understood, which determines the relevance of the ongoing research. The novelty of the study is to identify and describe the process of transformation of the classical (anthropocentric) concept of war into a network-centric one due to the introduction of remote weapons. The object of the research is the humanitarian consequences of the introduction of modern types of remote weapons. The process of transformation of modern wars due to the transformation of civilian drones into unconventional weapons has been chosen as the subject of the study. The anthropocentric and humanistic understanding of war and weapons is outdated. Over the past few years, the war has ceased to be understood as a direct and open confrontation. Large-scale wars of attrition were replaced by armed conflicts in which time became the determining factor in the struggle. The basis for the success of military operations is determined by the availability of a high-speed adaptive information and communication network for managing units and weapons. Combining mining, information management and executive elements on the drone platform has made drones a universal striking tool capable of turning any unguided projectile into a precision weapon. This served as the basis for a humanistic reversal that launched the process of reassessing moral principles and making drones a necessary, "morally acceptable" and unconventional weapon. The asymmetry of modern wars has made "victory" and "humanitarian catastrophe," "humanism" and "murder" synonymous.

Blunt weapons in the roman imperial army. A multidisciplinary approach to the clava from experimental archaeology to forensic anthropology

The wooden club (clava) is rarely associated with the image of Roman soldiers, perhaps because it was considered an unconventional weapon with ethnic attributes and/or specific combat roles. Nonetheless, it is attested in the archaeological record and some ancient texts. The panoply and the military career of the soldiers represented on the tombstones of Catavignus son of Ivomagus (1st century AD) and Marcus Aurelius Alexis (early 3rd century AD) offered us the possibility to reconsider the use of the club as an offensive weapon within the Imperial Roman army. The authors made a replica of the clava using historical tools and manufacturing techniques. A series of tests have then been performed to investigate the use of the club in combat. The possible traumas on human targets were also evaluated with a forensic anthropological approach. The results suggest the essential role of flexion and rotation of the kinetic chain «hip/shoulder/ arm» in wielding the clava. This movement requires a much more mobile combat style that can prove very effective against heavily armoured targets due to the weapon's high-impact force and a more extended reach than more conventional Roman sidearms.

Existential Terrorism: Can Terrorists Destroy Humanity?

AbstractMass-casualty terrorism and terrorism involving unconventional weapons have received extensive academic and policy attention, yet few academics have considered the broader question of whether such behaviours could pose a plausible risk to humanity’s survival or continued flourishing. Despite several terrorist and other violent non-state actors having evinced an interest in causing existential harm to humanity, their ambition has historically vastly outweighed their capability. Nonetheless, three pathways to existential harm exist: existential attack, existential spoilers and systemic harm. Each pathway varies in its risk dynamics considerably. Although an existential attack is plausible, it would require extraordinary levels of terrorist capability. Conversely, modest terrorist capabilities might be sufficient to spoil risk mitigation measures or cause systemic harm, but such actions would only result in existential harm under highly contingent circumstances. Overall, we conclude that the likelihood of terrorism causing existential harm is extremely low, at least in the near to medium term, but it is theoretically possible for terrorists to intentionally destroy humanity.

Prerequisites, International Context and Features of NATO’s Proxy War against Russia in Ukraine (2022–2023)

The purpose of the article is to clarify the prerequisites, international context, and features of the armed conflict in Ukraine, which in the conditions of a Special Military Operation (SVO) has acquired the character of a protracted and exhausting proxy war between Russia and NATO countries. By now, Russian social scientists have generally developed an adequate understanding of the causes of the war and the goals of the warring parties. Their methodological position is clear and is mainly determined by political attitudes that have been repeatedly voiced by the President of the Russian Federation, the Head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, other senior officials, and representatives of interested departments. As a rule, this does not raise questions since the official Russian position is not actually imbued with ideology. At the same time, the publications of Western political scientists, experts, and journalists, especially those who adhere to the realistic paradigm, deserve attention. Their assessments and forecasts contribute to the formation of an objective picture of the Ukrainian crisis. During the study, it was found that the intentions of the NATO countries led by the United States, and, therefore, the background of their rivalry with Russia, have not changed during the SVO. They still expect to inflict a strategic defeat on our country and thereby prolong the existence of a unipolar world. Believing in Russia’s weakness, Western elites associate the end of the conflict with the victory of the Kiev regime on the battlefield. Therefore, the United States and its NATO allies continue to saturate Ukraine with more and more modern weapons. The main sponsor and organizer of the ongoing war is the United States, which pays two-thirds of Ukrainian military expenses. At the same time, their behavior is characterized by caution and even a certain responsibility. The United States fears an uncontrolled escalation of the conflict, every time it emphasizes its non-involvement in military actions and seeks to localize them within the borders of Ukraine. Even though the Russian Federation is also wary of striking at the territory of NATO countries, the conflict between them continues to develop in an escalating spiral. The war is gradually moving beyond the mediated relations between Russia and the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. With the expansion of supplies of increasingly destructive weapons and the direct involvement of NATO members in the confrontation with the Russian military, it acquires a full-fledged character with the prospect of going beyond the borders of Ukraine and using unconventional weapons.

Guarding Against Catastrophic Biological Risks: Preventing State Biological Weapon Development and Use by Shaping Intentions.

Guarding Against Catastrophic Biological Risks: Preventing State Biological Weapon Development and Use by Shaping Intentions.

Flying While Palestinian: A Critical Analysis of Palestinian Aviation Diplomacy

This article provides a study of Palestinian aviation diplomacy by examining two “states of exception”: the deterritorialized Palestinian state and the supraterritorial, supranational state of aviation. It discusses five important episodes in Palestine’s aviation history: aviation as a colonial instrument in Palestine prior to 1948, Jerusalem Airport as a contested site of power, Palestinian airplane hijackings as media spectacle, Yasir Arafat’s creative aviation diplomacy, and Gaza International Airport and Palestinian Airlines as symbols of Palestinian sovereignty. Although Palestinians have faced difficulties with conventional aviation diplomacy, they have been somewhat successful in exploiting aviation as an unconventional weapon of resistance to disrupt dominant narratives.

Anthrax in wartime Ukraine requires increased surveillance

This Watching Brief provides analysis of a recent outbreak of anthrax amongst goats in Ukraine. Occurring outside the usual expected geography, this cluster is an illustration of the challenges facing Ukrainian authorities in maintaining disease surveillance during wartime. The context of the ongoing Russian invasion of the country should alert local authorities and international donors to the importance of discerning between bacteriological outbreaks of natural and unnatural cause, especially given the potential for battlefield use of unconventional weapons as the conflict escalates.

International protection from unconventional weapons

تعد الحرب أحد الظواهر المصاحبة للجنس البشري منذ القدم، لذا نجد أن العنصر البشري قد تفنن وأتقن استخدام وصناعة الأسلحة وعمل على تطورها من أجل توفير سبل الحماية والوقاية من أي عدوان خارجي من قبل الأعداء، فمع التطورات المتسارعة على تلك الأسلحة قد أدى إلى زيادة خطورتها، لذا نجد أن العالم يحد من استخدامها ومن إنتاجها، لذا تم انعقاد العديد من المعاهدات لنزعها وللحد من انتشارها، وللحفاظ على أمن واستقرار الدول من الأضرار السلبية الناتجة عن الأسلحة غير التقليدية، ومن هذا المنطلق نجد هناك العديد من الجهود الدولية القائمة لمنع نشر الأسلحة غير التقليدية بكافة صورها حفاظا على السلم والأمن الدوليين.
 لهذا سوف نتناول في هذا البحث التعريف بالسلاح وبأنواعه وبالنشأة وبالتطورات التي مر بها الإنسان في صناعة الأسلحة غير التقليدية، وكيف سخر الإنسان المواد الطبيعية واستخدمها في الصناعات غير الآدمية، وكيف جعلها مع استخدامه لما تم ابتكاره من التكنولوجيا والتطبيقات الحديثة في إيذاء الجنس البشري ليس فقط، بل أيضا في إيذاء كافة الكائنات الحية الموجودة على سطح الأرض وكذلك البيئة المحيطة به وأخيراً طرق الحماية والوقاية من تلك الأسلحة غير التقليدية.

Incidence of Blunt Brain and Neck Injury by Blast in Colombian Military Personnel: A Cases Review

General Objective: To describe the incidence of blunt trauma/injury accidents and injuries caused by unconventional weapons in military personnel of the Colombian National Army in a period from 2017-2021. Specific Objectives: 1. To characterize mortality per year of injuries due to accidents and/or unconventional weapons in the military personnel 2. To describe per year the number of cases attended at the Central Military Hospital of Nueva Granada. 3. To contextualize about blunt Injury and the experience of military engineers of the Colombian National Army in explosive devices. Methodology: Retrospective systematic review of cases, 704 case histories were reviewed considering clinical and imaging variables for the diagnosis of blunt injury and a descriptive analysis was performed. Results: The incidence of blunt injury in our study was like that reported at the international level. The study yielded a result of 1.65% incidence, a figure within the international range (0.03 to 4.8%) of reported incidence. Conclusion: It is important the multi and interdisciplinary management for this pathology, all hospitals, and national clinics, should be prepared for the diagnostic suspicion and approach of Blunt Injury, it is a clinical condition with low incidence but with high impact on morbidity and mortality.

The growing importance of economic security in the new paradigm. Towards a new definition of economic security

The contemporary world is undergoing profound processes of change, many of them unprecedented in terms of the scale on which they occur and their content or effects. In such a troubled context, the issue of security is becoming more acute by the day. All these changes involving a multidimensional security environment have generally become more acute with the (at least apparent or provisional) end of the Cold War. In that context, the bipolar world disintegrated in a very short space of time, the global security environment was suddenly unsupported and the balance of power was upset. The post-Cold War world needed a new global balance of power, but this was slow to emerge and the state of conflict in the international environment grew more and more tense. Alongside the classic challenges to (inter)national security, new problems have emerged, such as the demographic explosion, the increasingly bleak prospect of a global food crisis, worsening social problems of all kinds, mass migration, the growth of terrorism and new forms of terrorist action (most recently with the possibility of using unconventional weapons from the NBC spectrum), the emergence of global climate change and a whole host of other effects from all these phenomena. Thus, security concerns have become ever greater as traditional security paradigms have collapsed one by one.

Breaking taboos: Why insurgents pursue and use CBRN weapons

Much ado has been made about the specter of unconventional weapons in the hands of militant groups. Despite the alarmism of the policy community, the pursuit of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear capabilities by non-state actors is rare. What explains why some violent non-state organizations pursue chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons while most do not? Using new data on organizational behaviors and attributes from the Big Allied and Dangerous 2 Insurgency project, we analyze 140 insurgent actors, from 1998 to 2012. We expand previous work by Asal, Ackerman & Rethemeyer by studying the phenomenon longitudinally and attending to organizational behavior rather than only to structural and environmental factors. We find that organizations that attack cultural sites are more likely to pursue and use chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons. We interpret the latter as a willingness to transgress upon accepted mores, for the sake of sensationalism and shock value, which coheres with a willingness to pursue unconventional weapons. Our results reflect that chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear pursuit and use is part of a larger strategy for some violent non-state organizations, one predicated on generating mass fear and exacting a psychological toll.

Impact of Zeolite on Protein, Mg and Zn Content of Triticum aestivum L. Wheat in Contaminated Soils of War Zones

Background: Nowadays, the use of unconventional weapons has made a serious damage to the environment. The use of zeolite is one of the solutions in soil pollution management. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of natural zeolite on grain protein, Mg and Zn uptake in the wheat in contaminated soils by war weapons. Methods: The experiment was carried out in factorial arrangement in a randomized complete design with three replications in a pot. The studied treatments were four levels of zeolite as zero, 0.5, 1.5 and 2.5% based on weight of soil and two types of soils including non-contaminated and contaminated soil by mines and war explosives. Contaminated and non-contaminated soil samples were taken from the southern region of Dehloran city. Results: The results showed that the amount of grain protein and Mg in contaminated soils were significantly higher than non-contaminated soils. The use of zeolite in both soils caused a significant increase in either of them. In this study, the Zn concentration of grain in contaminated soils was higher than non-contaminated. In addition, the concentration of Zn was significantly decreased when zeolite consumption was increased. Conclusion: The results showed that the use of zeolite in contaminated and non-contaminated soils had a positive effect in terms of grain protein and Mg. In addition, the use of zeolite can prevent the excessive increase in Zn due to war weapons and can be effective in plant and community health.

DISINFORMATION DECONSTRUCTEDCOGNITION SECURITY AND DIGITAL CONTROL

Fake News and Deepfakes have lately been highlighted in informative videos, research papers and literature reviews as tools for disinformation, along with filter bubble and echo chamber, polarization and mistrust. To counteract the unconventional weapons of word and imagery, a new research area has been defined as cognition security, a transdisciplinary area to understand the threats hybrid wars currently make use of and to determine the proper measures against non-kinetic offensives. For this, data mining and deep analysis are performed with digital instruments in a cognitive security system. Defined by all these, the present paper deconstructs the terms in an experimental monitoring of the media, to connect the realm of Cognition Security to its instruments in Cognitive Security Key words: Fake news, deepfake, cognitive security, narrat

Unconventionally Acquired Brain Injury: Guidance and Instruction About an Emerging Challenge to Warfighter Brain Health.

Special Operations Forces have made brain health a medical priority in recent years, and new guidance identified a new challenge-unconventionally acquired brain injury (UBI). Although this emerging condition is described as a cluster of neurosensory and cognitive symptoms with unknown etiology/ origin, there remain critical questions about how this diagnosis differs from other brain injuries. More importantly, there are limited recommendations about how medical personnel should approach the problem. The current discussion will provide context and information about UBI based on higher guidance and will also review the scant literature to provide context. Foremost, UBI can be distinguished from traumatic brain injury (TBI) largely due to an unknown point of injury. The described symptoms otherwise appear to be largely the same as TBI. Likewise, the recommended course of treatment is to follow the Clinical Practice Guidelines for mild TBI/TBI even if the injury is an actual or suspected UBI. Personnel must be careful to avoid entering sensitive information into the medical record, which may be particularly challenging if identifying the cause involves classified information about an unconventional weapon. Finally, we briefly discuss the literature about several suspected incidents fitting UBI diagnostic criteria, and we conclude with five primary takeaways for medical personnel to follow.

Modeling Terrorist Attack Cycles as a Stochastic Process: Analyzing Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Incidents

To further the research agenda on chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) attacks, we present a novel methodology for modeling a CBRN terrorist attack cycle as a stochastic process. With this model, we can investigate the following questions: Given an adversary’s intent to pursue unconventional weapons, what agents do different perpetrator types pursue? What is the likelihood of a CBRN adversary acquiring or deploying a weapon? At what stage is an adversary most likely to abort their planned attack or be interdicted by law enforcement? Our model successfully identifies correlations between perpetrator type, weapon type, and outcome.

Project Gatekeeper: An Entrance Control System Embedded Radiation Detection Capability for Security Applications.

Threat assessments continue to conclude that terrorist groups and individuals as well as those wanting to cause harm to society have the ambition and increasing means to acquire unconventional weapons such as improvised nuclear explosive devices and radiological disposal devices. Such assessments are given credence by public statements of intent by such groups/persons, by reports of attempts to acquire radioactive material and by law enforcement actions which have interdicted, apprehended or prevented attempts to acquire such material. As a mechanism through which to identify radioactive materials being transported on an individual’s person, this work sought to develop a detection system that is of lower-cost, reduced form-factor and more covert than existing infrastructure, while maintaining adequate sensitivity and being retrofittable into an industry standard and widely utilised Gunnebo Speed Gate system. The system developed comprised an array of six off-set Geiger–Muller detectors positioned around the gate, alongside a single scintillator detector for spectroscopy, triggered by the systems inbuilt existing IR proximity sensor. This configuration served to not only reduce the cost for such a system but also allowed for source localisation and identification to be performed. Utilising the current setup, it was possible to detect a 1 µSv/h source carried into the Speed Gate in all test scenarios, alongside locating and spectrally analysing the material in a significant number.

Human Casualties and War: Results of a National Epidemiologic Survey in Iran.

Limited studies have reported epidemiologic data on the impact of Iran-Iraq war. This study examines the war casualties for both combatants and civilians on Iranians at national level. Databases of Veterans and Martyrs Affair Foundation (VMAF), Janbazan Medical and Engineering Research Center (JMERC) and Ministry of Health were used to collect the data. The prevalence of injuries for both civilians and combatants was presented. Casualties were studied based on conventional and unconventional weapons attacks (1980-2018), separately. The Iran-Iraq war led to 183623 lost lives, 554990 injured and 40240 captured. The mean length of captivity was 45.7 months (1 month-19 years) and 2.7% (n = 575) died in captivity. There were 1439180 war related injuries recorded in databanks, mostly affecting men (98.4%). About 1439180 injuries were recorded, most of them related to conventional weapons (938928 [65.24%]). Remaining artillery and mortar fragmentation in the body (39.5%, n = 371236), psychological disorders (15.9%, n = 228944), and exposure to chemical weapons (11%, n = 158817) were the most prevalent war-related injuries. Human casualties of the Iran-Iraq war on the Iranian side and the health care system are huge even after more than three decades.

Emerging Life Sciences and Possible Threats to International Security

At the intersection of emerging technologies and international affairs, one of the most provocative areas is the applications of advanced genetic engineering. The COVID-19 global pandemic and uncertainty about the origin of the causative virus illustrates both immediacy and the potential geopolitical implications of such technologies. These new gene editing techniques include one which has garnered a great deal of attention, the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) systems, as well as other, less well-known ones. CRISPR is not the first type of gene editing technology, but it is the most well-known within national and international security debates. Such advancements now allow for easier and more tunable manipulation of the genetic code of life with implications for governance of science and technology and with international security significance in the context of proliferation, deterrence, and unconventional weapons. Biosecurity and other emerging technologies require new models, not simple extrapolations of Cold War or more recent deterrence (or nonproliferation) paradigms.

The Kurdish Files of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Regime: Struggle for Reconciliation in Iraq

The U.S.-led wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 resulted in the seizure of vast quantities of internal state security documents from the former regime of Saddam Hussein. Following Iraq’s 1991 defeat in Kuwait, the Kurds staged a popular uprising against Saddam’s dictatorial rule, capturing tons of secret police files that detailed vast humanitarian crimes, including corroborating evidence of the “al-Anfāl” (referring to Quran: “The Spoils of War”) genocide, against the Kurds in the late 1980s. These files were transferred to the U.S. where they were digitized and analyzed for a possible genocide case against the Saddam regime. Another estimated 120 million pages of documents were seized by U.S. forces in the 2003 war in the failed hunt for evidence of Saddam’s alleged unconventional weapons and ties to al Qaeda. Most of the seized Ba’athist records, along with digital copies of the Anfāl files, have since been returned to Baghdad and various parties in Iraqi Kurdistan. The state security files of Saddam’s regime hold considerable historical importance and value for the peoples of Iraq. The documentary legacy of Saddam’s Ba’ath regime should be used to help Iraqis come to terms with their tragic history and initiate sweeping democratic reforms on behalf of reconciliation and the rule of law. This has proved difficult to achieve. Corruption and the cycle of revenge in both Baghdad and Erbil have fueled the increased exploitation and weaponization of these state security records against political and sectarian rivals. In Baghdad, the sectarian misuse of the files has helped to fuel new waves of still escalating tensions, confrontations, and the continuing destabilization of Iraq. The Kurdish political parties also have exploited the Anfāl files against their political adversaries, raising the specter of new infighting, division, civil war, and the continued supplication to foreign influence. Nonetheless, several positive and countervailing developments have fostered greater access to these documents in digital form among Iraqi Kurds in the hope of promoting human rights, the rule of law, and learning from Iraq’s recent history under Saddam’s homicidal regime. This article explores these topics in detail, including the seizure and restitution of the records, the political and sectarian misuse of the files, and the recent positive trends that hold the possibility of using the files in the spirit of human rights and the rule of law in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. It also outlines a number of concrete steps that Iraq’s political leaders can take to reinforce these positive trends with the help of international supporters.

Extremists and unconventional weapons: examining the pursuit of chemical and biological agents

ABSTRACT In this study, we examine the individual-level characteristics of extremists’ pursuit of chemical/biological (CB) agents. Using three different maximum likelihood estimation techniques, we identify three key findings. First, older extremists are more likely to pursue CB than younger extremists. Second, extremists who are jobless or students are more likely to pursue CB than employed extremists. Third, Islamist, far-right, and far-left extremists are less likely to pursue CB than single-issue extremists. We do not find any evidence that gender or education have an effect on whether an extremist will pursue CB agents. Since there has been little quantitative examination of unconventional weapon choices among violent extremists, this study makes an important contribution to the literature on CB adversaries.