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Johnson's algorithm is a way to find the shortest paths between all pairs of vertices in an edge-weighted directed graph. It allows some of the edge weights to be negative numbers, but no negative-weight cycles may exist. It works by using the Bellman–Ford algorithm to compute a transformation of the input graph that removes all negative weights, allowing Dijkstra's algorithm to be used on the transformed graph. It is named after Donald B. Johnson, who first published the technique in 1977.
A similar reweighting technique is also used in a version of the successive shortest paths algorithm for the minimum cost flow problem due to Edmonds and Karp, as well as in Suurballe's algorithm for finding two disjoint paths of minimum total length between the same two vertices in a graph with non-negative edge weights.
== Algorithm description ==
Johnson's algorithm consists of the following steps:
First, a new node q is added to the graph, connected by zero-weight edges to each of the other nodes.
Second, the Bellman–Ford algorithm is used, starting from the new vertex q, to find for each vertex v the minimum weight h(v) of a path from q to v. If this step detects a negative cycle, the algorithm is terminated.
Next the edges of the original graph are reweighted using the values computed by the Bellman–Ford algorithm: an edge from u to v, having length
w
(
u
,
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{\displaystyle w(u,v)}
, is given the new length w(u,v) + h(u) − h(v).
Finally, q is removed, and Dijkstra's algorithm is used to find the shortest paths from each node s to every other vertex in the reweighted graph. The distance in the original graph is then computed for each distance D(u, v), by adding h(v) − h(u) to the distance returned by Dijkstra's algorithm.
== Example ==
The first three stages of Johnson's algorithm are depicted in the illustration below.
The graph on the left of the illustration has two negative edges, but no negative cycles. The center graph shows the new vertex q, a shortest path tree as computed by the Bellman–Ford algorithm with q as starting vertex, and the values h(v) computed at each other node as the length of the shortest path from q to that node. Note that these values are all non-positive, because q has a length-zero edge to each vertex and the shortest path can be no longer than that edge. On the right is shown the reweighted graph, formed by replacing each edge weight
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{\displaystyle w(u,v)}
by w(u,v) + h(u) − h(v). In this reweighted graph, all edge weights are non-negative, but the shortest path between any two nodes uses the same sequence of edges as the shortest path between the same two nodes in the original graph. The algorithm concludes by applying Dijkstra's algorithm to each of the four starting nodes in the reweighted graph.
== Correctness ==
In the reweighted graph, all paths between a pair s and t of nodes have the same quantity h(s) − h(t) added to them. The previous statement can be proven as follows: Let p be an
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{\displaystyle s-t}
path. Its weight W in the reweighted graph is given by the following expression:
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{\displaystyle \left(w(s,p_{1})+h(s)-h(p_{1})\right)+\left(w(p_{1},p_{2})+h(p_{1})-h(p_{2})\right)+...+\left(w(p_{n},t)+h(p_{n})-h(t)\right).}
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{\displaystyle +h(p_{i})}
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{\displaystyle -h(p_{i})}
in the previous bracketed expression; therefore, we are left with the following expression for W:
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{\displaystyle \left(w(s,p_{1})+w(p_{1},p_{2})+\cdots +w(p_{n},t)\right)+h(s)-h(t)}
The bracketed expression is the weight of p in the original weighting.
Since the reweighting adds the same amount to the weight of every
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−
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{\displaystyle s-t}
path, a path is a shortest path in the original weighting if and only if it is a shortest path after reweighting. The weight of edges that belong to a shortest path from q to any node is zero, and therefore the lengths of the shortest paths from q to every node become zero in the reweighted graph; however, they still remain shortest paths. Therefore, there can be no negative edges: if edge uv had a negative weight after the reweighting, then the zero-length path from q to u together with this edge would form a negative-length path from q to v, contradicting the fact that all vertices have zero distance from q. The non-existence of negative edges ensures the optimality of the paths found by Dijkstra's algorithm. The distances in the original graph may be calculated from the distances calculated by Dijkstra's algorithm in the reweighted graph by reversing the reweighting transformation.
== Analysis ==
The time complexity of this algorithm, using Fibonacci heaps in the implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm, is
O
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{\displaystyle O(|V|^{2}\log |V|+|V||E|)}
: the algorithm uses
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{\displaystyle O(|V||E|)}
time for the Bellman–Ford stage of the algorithm, and
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{\displaystyle O(|V|\log |V|+|E|)}
for each of the
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.
== References ==
== External links ==
Boost: All Pairs Shortest Paths | Wikipedia/Johnson's_algorithm |
The reverse-delete algorithm is an algorithm in graph theory used to obtain a minimum spanning tree from a given connected, edge-weighted graph. It first appeared in Kruskal (1956), but it should not be confused with Kruskal's algorithm which appears in the same paper. If the graph is disconnected, this algorithm will find a minimum spanning tree for each disconnected part of the graph. The set of these minimum spanning trees is called a minimum spanning forest, which contains every vertex in the graph.
This algorithm is a greedy algorithm, choosing the best choice given any situation. It is the reverse of Kruskal's algorithm, which is another greedy algorithm to find a minimum spanning tree. Kruskal’s algorithm starts with an empty graph and adds edges while the Reverse-Delete algorithm starts with the original graph and deletes edges from it. The algorithm works as follows:
Start with graph G, which contains a list of edges E.
Go through E in decreasing order of edge weights.
For each edge, check if deleting the edge will further disconnect the graph.
Perform any deletion that does not lead to additional disconnection.
== Pseudocode ==
function ReverseDelete(edges[] E) is
sort E in decreasing order
Define an index i ← 0
while i < size(E) do
Define edge ← E[i]
delete E[i]
if graph is not connected then
E[i] ← edge
i ← i + 1
return edges[] E
In the above the graph is the set of edges E with each edge containing a weight and connected vertices v1 and v2.
== Example ==
In the following example green edges are being evaluated by the algorithm and red edges have been deleted.
== Running time ==
The algorithm can be shown to run in O(E log V (log log V)3) time (using big-O notation), where E is the number of edges and V is the number of vertices. This bound is achieved as follows:
Sorting the edges by weight using a comparison sort takes O(E log E) time, which can be simplified to O(E log V) using the fact that the largest E can be is V2.
There are E iterations of the loop.
Deleting an edge, checking the connectivity of the resulting graph, and (if it is disconnected) re-inserting the edge can be done in O(logV (log log V)3) time per operation (Thorup 2000).
== Proof of correctness ==
It is recommended to read the proof of the Kruskal's algorithm first.
The proof consists of two parts. First, it is proved that the edges that remain after the algorithm is applied form a spanning tree. Second, it is proved that the spanning tree is of minimal weight.
=== Spanning tree ===
The remaining sub-graph (g) produced by the algorithm is not disconnected since the algorithm checks for that in line 7. The result sub-graph cannot contain a cycle since if it does then when moving along the edges we would encounter the max edge in the cycle and we would delete that edge. Thus g must be a spanning tree of the main graph G.
=== Minimality ===
We show that the following proposition P is true by induction: If F is the set of edges remained at the end of the while loop, then there is some minimum spanning tree that (its edges) are a subset of F.
Clearly P holds before the start of the while loop . since a weighted connected graph always has a minimum spanning tree and since F contains all the edges of the graph then this minimum spanning tree must be a subset of F.
Now assume P is true for some non-final edge set F and let T be a minimum spanning tree that is contained in F. we must show that after deleting edge e in the algorithm there exists some (possibly other) spanning tree T' that is a subset of F.
if the next deleted edge e doesn't belong to T then T=T' is a subset of F and P holds. .
otherwise, if e belongs to T: first note that the algorithm only removes the edges that do not cause a disconnectedness in the F. so e does not cause a disconnectedness. But deleting e causes a disconnectedness in tree T (since it is a member of T). assume e separates T into sub-graphs t1 and t2. Since the whole graph is connected after deleting e then there must exists a path between t1 and t2 (other than e) so there must exist a cycle C in the F (before removing e). now we must have another edge in this cycle (call it f) that is not in T but it is in F (since if all the cycle edges were in tree T then it would not be a tree anymore). we now claim that T' = T - e + f is the minimum spanning tree that is a subset of F.
firstly we prove that T' is a spanning tree . we know by deleting an edge in a tree and adding another edge that does not cause a cycle we get another tree with the same vertices. since T was a spanning tree so T' must be a spanning tree too. since adding " f " does not cause any cycles since "e" is removed.(note that tree T contains all the vertices of the graph).
secondly we prove T' is a minimum spanning tree . we have three cases for the edges "e" and " f ". wt is the weight function.
wt( f ) < wt( e ) this is impossible since this causes the weight of tree T' to be strictly less than T . since T is the minimum spanning tree, this is simply impossible.
wt( f ) > wt( e ) this is also impossible. since then when we are going through edges in decreasing order of edge weights we must see " f " first . since we have a cycle C so removing " f " would not cause any disconnectedness in the F. so the algorithm would have removed it from F earlier . so " f " does not exist in F which is impossible( we have proved f exists in step 4 .
so wt(f) = wt(e) so T' is also a minimum spanning tree. so again P holds.
so P holds when the while loop is done ( which is when we have seen all the edges ) and we proved at the end F becomes a spanning tree and we know F has a minimum spanning tree as its subset . so F must be the minimum spanning tree itself .
== See also ==
Kruskal's algorithm
Prim's algorithm
Borůvka's algorithm
Dijkstra's algorithm
== References ==
Kleinberg, Jon; Tardos, Éva (2006), Algorithm Design, New York: Pearson Education, Inc..
Kruskal, Joseph B. (1956), "On the shortest spanning subtree of a graph and the traveling salesman problem", Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, 7 (1): 48–50, doi:10.2307/2033241, JSTOR 2033241.
Thorup, Mikkel (2000), "Near-optimal fully-dynamic graph connectivity", Proc. 32nd ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, pp. 343–350, doi:10.1145/335305.335345. | Wikipedia/Reverse-delete_algorithm |
In computer science, a search algorithm is an algorithm designed to solve a search problem. Search algorithms work to retrieve information stored within particular data structure, or calculated in the search space of a problem domain, with either discrete or continuous values.
Although search engines use search algorithms, they belong to the study of information retrieval, not algorithmics.
The appropriate search algorithm to use often depends on the data structure being searched, and may also include prior knowledge about the data. Search algorithms can be made faster or more efficient by specially constructed database structures, such as search trees, hash maps, and database indexes.
Search algorithms can be classified based on their mechanism of searching into three types of algorithms: linear, binary, and hashing. Linear search algorithms check every record for the one associated with a target key in a linear fashion. Binary, or half-interval, searches repeatedly target the center of the search structure and divide the search space in half. Comparison search algorithms improve on linear searching by successively eliminating records based on comparisons of the keys until the target record is found, and can be applied on data structures with a defined order. Digital search algorithms work based on the properties of digits in data structures by using numerical keys. Finally, hashing directly maps keys to records based on a hash function.
Algorithms are often evaluated by their computational complexity, or maximum theoretical run time. Binary search functions, for example, have a maximum complexity of O(log n), or logarithmic time. In simple terms, the maximum number of operations needed to find the search target is a logarithmic function of the size of the search space.
== Applications of search algorithms ==
Specific applications of search algorithms include:
Problems in combinatorial optimization, such as:
The vehicle routing problem, a form of shortest path problem
The knapsack problem: Given a set of items, each with a weight and a value, determine the number of each item to include in a collection so that the total weight is less than or equal to a given limit and the total value is as large as possible.
The nurse scheduling problem
Problems in constraint satisfaction, such as:
The map coloring problem
Filling in a sudoku or crossword puzzle
In game theory and especially combinatorial game theory, choosing the best move to make next (such as with the minmax algorithm)
Finding a combination or password from the whole set of possibilities
Factoring an integer (an important problem in cryptography)
Search engine optimization (SEO) and content optimization for web crawlers
Optimizing an industrial process, such as a chemical reaction, by changing the parameters of the process (like temperature, pressure, and pH)
Retrieving a record from a database
Finding the maximum or minimum value in a list or array
Checking to see if a given value is present in a set of values
== Classes ==
=== For virtual search spaces ===
Algorithms for searching virtual spaces are used in the constraint satisfaction problem, where the goal is to find a set of value assignments to certain variables that will satisfy specific mathematical equations and inequations / equalities. They are also used when the goal is to find a variable assignment that will maximize or minimize a certain function of those variables. Algorithms for these problems include the basic brute-force search (also called "naïve" or "uninformed" search), and a variety of heuristics that try to exploit partial knowledge about the structure of this space, such as linear relaxation, constraint generation, and constraint propagation.
An important subclass are the local search methods, that view the elements of the search space as the vertices of a graph, with edges defined by a set of heuristics applicable to the case; and scan the space by moving from item to item along the edges, for example according to the steepest descent or best-first criterion, or in a stochastic search. This category includes a great variety of general metaheuristic methods, such as simulated annealing, tabu search, A-teams, and genetic programming, that combine arbitrary heuristics in specific ways. The opposite of local search would be global search methods. This method is applicable when the search space is not limited and all aspects of the given network are available to the entity running the search algorithm.
This class also includes various tree search algorithms, that view the elements as vertices of a tree, and traverse that tree in some special order. Examples of the latter include the exhaustive methods such as depth-first search and breadth-first search, as well as various heuristic-based search tree pruning methods such as backtracking and branch and bound. Unlike general metaheuristics, which at best work only in a probabilistic sense, many of these tree-search methods are guaranteed to find the exact or optimal solution, if given enough time. This is called "completeness".
Another important sub-class consists of algorithms for exploring the game tree of multiple-player games, such as chess or backgammon, whose nodes consist of all possible game situations that could result from the current situation. The goal in these problems is to find the move that provides the best chance of a win, taking into account all possible moves of the opponent(s). Similar problems occur when humans or machines have to make successive decisions whose outcomes are not entirely under one's control, such as in robot guidance or in marketing, financial, or military strategy planning. This kind of problem — combinatorial search — has been extensively studied in the context of artificial intelligence. Examples of algorithms for this class are the minimax algorithm, alpha–beta pruning, and the A* algorithm and its variants.
=== For sub-structures of a given structure ===
An important and extensively studied subclass are the graph algorithms, in particular graph traversal algorithms, for finding specific sub-structures in a given graph — such as subgraphs, paths, circuits, and so on. Examples include Dijkstra's algorithm, Kruskal's algorithm, the nearest neighbour algorithm, and Prim's algorithm.
Another important subclass of this category are the string searching algorithms, that search for patterns within strings. Two famous examples are the Boyer–Moore and Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithms, and several algorithms based on the suffix tree data structure.
=== Search for the maximum of a function ===
In 1953, American statistician Jack Kiefer devised Fibonacci search which can be used to find the maximum of a unimodal function and has many other applications in computer science.
=== For quantum computers ===
There are also search methods designed for quantum computers, like Grover's algorithm, that are theoretically faster than linear or brute-force search even without the help of data structures or heuristics. While the ideas and applications behind quantum computers are still entirely theoretical, studies have been conducted with algorithms like Grover's that accurately replicate the hypothetical physical versions of quantum computing systems.
== See also ==
Backward induction – Process of reasoning backwards in sequence
Content-addressable memory – Type of computer memory hardware
Dual-phase evolution – Process that drives self-organization within complex adaptive systems
Linear search problem – Computational search problem
No free lunch in search and optimization – Average solution cost is the same with any method
Recommender system – System to predict users' preferences, also use statistical methods to rank results in very large data sets
Search engine (computing) – System to help searching for information
Search game – Two-person zero-sum game
Selection algorithm – Method for finding kth smallest value
Solver – Software for a class of mathematical problems
Sorting algorithm – Algorithm that arranges lists in order, necessary for executing certain search algorithms
Web search engine – Software system for finding relevant information on the WebPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
Categories:
Category:Search algorithms
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Bibliography ===
==== Books ====
Knuth, Donald (1998). Sorting and Searching. The Art of Computer Programming. Vol. 3 (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Professional.
==== Articles ====
Beame, Paul; Fich, Faith (August 2002). "Optimal Bounds for the Predecessor Problem and Related Problems". Journal of Computer and System Sciences. 65 (1): 38–72. doi:10.1006/jcss.2002.1822. S2CID 1991980.
Schmittou, Thomas; Schmittou, Faith E. (2002-08-01). "Optimal Bounds for the Predecessor Problem and Related Problems". Journal of Computer and System Sciences. 65 (1): 38–72. doi:10.1006/jcss.2002.1822.
== External links == | Wikipedia/Informed_search_algorithm |
The simulation theory of empathy holds that humans anticipate and make sense of the behavior of others by activating mental processes that, if they culminated in action, would produce similar behavior. This includes intentional behavior as well as the expression of emotions. The theory says that children use their own emotions to predict what others will do; we project our own mental states onto others.
Simulation theory is not primarily a theory about empathy, but rather a theory of how people understand others—that they do so by way of a kind of empathetic response. This theory uses more biological evidence than other theories of mind, such as the theory-theory.
== Origin ==
Simulation theory is based in philosophy of mind, a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind and its relationship to the brain, especially the work of Alvin Goldman and Robert Gordon. The discovery of mirror neurons in macaque monkeys provides a physiological mechanism to explain the common coding between perception and action (see Wolfgang Prinz) and the hypothesis of a similar mirror neuron system in the human brain.
Since the discovery of the mirror neuron system, many studies have been carried out to examine the role of this system in action understanding, emotion, and other social functions.
== Development ==
Mirror neurons are activated both when actions are executed and when actions are observed. This function of mirror neurons may explain how people recognize and understand the states of others: they mirror the observed action in the brain as if they conducted the observed action.
Two sets of evidence suggest that mirror neurons in the monkey have a role in action understanding. First, the activation of mirror neurons requires biological effectors such as the hand or mouth. Mirror neurons do not respond to actions undertaken by tools like pliers. Mirror neurons respond to neither the sight of an object alone nor to an action without an object (intransitive action). Umilta and colleagues demonstrated that a subset of mirror neurons fired in the observer when a final critical part of the action was not visible to that observer. The experimenter showed his hand moving toward a cube and grasping it, and later showed the same action without showing the final grasping of the cube (the cube was behind an occluder). Mirror neurons fired in both scenarios. However mirror neurons did not fire when the observer knew that there was not a cube behind the occluder.
Second, responses of mirror neurons to the same action are different depending on context of the action. A single cell recording experiment with monkeys demonstrated the different level of activation of mouth mirror neurons when monkey observed mouth movement depending on context (ingestive actions such as sucking juice vs. communicative actions such as lip-smacking or tongue protrusions). An fMRI study also showed that mirror neurons respond to the action of grasping a cup differently depending on context (to drink a cup of coffee vs. to clean a table on which a cup was placed).
Since mirror neurons fire both for someone watching an action and someone completing an action, they may only predict actions, not beliefs or desires.
=== Emotion understanding ===
Shared neural representation for a motor behavior and its observation has been extended into the domains of feelings and emotions. Not only observations of movements but also those of facial expressions activate the same brain regions that are activated by direct experiences. In an fMRI study, the same brain regions activated when people imitated and observed emotional facial expressions such as happy, sad, angry, surprise, disgust, and afraid.
Observing video clips that displayed facial expressions indicating disgust activated the neural networks typical of direct experience of disgust. Similar results have been found in the case of touch. Watching movies in which someone touched legs or faces activated the somatosensory cortex for direct feeling of the touch. A similar mirror system exists in perceiving pain. When people see other people feel pain, people feel pain not only affectively, but also sensorially.
These results suggest that understanding another's feelings and emotions is driven not by cognitive deduction of what the stimuli means but by automatic activation of somatosensory neurons. A recent study on pupil size directly demonstrated emotion perception as an automatic process modulated by mirror systems. When people saw sad faces, pupil sizes influenced viewers in perceiving and judging emotional states without explicit awareness of differences of pupil size. When pupil size was 180% of original size, people perceived a sad face as less negative and less intense than when pupil was smaller than or equal to original pupil size. This mechanism was correlated with brain regions implicated in emotion processing, such as the amygdala. Viewers mirror the size of their own pupils to those of sad faces they watch. Considering that pupil size is beyond voluntary control, the change of pupil size upon emotion judgment is a good indication that understanding emotions is automatic process. However, the study could not find that other emotional faces, such as faces displaying happiness and anger, influence pupil size as sadness did.
=== Epistemological role of empathy ===
Based on findings from neuroimaging studies, de Vignemont and Singer proposed empathy as a crucial factor in human communication: "Empathy might enable us to make faster and more accurate predictions of other people's needs and actions and discover salient aspects of our environment." Mental mirroring of actions and emotions may enable humans to understand other's actions and their related environment quickly, and thus help humans communicate efficiently.
In an fMRI study, a mirror system has been proposed as common neural substrate that mediates the experience of basic emotions. Participants watched video clips of happy, sad, angry, and disgusted facial expressions, and researchers measured their empathy quotient (EQ). Specific brain regions relevant to the four emotions were found to be correlated with the EQ while the mirror system (i.e., the left dorsal inferior frontal gyrus/premotor cortex) was correlated to the EQ across all emotions. The authors interpreted this result as an evidence that action perception mediates face perception to emotion perception.
== Empathy for pain ==
A paper published in Science challenges the idea that pain sensations and mirror neurons play a role in empathy for pain. Specifically, the authors found that activity in the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex (two regions known to be responsible for the affective experience of pain) was present both when one's self and when another person were presented with a painful stimulus, but the rest of the pain matrix responsible for sensation was not active. Furthermore, participants merely saw the hand of another person with the electrode on it, making it unlikely that "mirroring" could have caused the empathic response. However, a number of other studies, using magnetoencephalography and functional MRI have since demonstrated that empathy for pain does involve the somatosensory cortex, which supports the simulation theory.
Support for the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex being the neural substrates of empathy include Wicker et al., 2003 who report that their "core finding is that the anterior insula is activated both during observation of disgusted facial expressions and during the emotion of disgust evoked by unpleasant odorants.": 655
Furthermore, one study demonstrated that "for actions, emotions, and sensations both animate and inanimate touch activates our inner representation of touch." They note, however that "it is important at this point to clarify the fact that we do not believe that the activation we observe evolved in order to empathize with other objects or human beings": 343
== Empathy activating altruism ==
This model states that empathy activates only one interpersonal motivation: altruism. Theoretically, this model makes sense, because empathy is an other-focused emotion. There is an impressive history of research suggesting that empathy, when activated, causes people to act in ways to benefit the other, such as receiving electric shocks for the other. These findings have often been interpreted in terms of empathy causing increased altruistic motivation, which in turn causes helping behavior.
== See also ==
Mentalization
Moral emotions
Perspective-taking
Social emotions
Theory of mind
== References == | Wikipedia/Simulation_theory_of_empathy |
Inhibitory control, also known as response inhibition, is a cognitive process – and, more specifically, an executive function – that permits an individual to inhibit their impulses and natural, habitual, or dominant behavioral responses to stimuli (a.k.a. prepotent responses) in order to select a more appropriate behavior that is consistent with completing their goals. Self-control is an important aspect of inhibitory control. For example, successfully suppressing the natural behavioral response to eat cake when one is craving it while dieting requires the use of inhibitory control.
The prefrontal cortex, caudate nucleus, and subthalamic nucleus are known to regulate inhibitory control cognition. Inhibitory control is impaired in both addiction and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In healthy adults and ADHD individuals, inhibitory control improves over the short term with low (therapeutic) doses of methylphenidate or amphetamine. Inhibitory control may also be improved over the long-term via consistent aerobic exercise.
== Tests ==
An inhibitory control test is a neuropsychological test that measures an individual's ability to override their natural, habitual, or dominant behavioral response to a stimulus in order to implement more adaptive goal-oriented behaviors. Some of the neuropsychological tests that measure inhibitory control include the Stroop task, go/no-go task, Simon task, Flanker task, antisaccade tasks, delay of gratification tasks, and stop-signal tasks.
== Gender differences ==
Females tend to have a greater basal capacity to exert inhibitory control over undesired or habitual behaviors and respond differently to modulatory environmental contextual factors relative to males. For example, listening to music tends to significantly improve the rate of response inhibition in females, but reduces the rate of response inhibition in males.
== See also ==
Discipline#Self-discipline
Neurobiological effects of physical exercise#Cognitive control and memory
Inhibition of return
== References ==
== External links == | Wikipedia/Inhibitory_control |
Theory of mind in animals is an extension to non-human animals of the philosophical and psychological concept of theory of mind (ToM), sometimes known as mentalisation or mind-reading. It involves an inquiry into whether non-human animals have the ability to attribute mental states (such as intention, desires, pretending, knowledge) to themselves and others, including recognition that others have mental states that are different from their own. To investigate this issue experimentally, researchers place non-human animals in situations where their resulting behavior can be interpreted as supporting ToM or not.
The existence of theory of mind in non-human animals is controversial. On the one hand, one hypothesis proposes that some non-human animals have complex cognitive processes which allow them to attribute mental states to other individuals, sometimes called "mind-reading" while another proposes that non-human animals lack these skills and depend on more simple learning processes such as associative learning; or in other words, they are simply behaviour-reading.
Several studies have been designed specifically to test whether non-human animals possess theory of mind by using interspecific or intraspecific communication. Several taxa have been tested including primates, birds and canines. Positive results have been found; however, these are often qualified as showing only low-grade ToM, or rejected as not convincing by other researchers.
== History and development ==
The term "theory of mind" was originally proposed by Premack and Woodruff in 1978. Early studies focused almost entirely on studying if chimpanzees could understand the knowledge of humans. This approach turned out not to be particularly fruitful and 20 years later, Heyes, reviewing all the extant data, observed that there had been "no substantial progress" in the subject area.
A 2000 paper approached the issue differently by examining competitive foraging behaviour between primates of the same species (conspecifics). This led to the rather limited conclusion that "chimpanzees know what conspecifics do and do not see".
In 2007, Penn and Povinelli wrote "there is still little consensus on whether or not nonhuman animals understand anything about unobservable mental states or even what it would mean for a non-verbal animal to understand the concept of a 'mental state'." They went on further to suggest that ToM was "any cognitive system, whether theory-like or not, that predicts or explains the behaviour of another agent by postulating that unobservable inner states particular to the cognitive perspective of that agent causally modulate that agent's behaviour".
In 2010, an article in Scientific American acknowledged that dogs are considerably better at using social direction cues (e.g. pointing by humans) than are chimpanzees. In the same year, Towner wrote, "the issue may have evolved beyond whether or not there is theory of mind in non-human primates to a more sophisticated appreciation that the concept of mind has many facets and some of these may exist in non-human primates while others may not." Horowitz, working with dogs, agreed.
In 2013, Whiten reviewed the literature and concluded that regarding the question "Are chimpanzees truly mentalists, like we are?", he stated he could not offer an affirmative or negative answer. A similarly equivocal view was stated in 2014 by Brauer, who suggested that many previous experiments on ToM could be explained by the animals possessing other abilities. They went on further to make reference to several authors who suggest it is pointless to ask a "yes or no" question, rather, it makes more sense to ask which psychological states animals understand and to what extent. At the same time, it was suggested that a "minimal theory of mind" may be "what enables those with limited cognitive resources or little conceptual sophistication, such as infants, chimpanzees, scrub-jays and human adults under load, to track others' perceptions, knowledge states and beliefs."
In 2015, Cecilia Heyes, Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford, wrote about research on ToM, "Since that time [2000], many enthusiasts have become sceptics, empirical methods have become more limited, and it is no longer clear what research on animal mindreading is trying to find" and "However, after some 35 years of research on mindreading in animals, there is still nothing resembling a consensus about whether any animal can ascribe any mental state" (Heyes' emphasis). Heyes further suggested that "In combination with the use of inanimate control stimuli, species that are unlikely to be capable of mindreading, and the 'goggles method' [see below], these approaches could restore both vigour and rigour to research on animal mindreading."
== Methods ==
Specific categories of behaviour are sometimes used as evidence of animal ToM, including imitation, self-recognition, social relationships, deception, role-taking (empathy), perspective-taking, teaching and co-operation, however, this approach has been criticised. Some researchers focus on animals' understanding of intention, gaze, perspective, or knowledge, i.e. what another being has seen. Several experimental methods have been developed which are widely used or suggested as appropriate tests for nonhuman animals possessing ToM. Some studies look at communication between individuals of the same species (intraspecific) whereas others investigate behaviour between individuals of different species (interspecific).
=== Knower-Guesser ===
The Knower-Guesser method has been used in many studies relating to animal ToM.
=== Competitive feeding paradigm ===
The competitive feeding paradigm approach is considered by some as evidence that animals have some understanding of the relationship between "seeing" and "knowing".
=== Goggles Method ===
In one suggested protocol, chimpanzees are given first-hand experience of wearing two mirrored visors. One of the visors is transparent whereas the other is not. The visors themselves are of markedly different colours or shapes. During the subsequent test session, the chimpanzees are given the opportunity to use their species-typical begging behaviour to request food from one of the two humans, one wearing the transparent visor and the other wearing the opaque. If chimpanzees possess ToM, it would be expected they would beg more often from the human wearing the transparent visor.
=== False Belief Test ===
A method used to test ToM in human children has been adapted for testing non-human animals. The basis of the test is to track the gaze of the animal. One human hides an object in view of a second human who then leaves the room. The object is then removed.
== In nonhuman primates ==
Many ToM studies have used nonhuman primates (NHPs). One study that examined the understanding of intention in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children showed that all three species understood the difference between accidental and intentional acts.
=== Chimpanzees ===
There is controversy over the interpretation of evidence purporting to show ToM in chimpanzees.
==== Attribution of perception ====
Chimpanzees were unable to follow a human's gaze to find food hidden under opaque bowls, but were able to do so when food was hidden in tubes that the experimenter was able to look into. This seems to suggest that chimpanzees can infer another individual's perception depending on the clarity of the mechanism through which the individual has gained that knowledge.
Attempts to use the "Goggles Method" (see above) on highly human-enculturated chimpanzees failed to demonstrate they possess ToM.
In contrast, chimpanzees use the gaze of other chimpanzees to gain information about whether food is accessible. Subordinate chimpanzees are able to use the knowledge state of dominant chimpanzees to determine which container has hidden food.
==== Attribution of intentions ====
Young chimpanzees were shown to reliably help researchers perform tasks that involved reaching (such as picking up dropped items that the researcher struggled to retrieve), without specific prompting. This suggests that these chimpanzees were able to understand the researcher's intentions in these cases and acted upon them.
In a similar study, chimps were provided with a preference box with two compartments, one containing a picture of food, the other containing a picture of nothing. Neither were actually related to the contents of the box. In a foraging competition game, chimpanzees avoided the chamber with the picture of food when their competitor had chosen one of the chambers before them.
Captive bonobos such as Kanzi have been reported to show concern for their handlers’ well-being. Bonobos also console other bonobos who are victims of aggressive conflicts and reconcile after participating in these conflicts. Both of these behaviors suggest some semblance of ToM through an attribution of mental states to another individual.
==== Attribution of False Belief ====
Chimpanzees have passed the False Belief Test (see above) involving anticipating the gaze of humans when objects have been removed. Infrared eye-tracking showed that the chimpanzee subjects’ gaze were focused on where the experimenter would falsely believe the object /subject to be, rather than focusing on its actual location of which the chimps were aware. This seems to suggest that the chimpanzees were capable of ascribing false belief to the experimenter.
=== Other primates ===
In one approach testing monkeys, rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) are able to "steal" a contested grape from one of two human competitors. In six experiments, the macaques selectively stole the grape from a human who was incapable of seeing the grape, rather than from the human who was visually aware. Similarly, free ranging rhesus macaques preferentially choose to steal food items from locations where they can be less easily observed by humans, or where they will make less noise.
The authors also reported that at least one individual of each of the species showed (weak) evidence of ToM.
In a multi-species study, it was shown that chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans passed the False Belief Test (see above).
In 2009, a summary of the ToM research, particularly emphasising an extensive comparison of humans, chimpanzees and orang-utans, concluded that great apes do not exhibit understanding of human referential intentions expressed in communicative gestures, such as pointing.
== In birds ==
=== Parrots ===
Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) have demonstrated high levels of intelligence. Irene Pepperberg did experiments with these and her most accomplished parrot, Alex, demonstrated behaviour which seemed to manipulate the trainer, possibly indicating theory of mind.
=== Ravens ===
Ravens are members of the family Corvidae and are widely regarded as having complex cognitive abilities. Other studies indicate that ravens recall who was watching them during caching, but also know the effects of visual barriers on what competitors can and can not see, and how this affects their pilfering.
Ravens have been tested for their understanding of "seeing" as a mental state in other ravens. The researchers further suggested that their findings could be considered in terms of the "minimal" (as opposed to "full-blown") ToM recently suggested.
Using the Knower-Guesser approach, ravens observing a human hiding food are capable of predicting the behaviour of bystander ravens that had been visible at both, none or just one of two baiting events. The visual field of the competitors was manipulated independently of the view of the test-raven.
=== Scrub jays ===
Scrub jays are also corvids. Western scrub jays (Aphelocoma californica) both cache food and pilfer other scrub jays' caches. They use a range of tactics to minimise the possibility that their own caches will be pilfered. One of these tactics is to remember which individual scrub jay watched them during particular caching events and adjust their re-caching behaviour accordingly. One study with particularly interesting results found that only scrub jays which had themselves pilfered would re-cache when they had been observed making the initial cache. This has been interpreted as the re-caching bird projecting its own experiences of pilfering intent onto those of another potential pilferer, and taking appropriate action.
== In dogs ==
Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) show an impressive ability to use the behaviour of humans to find food and toys using behaviours such as pointing and gazing. The performance of dogs in these studies is superior to that of NHPs, however, some have stated categorically that dogs do not possess a human-like ToM.
Similarly, dogs preferentially use the behaviour of the human Knower to indicate the location of food. This is unrelated to the sex or age of the dog. In another study, 14 of 15 dogs preferred the location indicated by the Knower on the first trial, whereas chimpanzees require approximately 100 trials to reliably exhibit the preference.
== In pigs ==
An experiment at the University of Bristol found that one out of ten pigs was possibly able to understand what other pigs can see. That pig observed another pig which had view of a maze in which food was being hidden, and trailed that pig through the maze to the food. The other pigs involved in the experiment did not.
== In goats ==
A 2006 study found that goats exhibited intricate social behaviours indicative of high-level cognitive processes, particularly in competitive situations. The study included an experiment in which a subordinate animal was allowed to choose between food that a dominant animal could also see and food that it could not; those who were subject to aggressive behaviour selected the food that the dominant animal could not see, suggesting that they are able to perceive a threat based on being within the dominant animal's view – in other words, visual perspective taking.
== See also ==
List of animals by number of neurons
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Lurz, R.W. (2011). Mindreading Animals: The Debate Over What Animals Know About Other Minds. MIT Press.
Udell, M.A. & Wynne, C.D. (2011). "Reevaluating canine perspective-taking behavior". Learning & Behavior. 39 (4): 318–323. doi:10.3758/s13420-011-0043-5. PMID 21870213. S2CID 18428903.
Whiten, A. (1996). "When does behaviour-reading become mind-reading". In Caruthers P.; Smith P. K. (eds.). Theories of Theory of Mind. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. pp. 277–292. | Wikipedia/Theory_of_mind_in_animals |
The theory-theory (or 'theory theory') is a scientific theory relating to the human development of understanding about the outside world. This theory asserts that individuals hold a basic or 'naïve' theory of psychology ("folk psychology") to infer the mental states of others, such as their beliefs, desires or emotions. This information is used to understand the intentions behind that person's actions or predict future behavior. The term 'perspective taking' is sometimes used to describe how one makes inferences about another person's inner state using theoretical knowledge about the other's situation.
This approach has become popular with psychologists as it gives a basis from which to explore human social understanding. Beginning in the mid-1980s, several influential developmental psychologists began advocating the theory theory: the view that humans learn through a process of theory revision closely resembling the way scientists propose and revise theories. Children observe the world, and in doing so, gather data about the world's true structure. As more data accumulates, children can revise their naive theories accordingly. Children can also use these theories about the world's causal structure to make predictions, and possibly even test them out. This concept is described as the 'Child Scientist' theory, proposing that a series of personal scientific revolutions are required for the development of theories about the outside world, including the social world.
In recent years, proponents of Bayesian learning have begun describing the theory theory in a precise, mathematical way.
The concept of Bayesian learning is rooted in the assumption that children and adults learn through a process of theory revision; that is, they hold prior beliefs about the world but, when receiving conflicting data, may revise these beliefs depending upon their strength.
== Child development ==
Theory-theory states that children naturally attempt to construct theories to explain their observations. As all humans do, children seek to find explanations that help them understand their surroundings. They learn through their own experiences as well as through their observations of others' actions and behaviors.
Through their growth and development, children will continue to form intuitive theories; revising and altering them as they come across new results and observations. Several developmentalists have conducted research of the progression of their theories, mapping out when children start to form theories about certain subjects, such as the biological and physical world, social behaviors, and others' thoughts and minds ("theory of mind"), although there remains controversies over when these shifts in theory-formation occur.
As part of their investigative process, children often ask questions, frequently posing "Why?" to adults, not seeking a technical and scientific explanation but instead seeking to investigate the relation of the concept in question to themselves, as part of their egocentric view. In a study where Mexican-American mothers were interviewed over a two-week period about the types of questions their preschool children ask, researchers discovered that the children asked their parents more about biology and social behaviors rather than nonliving objects and artifacts. In their questions, the children were mostly ambiguous, unclear if they desired an explanation of purpose or cause. Although parents will usually answer with a causal explanation, some children found the answers and explanations inadequate for their understanding, and as a result, they begin to create their own theories, particularly evident in children's understanding of religion.
This theory also plays a part in Vygotsky's social learning theory, also called modeling. Vygotsky claims that humans, as social beings, learn and develop by observing others' behavior and imitating them. In this process of social learning, prior to imitation, children will first post inquiries and investigate why adults act and behave in a particular way. Afterwards, if the adult succeeds at the task, the child will likely copy the adult, but if the adult fails, the child will choose not to follow the example.
== Comparison with other theories ==
=== Theory of mind (ToM) ===
Theory-theory is closely related to theory of mind (ToM), which concerns mental states of people, but differs from ToM in that the full scope of theory-theory also concerns mechanical devices or other objects, beyond just thinking about people and their viewpoints.
=== Simulation theory ===
In the scientific debate in mind reading, theory-theory is often contrasted with simulation theory, an alternative theory which suggests simulation or cognitive empathy is integral to our understanding of others.
== References == | Wikipedia/Theory-theory |
The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs (JSAD) is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes articles on all aspects of the use and misuse of alcohol and other drugs; tobacco and e-cigarette use; the misuse of prescription medication; and behavioral addictions, including gambling and gaming. The journal also publishes research on the therapeutic uses of psychoactive substances (e.g., psilocybin, ketamine). The range of topics includes, but is not limited to, the biological, medical, epidemiological, psychiatric, social, psychological, legal, public health, socioeconomic, genetic, and neurobiological aspects of substance use and behavioral addictions. The journal was established in 1940 as the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol and changed its name in 1975 to Journal of Studies on Alcohol before obtaining its current name in 2007. The journal appears bimonthly and publishes supplements at irregular intervals. The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs is a not-for-profit journal based in the Center of Alcohol and Substance Use Studies at Rutgers University.
== Impact factor ==
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal's 2022 impact factor is 3.4, ranking it 19th of 54 journals in the category "Substance Abuse," 18th of 38 journals in the category "Substance Abuse" (social science), 12th of 21 journals in the category "Substance Abuse" (science), and 22nd of 81 journals in the category "Psychology."
== Editors-in-chief ==
The editor-in-chief of the journal as of 1 July 2023 is Jennifer P. Read. Previous editors-in-chief have been Howard W. Haggard (1940–1958), Mark Keller (1958–1977), Timothy Coffee (1977–1984), Jack H. Mendelson and Nancy K. Mello (1984–1991), John Carpenter (1991–1994), Marc A. Schuckit (University of California, San Diego) (1994–2015), and Thomas F. Babor (2015–2023) (University of Connecticut).
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website | Wikipedia/Journal_of_Studies_on_Alcohol_and_Drugs |
Relational frame theory (RFT) is a behavior analytic theory of human language, cognition, and behaviour. It was developed originally by Steven C. Hayes of University of Nevada, Reno and has been extended in research, notably by Dermot Barnes-Holmes and colleagues of Ghent University.
Relational frame theory argues that the building block of human language and higher cognition is relating, i.e. the human ability to create bidirectional links between things. It can be contrasted with associative learning, which discusses how animals form links between stimuli in the form of the strength of associations in memory. However, relational frame theory argues that natural human language typically specifies not just the strength of a link between stimuli but also the type of relation as well as the dimension along which they are to be related. For example, a tennis ball could be associated with an orange, by virtue of having the same shape, but it is different because it is not edible, and is perhaps a different color. In the preceding sentence, 'same', 'different' and 'not' are cues in the environment that specify the type of relation between the stimuli, and 'shape', 'colour' and 'edible' specify the dimension along which each relation is to be made. Relational frame theory argues that while there is an arbitrary number of types of relations and number of dimensions along which stimuli can be related, the core unit of relating is an essential building block for much of what is commonly referred to as human language or higher cognition.
Several hundred studies have explored many testable aspects and implications of the theory in terms of:
The emergence of specific frames in childhood.
How individual frames can be combined to create verbally complex phenomena such as metaphors and analogies.
How the rigidity or automaticity of relating within certain domains is related to psychopathology.
In attempting to describe a fundamental building block of human language and higher cognition, RFT explicitly states that its goal is to provide a general theory of psychology that can provide a bedrock for multiple domains and levels of analysis.
Relational frame theory focuses on how humans learn language (i.e., communication) through interactions with the environment and is based on a philosophical approach referred to as functional contextualism.
== Overview ==
=== Introduction ===
Relational frame theory (RFT) is a behavioral theory of human language. It is rooted in functional contextualism and focused on predicting and influencing verbal behavior with precision, scope, and depth.
Relational framing is relational responding based on arbitrarily applicable relations and arbitrary stimulus functions. The relational responding is subject to mutual entailment, combinatorial mutual entailment, and transformation of stimulus functions. The relations and stimulus functions are controlled by contextual cues.
=== Contextual cues and stimulus functions ===
In human language, a word, sentence or a symbol (e.g. stimulus) can have a different meaning (e.g. functions), depending on context.
In terms of RFT, it is said that in human language a stimulus can have different stimulus functions depending on contextual cues.
Take these two sentences for example:
This task is a piece of cake.
Yes, I would like a piece of that delicious cake you've made.
In the sentences above, the stimulus "cake" has two different functions:
The stimulus "cake" has a figurative function in the presence of the contextual cues "this task; is; piece of".
Whereas in the presence of the contextual cues "I; would like; delicious; you've made", the stimulus "cake" has a more literal function.
The functions of stimuli are called stimulus functions, Cfunc for short.
When stimulus function refers to physical properties of the stimulus, such as quantity, colour, shape, etc., they are called nonarbitrary stimulus functions. When a stimulus function refers to non-physical properties of the stimulus, such as value, they are called arbitrary stimulus functions. For example, a one dollar bill. The value of the one dollar bill is an arbitrary stimulus function, but the colour green is a nonarbitrary stimulus function of the one dollar bill.
=== Arbitrarily applicable relational responding ===
Arbitrarily applicable relational responding is a form of relational responding.
==== Relational responding ====
Relational responding is a response to one stimulus in relation to other available stimuli. For example, a lion who picks the largest piece of meat. The deer who picks the strongest male of the pack. In contrast if an animal would always pick the same drinking spot, it is not relational responding (it is not related to other stimuli in the sense of best/worst/larger/smaller, etc.). These examples of relational responding are based on the physical properties of the stimuli. When relational responding is based on the physical properties of the stimuli, such as shape, size, quantity, etc., it is called nonarbitrarily relational responding (NARR).
==== Arbitrarily applicable relational responding ====
Arbitrarily applicable relational responding refers to responding based on relations that are arbitrarily applied between the stimuli. That is to say the relations applied between the stimuli are not supported by the physical properties of said stimuli, but for example based on social convention or social whim. For example, the sound "cow" refers to the animal in the English language. But in another language the same animal is referred by a totally different sound. For example, in Dutch is called "koe" (pronounced as coo). The word "cow" or "koe" has nothing to do with the physical properties of the animal itself. It is by social convention that the animal is named this way. In terms of RFT, it is said that the relation between the word cow and the actual animal is arbitrarily applied. We can even change these arbitrarily applied relations: Just look at the history of any language, where meanings of words, symbols and complete sentence can change over time and place.
Arbitrarily applicable relational responding is responding based on arbitrarily applied relations.
=== Mutual entailment ===
Mutual entailment refers to deriving a relation between two stimuli based on a given relation between those same two stimuli: Given the relation A to B, the relation B to A can be derived.
For example, Joyce is standing in front of Peter. The relation trained is stimulus A in front of stimulus B. One can derive that Peter is behind Joyce. The derived relation is stimulus B is behind stimulus A.
Another example: Jared is older than Jacob. One could derive that Jacob is younger than Jared. Relation trained: stimulus A is older than stimulus B. Relation derived: stimulus B is younger than stimulus A.
=== Combinatorial mutual entailment ===
Combinatorial mutual entailment refers to deriving relations between two stimuli, given the relations of those two stimuli with a third stimulus: Given the relation, A to B and B to C, the relations A to C and C to A can be derived.
To go on with the examples above:
Joyce is standing in front of Peter and Peter is standing in front of Lucy. The relations trained in this example are: stimulus A in front of B and stimulus B in front of C. With this it can be derived that Joyce is standing in front of Lucy and Lucy is standing behind Joyce. The derived relations are A is in front of C and C is behind A.
John is older than Jared and Jared is older than Jacob. Stimulus A is older than stimulus B and stimulus B is older than stimulus C. It can be derived that Jacob is younger than Jared and Jared is younger than John. The derived relation becomes stimulus A is older than stimulus C and stimulus C is younger than stimulus A.
Notice that the relations between A and C were never given. They can be derived from the other relations.
=== Transfer and transformation of stimulus function ===
A stimulus can have different functions depending on contextual cues. However, a stimulus function can change based on the arbitrary relations with that stimulus.
For example, this relational frame: A is more than B and B is more than C.
For now, the stimulus functions of these letters are rather neutral. But as soon as C would be labeled 'as very valuable' and 'nice to have', then A would become more attractive than C, based on the relations. Before there was stated anything about C being valuable, A had a rather neutral stimulus function. After giving C an attractive stimulus function, A has become attractive. The attractive stimulus function has been transferred from C to A through the relations between A, B and C. And A has had a transformation of stimulus function from neutral to attractive.
The same can be done with aversive stimulus function as danger instead of valuable, in saying that C is dangerous, A becomes more dangerous than C based on the relations.
== Development ==
RFT is a behavioral account of language and higher cognition. In his 1957 book Verbal Behavior, B.F. Skinner presented an interpretation of language. However, this account was intended to be an interpretation as opposed to an experimental research program, and researchers commonly acknowledge that the research products are somewhat limited in scope. For example, Skinner's behavioral interpretation of language has been useful in some aspects of language training in developmentally disabled children, but it has not led to a robust research program in the range of areas relevant to language and cognition, such as problem-solving, reasoning, metaphor, logic, and so on. RFT advocates are fairly bold in stating that their goal is an experimental behavioral research program in all such areas, and RFT research has indeed emerged in a large number of these areas, including grammar.
In a review of Skinner's book, linguist Noam Chomsky argued that the generativity of language shows that it cannot simply be learned, that there must be some innate "language acquisition device". Many have seen this review as a turning point, when cognitivism took the place of behaviorism as the mainstream in psychology. Behavior analysts generally viewed the criticism as somewhat off point. However, it is undeniable that psychology turned its attention elsewhere, and the review was very influential in helping to produce the rise of cognitive psychology.
Despite the lack of attention from the mainstream, behavior analysis is alive and growing. Its application has been extended to areas such as language and cognitive training. Behavior analysis has long been extended as well to animal training, business and school settings, as well as hospitals and areas of research.
RFT distinguishes itself from Skinner's work by identifying and defining a particular type of operant conditioning known as arbitrarily applicable derived relational responding (AADRR). In essence, the theory argues that language is not associative but is learned and relational. For example, young children learn relations of coordination between names and objects; followed by relations of difference, opposition, before and after, and so on. These are "frames" in the sense that once relating of that kind is learned, any event can be related in that way mutually and in combination with other relations, given a cue to do so. This is a learning process that to date appears to occur only in humans possessing a capacity for language: to date relational framing has not yet been shown unambiguously in non-human animals despite many attempts to do so. AADRR is theorized to be a pervasive influence on almost all aspects of human behavior. The theory represents an attempt to provide a more empirically progressive account of complex human behavior while preserving the naturalistic approach of behavior analysis.
== Evidence ==
Approximately 300 studies have tested RFT ideas. Supportive data exists in the areas needed to show that an action is "operant" such as the importance of multiple examples in training derived relational responding, the role of context, and the importance of consequences. Derived relational responding has also been shown to alter other behavioral processes such as classical conditioning, an empirical result that RFT theorists point to in explaining why relational operants modify existing behavioristic interpretations of complex human behavior. Empirical advances have also been made by RFT researchers in the analysis and understanding of such topics as metaphor, perspective taking, and reasoning.
Proponents of RFT often indicate the failure to establish a vigorous experimental program in language and cognition as the key reason why behavior analysis fell out of the mainstream of psychology despite its many contributions, and argue that RFT might provide a way forward. The theory is still somewhat controversial within behavioral psychology, however. At the current time the controversy is not primarily empirical since RFT studies publish regularly in mainstream behavioral journals and few empirical studies have yet claimed to contradict RFT findings. Rather the controversy seems to revolve around whether RFT is a positive step forward, especially given that its implications seem to go beyond many existing interpretations and extensions from within this intellectual tradition.
== Applications ==
=== Acceptance and commitment therapy ===
RFT has been argued to be central to the development of the psychotherapeutic tradition known as acceptance and commitment therapy and clinical behavior analysis more generally. Indeed, the psychologist Steven C Hayes was involved with the creation of both acceptance and commitment therapy and RFT, and has credited them as inspirations for one another. However, the extent and exact nature of the interaction between RFT as basic behavioral science and applications such as ACT has been an ongoing point of discussion within the field.
=== Gender constructs ===
Queer theorist and ACT therapist Alex Stitt observed how relational frames within a person's language development inform their cognitive associations pertaining to gender identity, gender role, and gender expression. How rigid or flexible a person is with their relational frames, Stitt proposed, will determine how adaptable their concept of gender is within themselves, and how open they are to gender diversity. Children, for example, may adhere to the rigid hierarchical frame "males are boys, and boys have short hair" leading to the false inference that anyone who has short hair is male. Likewise, children may adhere to oppositional frames, leading to false notions like the opposite of a lemon is a lime, the opposite of a cat is a dog, or the opposite of a man is a woman. Stitt observes that adults struggling with gender related issues within themselves, often hyperfocus on causal frames in an attempt to explain gender variance, or frames of comparison and distinction, potentially resulting in feelings of isolation and alienation.
=== Autism spectrum disorder ===
RFT provides conceptual and procedural guidance for enhancing the cognitive and language development capability (through its detailed treatment and analysis of derived relational responding and the transformation of function) of early intensive behavior intervention (EIBI) programs for young children with autism and related disorders. The Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge (PEAK) Relational Training System is heavily influenced by RFT.
=== Evolution science ===
More recently, RFT has also been proposed as a way to guide discussion of language processes within evolution science, whether within evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology, toward a more informed understanding of the role of language in shaping human social behavior. The effort at integrating RFT into evolution science has been led by, among others, Steven C. Hayes, a co-developer of RFT, and David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University. For example, in 2011, Hayes presented at a seminar at Binghamton, on the topic of "Symbolic Behavior, Behavioral Psychology, and the Clinical Importance of Evolution Science", while Wilson likewise presented at a symposium at the annual conference in Parma, Italy, of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, the parent organization sponsoring RFT research, on the topic of "Evolution for Everyone, Including Contextual Psychology". Hayes, Wilson, and colleagues have recently linked RFT to the concept of a symbotype and an evolutionarily sensible way that relational framing could have developed has been described.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Hayes, Steven C.; Barnes-Holmes, Dermot; Roche, Bryan, eds. (2001). Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. doi:10.1007/b108413. ISBN 978-0306466007. OCLC 46633963.
Hayes, Steven C.; Barnes-Holmes, Dermot; Roche, Bryan (April 2003). "Behavior analysis, relational frame theory, and the challenge of human language and cognition: a reply to the commentaries on Relational frame theory: a post-Skinnerian account of human language and cognition". The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. 19 (1): 39–54. doi:10.1007/BF03392981. PMC 2755418. PMID 22477255.
Hughes, Sean; Barnes-Holmes, Dermot (2016). "Relational frame theory: the basic account". In Zettle, Robert D.; Hayes, Steven C.; Barnes-Holmes, Dermot; Biglan, Anthony (eds.). The Wiley handbook of contextual behavioral science. Chichester, UK; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 129–178. doi:10.1002/9781118489857.ch8. ISBN 9781118489567. OCLC 920735550.
Skinner, B. F. (March 1989). "Review of Hull's Principles of behavior". Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 51 (2): 287–290. doi:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-287. PMC 1338857.
Törneke, Niklas (2010). Learning RFT: an introduction to relational frame theory and its clinical applications. Oakland, CA: Context Press. ISBN 9781572249066. OCLC 502034176.
== External links ==
Official website of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, which is one of the organizations that most commonly presents new work in RFT
An Introduction to Relational Frame Theory (free, multimedia, open-access, online tutorial)] | Wikipedia/Relational_frame_theory |
In computer science, a mark–compact algorithm is a type of garbage collection algorithm used to reclaim unreachable memory. Mark–compact algorithms can be regarded as a combination of the mark–sweep algorithm and Cheney's copying algorithm. First, reachable objects are marked, then a compacting step relocates the reachable (marked) objects towards the beginning of the heap area. Compacting garbage collection is used by modern JVMs, Microsoft's Common Language Runtime and by the Glasgow Haskell Compiler.
== Algorithms ==
After marking the live objects in the heap in the same fashion as the mark–sweep algorithm, the heap will often be fragmented. The goal of mark–compact algorithms is to shift the live objects in memory together so the fragmentation is eliminated. The challenge is to correctly update all pointers to the moved objects, most of which will have new memory addresses after the compaction. The issue of handling pointer updates is handled in different ways.
=== Table-based compaction ===
A table-based algorithm was first described by Haddon and Waite in 1967. It preserves the relative placement of the live objects in the heap, and requires only a constant amount of overhead.
Compaction proceeds from the bottom of the heap (low addresses) to the top (high addresses). As live (that is, marked) objects are encountered, they are moved to the first available low address, and a record is appended to a break table of relocation information. For each live object, a record in the break table consists of the object's original address before the compaction and the difference between the original address and the new address after compaction. The break table is stored in the heap that is being compacted, but in an area that is marked as unused. To ensure that compaction will always succeed, the minimum object size in the heap must be larger than or the same size as a break table record.
As compaction progresses, relocated objects are copied towards the bottom of the heap. Eventually an object will need to be copied to the space occupied by the break table, which now must be relocated elsewhere. These movements of the break table, (called rolling the table by the authors) cause the relocation records to become disordered, requiring the break table to be sorted after the compaction is complete. The cost of sorting the break table is O(n log n), where n is the number of live objects that were found in the mark stage of the algorithm.
Finally, the break table relocation records are used to adjust pointer fields inside the relocated objects. The live objects are examined for pointers, which can be looked up in the sorted break table of size n in O(log n) time if the break table is sorted, for a total running time of O(n log n). Pointers are then adjusted by the amount specified in the relocation table.
=== LISP 2 algorithm ===
In order to avoid O(n log n) complexity, the LISP 2 algorithm uses three different passes over the heap. In addition, heap objects must have a separate forwarding pointer slot that is not used outside of garbage collection.
After standard marking, the algorithm proceeds in the following three passes:
Compute the forwarding location for live objects.
Keep track of a free and live pointer and initialize both to the start of heap.
If the live pointer points to a live object, update that object's forwarding pointer to the current free pointer and increment the free pointer according to the object's size.
Move the live pointer to the next object
End when the live pointer reaches the end of heap.
Update all pointers
For each live object, update its pointers according to the forwarding pointers of the objects they point to.
Move objects
For each live object, move its data to its forwarding location.
This algorithm is O(n) on the size of the heap; it has a better complexity than the table-based approach, but the table-based approach's n is the size of the used space only, not the entire heap space as in the LISP2 algorithm. However, the LISP2 algorithm is simpler to implement.
=== The Compressor ===
The Compressor compaction algorithm has the lowest complexity among compaction algorithms known today. It extends IBM’s garbage collection for Java.
The serial version of the Compressor maintains a relocation map that maps the old address of each object to its new address (i.e., its address before compaction is mapped to its address after compaction). In a first pass, the mapping is computed for all objects in the heap. In a second pass, each object is moved to its new location (compacted to the beginning of the heap), and all pointers within it are modified according to the relocation map.
The computation of the relocation map in the first pass can be made very efficient by working with small tables that do not require a pass over the entire heap. This keeps the Compressor complexity low, involving one pass over small tables and one pass over the full heap. This represents the best-known complexity for compaction algorithms.
The Compressor also has a parallel version in which multiple compacting threads can work together to compact all objects in parallel. The Compressor also has a concurrent version in which compacting threads can work concurrently with the program, carefully allowing the program to access objects as they are being moved towards the beginning of the heap. The parallel and concurrent versions of the Compressor make use of virtual memory primitives.
== See also ==
Dead-code elimination
Tracing garbage collection
== References == | Wikipedia/Mark–compact_algorithm |
In computer science, region-based memory management is a type of memory management in which each allocated object is assigned to a region. A region, also called a partition, subpool, zone, arena, area, or memory context, is a collection of allocated objects that can be efficiently reallocated or deallocated all at once. Memory allocators using region-based managements are often called area allocators, and when they work by only "bumping" a single pointer, as bump allocators.
Like stack allocation, regions facilitate allocation and deallocation of memory with low overhead; but they are more flexible, allowing objects to live longer than the stack frame in which they were allocated. In typical implementations, all objects in a region are allocated in a single contiguous range of memory addresses, similarly to how stack frames are typically allocated.
In OS/360 and successors, the concept applies at two levels; each job runs within a contiguous partition or region. Storage allocation requests specify a subpool, and the application can free an entire subpool. Storage for a subpool is allocated from the region or partition in blocks that are a multiple of 2 Kib or 4 KiB that generally are not contiguous.
== Example ==
As a simple example, consider the following C code which allocates and then deallocates a linked list data structure:
Although it required many operations to construct the linked list, it can be quickly deallocated in a single operation by destroying the region in which the nodes were allocated. There is no need to traverse the list.
== Implementation ==
Simple explicit regions are straightforward to implement; the following description is based on the work of Hanson. Each region is implemented as a linked list of large blocks of memory; each block should be large enough to serve many allocations. The current block maintains a pointer to the next free position in the block, and if the block is filled, a new one is allocated and added to the list. When the region is deallocated, the next-free-position pointer is reset to the beginning of the first block, and the list of blocks can be reused for the next allocated region. Alternatively, when a region is deallocated, its list of blocks can be appended to a global freelist from which other regions may later allocate new blocks. With either case of this simple scheme, it is not possible to deallocate individual objects in regions.
The overall cost per allocated byte of this scheme is very low; almost all allocations involve only a comparison and an update to the next-free-position pointer. Deallocating a region is a constant-time operation, and is done rarely. Unlike in typical garbage collection systems, there is no need to tag data with its type.
== History and concepts ==
The basic concept of regions is very old, first appearing as early as 1967 in Douglas T. Ross's AED Free Storage Package, in which memory was partitioned into a hierarchy of zones; each zone had its own allocator, and a zone could be freed all-at-once, making zones usable as regions. In 1976, the PL/I standard included the AREA data type. In 1990, Hanson demonstrated that explicit regions in C (which he called arenas) could achieve time performance per allocated byte superior to even the fastest-known heap allocation mechanism. Explicit regions were instrumental in the design of some early C-based software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server, which calls them pools, and the PostgreSQL database management system, which calls them memory contexts. Like traditional heap allocation, these schemes do not provide memory safety; it is possible for a programmer to access a region after it is deallocated through a dangling pointer, or to forget to deallocate a region, causing a memory leak.
=== Region inference ===
In 1988, researchers began investigating how to use regions for safe memory allocation by introducing the concept of region inference, where the creation and deallocation of regions, as well as the assignment of individual static allocation expressions to particular regions, is inserted by the compiler at compile-time. The compiler is able to do this in such a way that it can guarantee dangling pointers and leaks do not occur.
In an early work by Ruggieri and Murtagh, a region is created at the beginning of each function and deallocated at the end. They then use data flow analysis to determine a lifetime for each static allocation expression, and assign it to the youngest region that contains its entire lifetime.
In 1994, this work was generalized in a seminal work by Tofte and Talpin to support type polymorphism and higher-order functions in Standard ML, a functional programming language, using a different algorithm based on type inference and the theoretical concepts of polymorphic region types and the region calculus. Their work introduced an extension of the lambda calculus including regions, adding two constructs:
e1 at ρ: Compute the result of the expression e1 and store it in region ρ;
let region ρ in e2 end: Create a region and bind it to ρ; evaluate e2; then deallocate the region.
Due to this syntactic structure, regions are nested, meaning that if r2 is created after r1, it must also be deallocated before r1; the result is a stack of regions. Moreover, regions must be deallocated in the same function in which they are created. These restrictions were relaxed by Aiken et al.
This extended lambda calculus was intended to serve as a provably memory-safe intermediate representation for compiling Standard ML programs into machine code, but building a translator that would produce good results on large programs faced a number of practical limitations which had to be resolved with new analyses, including dealing with recursive calls, tail calls, and eliminating regions which contained only a single value. This work was completed in 1995 and integrated into the ML Kit, a version of ML based on region allocation in place of garbage collection. This permitted a direct comparison between the two on medium-sized test programs, yielding widely varying results ("between 10 times faster and four times slower") depending on how "region-friendly" the program was; compile times, however, were on the order of minutes. The ML Kit was eventually scaled to large applications with two additions: a scheme for separate compilation of modules, and a hybrid technique combining region inference with tracing garbage collection.
=== Generalization to new language environments ===
Following the development of ML Kit, regions began to be generalized to other language environments:
Various extensions to the C programming language:
The safe C dialect Cyclone, which among many other features adds support for explicit regions, and evaluates the impact of migrating existing C applications to use them.
An extension to C called RC was implemented that uses explicitly-managed regions, but also uses reference counting on regions to guarantee memory safety by ensuring that no region is freed prematurely. Regions decrease the overhead of reference counting, since references internal to regions don't require counts to be updated when they're modified. RC includes an explicit static type system for regions that allows some reference count updates to be eliminated.
A restriction of C called Control-C limits programs to use regions (and only a single region at a time), as part of its design to statically ensure memory safety.
Regions were implemented for a subset of Java, and became a critical component of memory management in Real time Java, which combines them with ownership types to demonstrate object encapsulation and eliminate runtime checks on region deallocation. More recently, a semi-automatic system was proposed for inferring regions in embedded real-time Java applications, combining a compile-time static analysis, a runtime region allocation policy, and programmer hints. Regions are a good fit for real-time computing because their time overhead is statically predictable, without the complexity of incremental garbage collection.
Java 21 added a Java API to allocate and release Arenas. The stated purpose of these is to improve safe integration with native libraries so as to prevent JVM memory leaks and to reduce the risk of JVM memory corruption by native code.
They were implemented for the logic programming languages Prolog and Mercury by extending Tofte and Talpin's region inference model to support backtracking and cuts.
Region-based storage management is used throughout the parallel programming language ParaSail. Due to the lack of explicit pointers in ParaSail, there is no need for reference counting.
== Disadvantages ==
Systems using regions may experience issues where regions become very large before they are deallocated and contain a large proportion of dead data; these are commonly called "leaks" (even though they are eventually freed). Eliminating leaks may involve restructuring the program, typically by introducing new, shorter-lifetime regions. Debugging this type of problem is especially difficult in systems using region inference, where the programmer must understand the underlying inference algorithm, or examine the verbose intermediate representation, to diagnose the issue. Tracing garbage collectors are more effective at deallocating this type of data in a timely manner without program changes; this was one justification for hybrid region/GC systems. On the other hand, tracing garbage collectors can also exhibit subtle leaks, if references are retained to data which will never be used again.
Region-based memory management works best when the number of regions is relatively small and each contains many objects; programs that contain many sparse regions will exhibit internal fragmentation, leading to wasted memory and a time overhead for region management. Again, in the presence of region inference this problem can be more difficult to diagnose.
== Hybrid methods ==
As mentioned above, RC uses a hybrid of regions and reference counting, limiting the overhead of reference counting since references internal to regions don't require counts to be updated when they're modified. Similarly, some mark-region hybrid methods combine tracing garbage collection with regions; these function by dividing the heap into regions, performing a mark-sweep pass in which any regions containing live objects are marked, and then freeing any unmarked regions. These require continual defragmentation to remain effective.
== Notes ==
== References == | Wikipedia/Region_inference |
Azul Systems, Inc. (also known as Azul) is a company that develops and distributes runtimes (JDK, JRE, JVM) for executing Java-based applications. The company was founded in March 2002. Azul Systems has headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.
== History ==
Azul Systems was founded by Scott Sellers (now President & CEO), Gil Tene (CTO), and Shyam Pillalamarri. Initially founded as a hardware appliance company, Azul's Java Compute Appliances (JCAs) were designed to massively scale up the usable computing resources available to Java applications. The first compute appliances, offered in April 2005, were the Vega 1-based models.
With the introduction of Azul Platform Prime in 2010, the company transitioned to producing software-only products. It retired its hardware appliance Vega product lines in 2013. Stephen DeWitt previously held the position of CEO.
On April 1, 2020, Azul announced that it had closed a strategic growth equity investment led by London-based Vitruvian Partners and New York-based Lead Edge Capital. In the agreement, Azul shareholders were expected to receive a total of approximately $340 million in consideration. Based on public filings, Azul had raised more than $200M in financing to date.
== Products ==
=== Azul Platform Prime (formerly Zing) ===
Azul produced Platform Prime, a Java virtual machine (JVM) and runtime platform for Java applications.
Platform Prime is compliant with the associated Java SE version standards. It is based on the same HotSpot JVM and JDK code base used by the Oracle and OpenJDK JDKs, with enhancements relating to garbage collection, JIT compilation, and Warmup behaviors, all aimed at producing improved application execution metrics and performance indicators.
Key feature areas in Platform Prime include:
C4 (Continuously Concurrent Compacting Collector): A garbage collector reported to maintain concurrent, disruption-free application execution across wide ranges of heap sizes and allocation rates [from sub-GB to multi-TB, from MBs/sec to tens of GB/sec]
Falcon: An LLVM-based JIT compiler that delivers dynamically and heavily optimized application code at runtime
ReadyNow: A feature aimed at improving application startup and warmup behaviors, reducing the amount of slowness experienced by Java applications as they get started or restarted
Formerly known as Zing, it first became available on October 19, 2010. The company was formerly known for its Vega Java Compute Appliances, specialized hardware designed to use compute resources available to Java applications. Zing utilized and improved on the software technology initially developed for the Vega hardware.
The product has been regularly updated and refreshed since then.
Platform Prime is available for Linux, and requires x86-based hardware powered by Intel or AMD processors.
=== Azul Platform Core (formerly Zulu and Zulu Embedded JVM) ===
Azul distributes and supports Zulu and Zulu Enterprise, a certified binary build of OpenJDK. The initial release in September 2013 supported Java 7 ran on Windows 2008 R2 and 2012 on the Windows Azure Cloud. On January 21, 2014, Azul announced Zulu support for multiple Linux versions, Java 6, as well as Zulu Enterprise, which has subscription support options. Support for Java 8 was added in April 2014 and Mac OS X support was added in June 2014. In September 2014, Zulu was extended to support Docker. Zulu Embedded, which allows developers to customize the build footprint, was released in March, 2015.
Azul produces the jHiccup open-source performance measurement tool for Java applications. It is designed to measure the stalls or "hiccups" caused by an application's underlying Java platform.
=== Azul Intelligence Cloud ===
In December 2021, Azul launched Intelligence Cloud, a family of products that apply cloud resources to analyze and optimize Java fleets and provide actionable intelligence. The first product, Cloud Native Compiler, uses a cloud-centric approach that decouples just-in-time (JIT) compilation from the Java virtual machine (JVM); it is compatible with all Java applications and retains the full advantages of JIT compilation.
== References ==
== External links ==
Azul Systems official website
Priming Java for Speed – Azul CTO Gil Tene's presentation from QCon SF 2014 (video)
Understanding Java Garbage Collection - Azul CTO Gil Tene's presentation from SpringOne 2GX 2013 (video)
C4 white paper - White paper from the ACM conference describing the C4 (Continuously Concurrent Compacting Collector) garbage collection algorithm. Authors: Gil Tene, Balaji Iyengar and Michael Wolf, all of Azul Systems
Enabling Java in Latency-Sensitive Environments - Video of Azul CTO Gil Tene's presentation from QCon New York 2013 | Wikipedia/Azul_Systems |
In computer science and networking in particular, a session is a time-delimited two-way link, a practical (relatively high) layer in the TCP/IP protocol enabling interactive expression and information exchange between two or more communication devices or ends – be they computers, automated systems, or live active users (see login session). A session is established at a certain point in time, and then ‘torn down’ - brought to an end - at some later point. An established communication session may involve more than one message in each direction. A session is typically stateful, meaning that at least one of the communicating parties needs to hold current state information and save information about the session history to be able to communicate, as opposed to stateless communication, where the communication consists of independent requests with responses.
An established session is the basic requirement to perform a connection-oriented communication. A session also is the basic step to transmit in connectionless communication modes. However, any unidirectional transmission does not define a session.
Communication Transport may be implemented as part of protocols and services at the application layer, at the session layer or at the transport layer in the OSI model.
Application layer examples:
HTTP sessions, which allow associating information with individual visitors
A telnet remote login session
Session layer example:
A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based Internet phone call
Transport layer example:
A TCP session, which is synonymous to a TCP virtual circuit, a TCP connection, or an established TCP socket.
In the case of transport protocols that do not implement a formal session layer (e.g., UDP) or where sessions at the application layer are generally very short-lived (e.g., HTTP), sessions are maintained by a higher level program using a method defined in the data being exchanged. For example, an HTTP exchange between a browser and a remote host may include an HTTP cookie which identifies state, such as a unique session ID, information about the user's preferences or authorization level.
HTTP/1.0 was thought to only allow a single request and response during one Web/HTTP Session. Protocol version HTTP/1.1 improved this by completing the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), making it easier to maintain the Web Session and supporting HTTP cookies and file uploads.
Most client-server sessions are maintained by the transport layer - a single connection for a single session. However each transaction phase of a Web/HTTP session creates a separate connection. Maintaining session continuity between phases requires a session ID. The session ID is embedded within the <A HREF> or <FORM> links of dynamic web pages so that it is passed back to the CGI. CGI then uses the session ID to ensure session continuity between transaction phases. One advantage of one connection-per-phase is that it works well over low bandwidth (modem) connections.
== Software implementation ==
TCP sessions are typically implemented in software using child processes and/or multithreading, where a new process or thread is created when the computer establishes or joins a session. HTTP sessions are typically not implemented using one thread per session, but by means of a database with information about the state of each session. The advantage with multiple processes or threads is relaxed complexity of the software, since each thread is an instance with its own history and encapsulated variables. The disadvantage is large overhead in terms of system resources, and that the session may be interrupted if the system is restarted.
When a client may connect to any server in a cluster of servers, a special problem is encountered in maintaining consistency when the servers must maintain session state. The client must either be directed to the same server for the duration of the session, or the servers must transmit server-side session information via a shared file system or database. Otherwise, the client may reconnect to a different server than the one it started the session with, which will cause problems when the new server does not have access to the stored state of the old one.
== Server-side web sessions ==
Server-side sessions are handy and efficient, but can become difficult to handle in conjunction with load-balancing/high-availability systems and are not usable at all in some embedded systems with no storage. The load-balancing problem can be solved by using shared storage or by applying forced peering between each client and a single server in the cluster, although this can compromise system efficiency and load distribution.
A method of using server-side sessions in systems without mass-storage is to reserve a portion of RAM for storage of session data. This method is applicable for servers with a limited number of clients (e.g. router or access point with infrequent or disallowed access to more than one client at a time).
== Client-side web sessions ==
Client-side sessions use cookies and cryptographic techniques to maintain state without storing as much data on the server. When presenting a dynamic web page, the server sends the current state data to the client (web browser) in the form of a cookie. The client saves the cookie in memory or on disk. With each successive request, the client sends the cookie back to the server, and the server uses the data to "remember" the state of the application for that specific client and generate an appropriate response.
This mechanism may work well in some contexts; however, data stored on the client is vulnerable to tampering by the user or by software that has access to the client computer. To use client-side sessions where confidentiality and integrity are required, the following must be guaranteed:
Confidentiality: Nothing apart from the server should be able to interpret session data.
Data integrity: Nothing apart from the server should manipulate session data (accidentally or maliciously).
Authenticity: Nothing apart from the server should be able to initiate valid sessions.
To accomplish this, the server needs to encrypt the session data before sending it to the client, and modification of such information by any other party should be prevented via cryptographic means.
Transmitting state back and forth with every request is only practical when the size of the cookie is small. In essence, client-side sessions trade server disk space for the extra bandwidth that each web request will require. Moreover, web browsers limit the number and size of cookies that may be stored by a web site. To improve efficiency and allow for more session data, the server may compress the data before creating the cookie, decompressing it later when the cookie is returned by the client.
== HTTP session token ==
A session token is a unique identifier that is generated and sent from a server to a client to identify the current interaction session. The client usually stores and sends the token as an HTTP cookie and/or sends it as a parameter in GET or POST queries. The reason to use session tokens is that the client only has to handle the identifier—all session data is stored on the server (usually in a database, to which the client does not have direct access) linked to that identifier. Examples of the names that some programming languages use when naming their HTTP cookie include JSESSIONID (JSP), PHPSESSID (PHP), CGISESSID (CGI), and ASPSESSIONID (ASP).
== Session management ==
In human–computer interaction, session management is the process of keeping track of a user's activity across sessions of interaction with the computer system.
Typical session management tasks in a desktop environment include keeping track of which applications are open and which documents each application has opened, so that the same state can be restored when the user logs out and logs in later. For a website, session management might involve requiring the user to re-login if the session has expired (i.e., a certain time limit has passed without user activity). It is also used to store information on the server-side between HTTP requests.
=== Desktop session management ===
A desktop session manager is a program that can save and restore desktop sessions. A desktop session is all the windows currently running and their current content. Session management on Linux-based systems is provided by X session manager. On Microsoft Windows systems, session management is provided by the Session Manager Subsystem (smss.exe); user session functionality can be extended by third-party applications like twinsplay.
=== Browser session management ===
Session management is particularly useful in a web browser where a user can save all open pages and settings and restore them at a later date or on a different computer (see data portability).
To help recover from a system or application crash, pages and settings can also be restored on next run. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, OmniWeb and Opera are examples of web browsers that support session management. Session management is often managed through the application of cookies.
=== Web server session management ===
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is stateless. Session management is the technique used by the web developer to make the stateless HTTP protocol support session state. For example, once a user has been authenticated to the web server, the user's next HTTP request (GET or POST) should not cause the web server to ask for the user's account and password again. For a discussion of the methods used to accomplish this see HTTP cookie and Session ID
In situations where multiple web servers must share knowledge of session state (as is typical in a cluster environment) session information must be shared between the cluster nodes that are running web server software. Methods for sharing session state between nodes in a cluster include: multicasting session information to member nodes (see JGroups for one example of this technique), sharing session information with a partner node using distributed shared memory or memory virtualization, sharing session information between nodes using network sockets, storing session information on a shared file system such as a distributed file system or a global file system, or storing the session information outside the cluster in a database.
If session information is considered transient, volatile data that is not required for non-repudiation of transactions and does not contain data that is subject to compliance auditing (in the U.S. for example, see the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Sarbanes–Oxley Act for examples of two laws that necessitate compliance auditing) then any method of storing session information can be used. However, if session information is subject to audit compliance, consideration should be given to the method used for session storage, replication, and clustering.
In a service-oriented architecture, Simple Object Access Protocol or SOAP messages constructed with Extensible Markup Language (XML) messages can be used by consumer applications to cause web servers to create sessions.
=== Session management over SMS ===
Just as HTTP is a stateless protocol, so is SMS. As SMS became interoperable across rival networks in 1999, and text messaging started its ascent towards becoming a ubiquitous global form of communication, various enterprises became interested in using the SMS channel for commercial purposes. Initial services did not require session management since they were only one-way communications (for example, in 2000, the first mobile news service was delivered via SMS in Finland). Today, these applications are referred to as application-to-peer (A2P) messaging as distinct from peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging. The development of interactive enterprise applications required session management, but because SMS is a stateless protocol as defined by the GSM standards, early implementations were controlled client-side by having the end-users enter commands and service identifiers manually.
== See also ==
HTTPS
REST
Session ID
Sessionization
Session fixation
Session poisoning
== References ==
== External links ==
Sessions by Doug Lea | Wikipedia/Session_(computer_science) |
Cheney's algorithm, first described in a 1970 ACM paper by C.J. Cheney, is a stop and copy method of tracing garbage collection in computer software systems. In this scheme, the heap is divided into two equal halves, only one of which is in use at any one time. Garbage collection is performed by copying live objects from one semispace (the from-space) to the other (the to-space), which then becomes the new heap. The entire old heap is then discarded in one piece. It is an improvement on the previous stop-and-copy technique.
Cheney's algorithm reclaims items as follows:
Object references on the stack. Object references on the stack are checked. One of the two following actions is taken for each object reference that points to an object in from-space:
If the object has not yet been moved to the to-space, this is done by creating an identical copy in the to-space, and then replacing the from-space version with a forwarding pointer to the to-space copy. Then update the object reference to refer to the new version in to-space.
If the object has already been moved to the to-space, simply update the reference from the forwarding pointer in from-space.
Objects in the to-space. The garbage collector examines all object references in the objects that have been migrated to the to-space, and performs one of the above two actions on the referenced objects.
Once all to-space references have been examined and updated, garbage collection is complete.
The algorithm needs no stack and only two pointers outside of the from-space and to-space: a pointer to the beginning of free space in the to-space, and a pointer to the next word in to-space that needs to be examined. The data between the two pointers represents work remaining for it to do (those objects are gray in the tri-color terminology, see later).
The forwarding pointer (sometimes called a "broken heart") is used only during the garbage collection process; when a reference to an object already in to-space (thus having a forwarding pointer in from-space) is found, the reference can be updated quickly simply by updating its pointer to match the forwarding pointer.
Because the strategy is to exhaust all live references, and then all references in referenced objects, this is known as a breadth-first list copying garbage collection scheme.
== Semispace ==
Cheney based his work on the semispace garbage collector, which was published a year earlier by R.R. Fenichel and J.C. Yochelson.
== Equivalence to tri-color abstraction ==
Cheney's algorithm is an example of a tri-color marking garbage collector. The first member of the gray set is the stack itself. Objects referenced on the stack are copied into the to-space, which contains members of the black and gray sets.
The algorithm moves any white objects (equivalent to objects in the from-space without forwarding pointers) to the gray set by copying them to the to-space. Objects that are between the scanning pointer and the free-space pointer on the to-space area are members of the gray set still to be scanned. Objects below the scanning pointer belong to the black set. Objects are moved to the black set by simply moving the scanning pointer over them.
When the scanning pointer reaches the free-space pointer, the gray set is empty, and the algorithm ends.
== References ==
Cheney, C.J. (November 1970). "A Nonrecursive List Compacting Algorithm". Communications of the ACM. 13 (11): 677–678. doi:10.1145/362790.362798. S2CID 36538112.
Fenichel, R.R.; Yochelson, Jerome C. (1969). "A LISP garbage-collector for virtual-memory computer systems". Communications of the ACM. 12 (11): 611–612. doi:10.1145/363269.363280. S2CID 36616954.
Byers, Rick (2007). "Garbage Collection Algorithms" (PDF). Garbage Collection Algorithms. 12 (11): 3–4.
== External links ==
Understanding Android Runtime (Google I/O'19) on YouTube - Android uses a variant of the semi-space garbage collector. | Wikipedia/Cheney's_algorithm |
In computer science, garbage includes data, objects, or other regions of the memory of a computer system (or other system resources), which will not be used in any future computation by the system, or by a program running on it. Because every computer system has a finite amount of memory, and most software produces garbage, it is frequently necessary to deallocate memory that is occupied by garbage and return it to the heap, or memory pool, for reuse.
== Classification ==
Garbage is generally classified into two types: syntactic garbage, any object or data which is within a program's memory space but unreachable from the program's root set; and semantic garbage, any object or data which is never accessed by a running program for any combination of program inputs. Objects and data which are not garbage are said to be live.
Casually stated, syntactic garbage is data that cannot be reached, and semantic garbage is data that will not be reached. More precisely, syntactic garbage is data that is unreachable due to the reference graph (there is no path to it), which can be determined by many algorithms, as discussed in tracing garbage collection, and only requires analyzing the data, not the code. Semantic garbage is data that will not be accessed, either because it is unreachable (hence also syntactic garbage), or is reachable but will not be accessed; this latter requires analysis of the code, and is in general an undecidable problem.
Syntactic garbage is a (usually strict) subset of semantic garbage, as it is entirely possible for an object to hold a reference to another object without ever using that object.
== Example ==
In the following simple stack implementation in Java, each element popped from the stack becomes semantic garbage once there are no outside references to it:
This is because elements[] still contains a reference to the object, but the object will never be accessed again through this reference, because elements[] is private to the class and the pop method only returns references to elements it has not already popped. (After it decrements size, this class will never access that element again.) However, knowing this requires analysis of the code of the class, which is undecidable in general.
If a later push call re-grows the stack to the previous size, overwriting this last reference, then the object will become syntactic garbage, because it can never be accessed again, and will be eligible for garbage collection.
=== Automatic garbage collection ===
An example of the automatic collection of syntactic garbage, by reference counting garbage collection, can be produced using the Python command-line interpreter:
In this session, an object is created, its location in the memory is displayed, and the only reference to the object is then destroyed—there is no way to ever use the object again from this point on, as there are no references to it. This becomes apparent when we try to access the original reference:
As it is now impossible to refer to the object, the object has become useless; it is garbage. Since Python uses garbage collection, it automatically deallocates the memory that was used for the object so that it may be used again:
The Bar instance now resides at the memory location 0x54f30; at the same place as where our previous object, the Foo instance, was located. Since the Foo instance was destroyed, freeing up the memory used to contain it, the interpreter creates the Bar object at the same memory location as before, making good use of the available resources.
== Effects ==
Garbage consumes heap memory, and thus one wishes to collect it (to minimize memory use, allow faster memory allocation, and prevent out-of-memory errors by reducing heap fragmentation and memory use).
However, collecting garbage takes time and, if done manually, requires coding overhead. Further, collecting garbage destroys objects and thus can cause calls to finalizers, executing potentially arbitrary code at an arbitrary point in the program's execution. Incorrect garbage collection (deallocating memory that is not garbage), primarily due to errors in manual garbage collection (rather than errors in garbage collectors), results in memory safety violations (that often create security holes) due to use of dangling pointers.
Syntactic garbage can be collected automatically, and garbage collectors have been extensively studied and developed. Semantic garbage cannot be automatically collected in general, and thus causes memory leaks even in garbage-collected languages. Detecting and eliminating semantic garbage is typically done using a specialized debugging tool called a heap profiler, which allows one to see which objects are live and how they are reachable, enabling one to remove the unintended reference.
== Eliminating garbage ==
The problem of managing the deallocation of garbage is well-known in computer science. Several approaches are taken:
Many operating systems reclaim the memory and resources used by a process or program when it terminates. Simple or short-lived programs which are designed to run in such environments can exit and allow the operating system to perform any necessary reclamation.
In systems or programming languages with manual memory management, the programmer must explicitly arrange for memory to be deallocated when it is no longer used. C and C++ are two well-known languages which support this model.
Garbage collection uses various algorithms to automatically analyze the state of a program, identify garbage, and deallocate it without intervention by the programmer. Many modern programming languages such as Java and Haskell provide automated garbage collection. However, it is not a recent development, as it has also been used in older languages such as LISP.
There is ongoing research to type-theoretic approaches (such as region inference) to identification and removal of garbage from a program. No general type-theoretic solution to the problem has been developed.
== Notes ==
== External links ==
Benjamin Pierce (editor), Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages, MIT Press (2005), ISBN 0-262-16228-8
Richard Jones and Rafael Lins, Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automated Dynamic Memory Management, Wiley and Sons (1996), ISBN 0-471-94148-4 | Wikipedia/Garbage_(computer_science) |
A network socket is a software structure within a network node of a computer network that serves as an endpoint for sending and receiving data across the network. The structure and properties of a socket are defined by an application programming interface (API) for the networking architecture. Sockets are created only during the lifetime of a process of an application running in the node.
Because of the standardization of the TCP/IP protocols in the development of the Internet, the term network socket is most commonly used in the context of the Internet protocol suite, and is therefore often also referred to as Internet socket. In this context, a socket is externally identified to other hosts by its socket address, which is the triad of transport protocol, IP address, and port number.
The term socket is also used for the software endpoint of node-internal inter-process communication (IPC), which often uses the same API as a network socket.
== Use ==
The use of the term socket in software is analogous to the function of an electrical female connector, a device in hardware for communication between nodes interconnected with an electrical cable. Similarly, the term port is used for external physical endpoints at a node or device.
The application programming interface (API) for the network protocol stack creates a handle for each socket created by an application, commonly referred to as a socket descriptor. In Unix-like operating systems, this descriptor is a type of file descriptor. It is stored by the application process for use with every read and write operation on the communication channel.
At the time of creation with the API, a network socket is bound to the combination of a type of network protocol to be used for transmissions, a network address of the host, and a port number. Ports are numbered resources that represent another type of software structure of the node. They are used as service types, and, once created by a process, serve as an externally (from the network) addressable location component, so that other hosts may establish connections.
Network sockets may be dedicated for persistent connections for communication between two nodes, or they may participate in connectionless and multicast communications.
In practice, due to the proliferation of the TCP/IP protocols in use on the Internet, the term network socket usually refers to use with the Internet Protocol (IP). It is therefore often also called Internet socket.
== Socket addresses ==
An application can communicate with a remote process by exchanging data with TCP/IP by knowing the combination of protocol type, IP address, and port number. This combination is often known as a socket address. It is the network-facing access handle to the network socket. The remote process establishes a network socket in its own instance of the protocol stack and uses the networking API to connect to the application, presenting its own socket address for use by the application.
== Implementation ==
A protocol stack, usually provided by the operating system (rather than as a separate library, for instance), is a set of services that allows processes to communicate over a network using the protocols that the stack implements. The operating system forwards the payload of incoming IP packets to the corresponding application by extracting the socket address information from the IP and transport protocol headers and stripping the headers from the application data.
The application programming interface (API) that programs use to communicate with the protocol stack, using network sockets, is called a socket API. Development of application programs that utilize this API is called socket programming or network programming. Internet socket APIs are usually based on the Berkeley sockets standard. In the Berkeley sockets standard, sockets are a form of file descriptor, due to the Unix philosophy that "everything is a file", and the analogies between sockets and files. Both have functions to read, write, open, and close. In practice, the differences strain the analogy, and different interfaces (send and receive) are used on a socket. In inter-process communication, each end generally has its own socket.
In the standard Internet protocols TCP and UDP, a socket address is the combination of an IP address and a port number, much like one end of a telephone connection is the combination of a phone number and a particular extension. Sockets need not have a source address, for example, for only sending data, but if a program binds a socket to a source address, the socket can be used to receive data sent to that address. Based on this address, Internet sockets deliver incoming data packets to the appropriate application process.
Socket often refers specifically to an internet socket or TCP socket. An internet socket is minimally characterized by the following:
local socket address, consisting of the local IP address and (for TCP and UDP, but not IP) a port number
protocol: A transport protocol, e.g., TCP, UDP, raw IP. This means that (local or remote) endpoints with TCP port 53 and UDP port 53 are distinct sockets, while IP does not have ports.
A socket that has been connected to another socket, e.g., during the establishment of a TCP connection, also has a remote socket address.
== Definition ==
The distinctions between a socket (internal representation), socket descriptor (abstract identifier), and socket address (public address) are subtle, and these are not always distinguished in everyday usage. Further, specific definitions of a socket differ between authors. In IETF Request for Comments, Internet Standards, in many textbooks, as well as in this article, the term socket refers to an entity that is uniquely identified by the socket number. In other textbooks, the term socket refers to a local socket address, i.e. a "combination of an IP address and a port number". In the original definition of socket given in RFC 147, as it was related to the ARPA network in 1971, "the socket is specified as a 32-bit number with even sockets identifying receiving sockets and odd sockets identifying sending sockets." Today, however, socket communications are bidirectional.
Within the operating system and the application that created a socket, a socket is referred to by a unique integer value called a socket descriptor.
== Tools ==
On Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows, the command-line tools netstat or ss are used to list established sockets and related information.
== Example ==
This example, modeled according to the Berkeley socket interface, sends the string "Hello, world!" via TCP to port 80 of the host with address 203.0.113.0. It illustrates the creation of a socket (getSocket), connecting it to the remote host, sending the string, and finally closing the socket:
Socket mysocket = getSocket(type = "TCP")
connect(mysocket, address = "203.0.113.0", port = "80")
send(mysocket, "Hello, world!")
close(mysocket)
== Types ==
Several types of Internet socket are available:
Datagram sockets
Connectionless sockets, which use User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Each packet sent or received on a datagram socket is individually addressed and routed. Order and reliability are not guaranteed with datagram sockets, so multiple packets sent from one machine or process to another may arrive in any order or might not arrive at all. Special configuration may be required to send broadcasts on a datagram socket. In order to receive broadcast packets, a datagram socket should not be bound to a specific address, though in some implementations, broadcast packets may also be received when a datagram socket is bound to a specific address.
Stream sockets
Connection-oriented sockets, which use Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) or Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP). A stream socket provides a sequenced and unique flow of error-free data without record boundaries, with well-defined mechanisms for creating and destroying connections and reporting errors. A stream socket transmits data reliably, in order, and with out-of-band capabilities. On the Internet, stream sockets are typically implemented using TCP so that applications can run across any networks using TCP/IP protocol.
Raw sockets
Allow direct sending and receiving of IP packets without any protocol-specific transport layer formatting. With other types of sockets, the payload is automatically encapsulated according to the chosen transport layer protocol (e.g. TCP, UDP), and the socket user is unaware of the existence of protocol headers that are broadcast with the payload. When reading from a raw socket, the headers are usually included. When transmitting packets from a raw socket, the automatic addition of a header is optional.
Most socket application programming interfaces (APIs), for example, those based on Berkeley sockets, support raw sockets. Windows XP was released in 2001 with raw socket support implemented in the Winsock interface, but three years later, Microsoft limited Winsock's raw socket support because of security concerns.
Raw sockets are used in security-related applications like Nmap. One use case for raw sockets is the implementation of new transport-layer protocols in user space. Raw sockets are typically available in network equipment, and used for routing protocols such as the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), and in the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) used, among other things, by the ping utility.
Other socket types are implemented over other transport protocols, such as Systems Network Architecture and Unix domain sockets for internal inter-process communication.
== Socket states in the client-server model ==
Computer processes that provide application services are referred to as servers, and create sockets on startup that are in the listening state. These sockets are waiting for initiatives from client programs.
A TCP server may serve several clients concurrently by creating a unique dedicated socket for each client connection in a new child process or processing thread for each client. These are in the established state when a socket-to-socket virtual connection or virtual circuit (VC), also known as a TCP session, is established with the remote socket, providing a duplex byte stream.
A server may create several concurrently established TCP sockets with the same local port number and local IP address, each mapped to its own server-child process, serving its own client process. They are treated as different sockets by the operating system since the remote socket address (the client IP address or port number) is different; i.e. since they have different socket pair tuples.
UDP sockets do not have an established state, because the protocol is connectionless. A UDP server process handles incoming datagrams from all remote clients sequentially through the same socket. UDP sockets are not identified by the remote address, but only by the local address, although each message has an associated remote address that can be retrieved from each datagram with the networking application programming interface (API).
== Socket pairs ==
Local and remote sockets communicating over TCP are called socket pairs. Each socket pair is described by a unique 4-tuple consisting of source and destination IP addresses and port numbers, i.e. of local and remote socket addresses. As discussed above, in the TCP case, a socket pair is associated on each end of the connection with a unique 4-tuple.
== History ==
The term socket dates to the publication of RFC 147 in 1971, when it was used in the ARPANET. Most modern implementations of sockets are based on Berkeley sockets (1983), and other stacks such as Winsock (1991). The Berkeley sockets API in the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), originated with the 4.2BSD Unix operating system as an API. Only in 1989, however, could UC Berkeley release versions of its operating system and networking library free from the licensing constraints of AT&T's copyright-protected Unix.
In c. 1987, AT&T introduced the STREAMS-based Transport Layer Interface (TLI) in UNIX System V Release 3 (SVR3). and continued into Release 4 (SVR4).
Other early implementations were written for TOPS-20, MVS, VM, IBM-DOS (PCIP).
== Sockets in network equipment ==
The socket is primarily a concept used in the transport layer of the Internet protocol suite or session layer of the OSI model. Networking equipment such as routers, which operate at the internet layer, and switches, which operate at the link layer, do not require implementations of the transport layer. However, stateful network firewalls, network address translators, and proxy servers keep track of active socket pairs. In multilayer switches and quality of service (QoS) support in routers, packet flows may be identified by extracting information about the socket pairs.
Raw sockets are typically available in network equipment and are used for routing protocols such as IGRP and OSPF, and for Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP).
== See also ==
List of TCP and UDP port numbers
Promiscuous traffic
WebSocket
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Jones, Anthony; Ohlund, Jim (2002). Network Programming for Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Press. ISBN 0-7356-1579-9.
== External links ==
How sockets work - IBM documentation
Server Programming with TCP/IP Sockets
Beej's Guide to Network Programming
Java Tutorials: Networking basics
Net::RawIP; module for Perl applications. Created by Sergey Kolychev.
SOCK_RAW Demystified: article describing inner workings of Raw Sockets
C language examples of Linux raw sockets for IPv4 and IPv6 - David Buchan's C language examples of IPv4 and IPv6 raw sockets for Linux. | Wikipedia/Network_socket |
The Algorithmic Justice League (AJL) is a digital advocacy non-profit organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 2016 by computer scientist Joy Buolamwini, the AJL uses research, artwork, and policy advocacy to increase societal awareness regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in society and the harms and biases that AI can pose to society. The AJL has engaged in a variety of open online seminars, media appearances, and tech advocacy initiatives to communicate information about bias in AI systems and promote industry and government action to mitigate against the creation and deployment of biased AI systems. In 2021, Fast Company named AJL as one of the 10 most innovative AI companies in the world.
== History ==
Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League in 2016 as a graduate student in the MIT Media Lab. While experimenting with facial detection software in her research, she found that the software could not detect her "highly melanated" face until she donned a white mask. After this incident, Buolamwini became inspired to found AJL to draw public attention to the existence of bias in artificial intelligence and the threat it can poses to civil rights. Early AJL campaigns focused primarily on bias in face recognition software; recent campaigns have dealt more broadly with questions of equitability and accountability in AI, including algorithmic bias, algorithmic decision-making, algorithmic governance, and algorithmic auditing.
Additionally there is a community of other organizations working towards similar goals, including Data and Society, Data for Black Lives, the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), and Fight for the Future.
== Notable work ==
=== Facial recognition ===
AJL founder Buolamwini collaborated with AI ethicist Timnit Gebru to release a 2018 study on racial and gender bias in facial recognition algorithms used by commercial systems from Microsoft, IBM, and Face++. Their research, entitled "Gender Shades", determined that machine learning models released by IBM and Microsoft were less accurate when analyzing dark-skinned and feminine faces compared to performance on light-skinned and masculine faces. The "Gender Shades" paper was accompanied by the launch of the Safe Face Pledge, an initiative designed with the Georgetown Center on Privacy & Technology that urged technology organizations and governments to prohibit lethal use of facial recognition technologies. The Gender Shades project and subsequent advocacy undertaken by AJL and similar groups led multiple tech companies, including Amazon and IBM, to address biases in the development of their algorithms and even temporarily ban the use of their products by police in 2020.
Buolamwini and AJL were featured in the 2020 Netflix documentary Coded Bias, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. This documentary focused on the AJL's research and advocacy efforts to spread awareness of algorithmic bias in facial recognition systems.
A research collaboration involving AJL released a white paper in May 2020 calling for the creation of a new United States federal government office to regulate the development and deployment of facial recognition technologies. The white paper proposed that creating a new federal government office for this area would help reduce the risks of mass surveillance and bias posed by facial recognition technologies towards vulnerable populations.
=== Bias in speech recognition ===
The AJL has run initiatives to increase public awareness of algorithmic bias and inequities in the performance of AI systems for speech and language modeling across gender and racial populations. The AJL's work in this space centers on highlighting gender and racial disparities in the performance of commercial speech recognition and natural language processing systems, which have been shown to underperform on racial minorities and reinforced gender stereotypes.
In March 2020, AJL released a spoken word artistic piece, titled Voicing Erasure, that increased public awareness of racial bias in automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. The piece was performed by numerous female and non-binary researchers in the field, including Ruha Benjamin, Sasha Costanza-Chock, Safiya Noble, and Kimberlé Crenshaw. AJL based their development of "Voicing Erasure" on a 2020 PNAS paper, titled, "Racial disparities in automated speech recognition" that identified racial disparities in performance of five commercial ASR systems.
=== Algorithmic governance ===
In 2019, Buolamwini represented AJL at a congressional hearing of the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, to discuss the applications of facial recognition technologies commercially and in the government. Buolamwini served as a witness at the hearing and spoke on underperformance of facial recognition technologies in identifying people with darker skin and feminine features and supported her position with research from the AJL project "Gender Shades".
In January 2022, the AJL collaborated with Fight for the Future and the Electronic Privacy Information Center to release an online petition called DumpID.me, calling for the IRS to halt their use of ID.me, a facial recognition technology they were using on users when they log in. The AJL and other organizations sent letters to legislators and requested them to encourage the IRS to stop the program. In February 2022, the IRS agreed to halt the program and stop using facial recognition technology. AJL has now shifted efforts to convince other government agencies to stop using facial recognition technology; as of March 2022, the DumpID.me petition has pivoted to stop the use of ID.me in all government agencies.
=== Olay Decode the Bias campaign ===
In September 2021, Olay collaborated with AJL and O'Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithmic Auditing (ORCAA) to conduct the Decode the Bias campaign, which included an audit that explored whether the Olay Skin Advisor (OSA) System included bias against women of color. The AJL chose to collaborate with Olay due to Olay's commitment to obtaining customer consent for their selfies and skin data to be used in this audit. The AJL and ORCAA audit revealed that the OSA system contained bias in its performance across participants' skin color and age. The OSA system demonstrated higher accuracy for participants with lighter skin tones, per the Fitzpatrick Skin Type and individual typology angle skin classification scales. The OSA system also demonstrated higher accuracy for participants aged 30–39. Olay has, since, taken steps to internally audit and mitigate against the bias of the OSA system. Olay has also funded 1,000 girls to attend the Black Girls Code camp, to encourage African-American girls to pursue STEM careers.
=== CRASH project ===
In July 2020, the Community Reporting of Algorithmic System Harms (CRASH) Project was launched by AJL. This project began in 2019 when Buolamwini and digital security researcher Camille François met at the Bellagio Center Residency Program, hosted by The Rockefeller Foundation. Since then, the project has also been co-led by MIT professor and AJL research director Sasha Costanza-Chock. The CRASH project focused on creating the framework for the development of bug-bounty programs (BBPs) that would incentivize individuals to uncover and report instances of algorithmic bias in AI technologies. After conducting interviews with BBP participants and a case study of Twitter's BBP program, AJL researchers developed and proposed a conceptual framework for designing BBP programs that compensate and encourage individuals to locate and disclose the existence of bias in AI systems. AJL intends for the CRASH framework to give individuals the ability to report algorithmic harms and stimulate change in AI technologies deployed by companies, especially individuals who have traditionally been excluded from the design of these AI technologies [20, DataSociety report].
== Support and media appearances ==
AJL initiatives have been funded by the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation and individual private donors. Fast Company recognized AJL as one of the 10 most innovative AI companies in 2021. Additionally, venues such as Time magazine, The New York Times, NPR, and CNN have featured Buolamwini's work with the AJL in several interviews and articles.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Official Website | Wikipedia/Algorithmic_Justice_League |
Tacit collusion is a collusion between competitors who do not explicitly exchange information but achieve an agreement about coordination of conduct. There are two types of tacit collusion: concerted action and conscious parallelism. In a concerted action also known as concerted activity, competitors exchange some information without reaching any explicit agreement, while conscious parallelism implies no communication. In both types of tacit collusion, competitors agree to play a certain strategy without explicitly saying so. It is also called oligopolistic price coordination or tacit parallelism.
A dataset of gasoline prices of BP, Caltex, Woolworths, Coles, and Gull from Perth gathered in the years 2001 to 2015 was used to show by statistical analysis the tacit collusion between these retailers. BP emerged as a price leader and influenced the behavior of the competitors. As result, the timing of price jumps became coordinated and the margins started to grow in 2010.
== Conscious parallelism ==
In competition law, some sources use conscious parallelism as a synonym to tacit collusion in order to describe pricing strategies among competitors in an oligopoly that occurs without an actual agreement or at least without any evidence of an actual agreement between the players. In result, one competitor will take the lead in raising or lowering prices. The others will then follow suit, raising or lowering their prices by the same amount, with the understanding that greater profits result.
This practice can be harmful to consumers who, if the market power of the firm is used, can be forced to pay monopoly prices for goods that should be selling for only a little more than the cost of production. Nevertheless, it is very hard to prosecute because it may occur without any collusion between the competitors. Courts have held that no violation of the antitrust laws occurs where firms independently raise or lower prices, but that a violation can be shown when plus factors occur, such as firms being motivated to collude and taking actions against their own economic self-interests. This procedure of the courts is sometimes called as setting of a conspiracy theory.
== Price leadership ==
Oligopolists usually try not to engage in price cutting, excessive advertising or other forms of competition. Thus, there may be unwritten rules of collusive behavior such as price leadership. Price leadership is the form of a tacit collusion, whereby firms orient at the price set by a leader. A price leader will then emerge and set the general industry price, with other firms following suit. For example, see the case of British Salt Limited and New Cheshire Salt Works Limited.
Classical economic theory holds that Pareto efficiency is attained at a price equal to the incremental cost of producing additional units. Monopolies are able to extract optimum revenue by offering fewer units at a higher cost. An oligopoly where each firm acts independently tends toward equilibrium at the ideal, but such covert cooperation as price leadership tends toward higher profitability for all, though it is an unstable arrangement.
There exist two types of price leadership. In dominant firm price leadership, the price leader is the biggest firm. In barometric firm price leadership, the most reliable firm emerges as the best barometer of market conditions, or the firm could be the one with the lowest costs of production, leading other firms to follow suit. Although this firm might not be dominating the industry, its prices are believed to reflect market conditions which are the most satisfactory, as the firm would most likely be a good forecaster of economic changes.
== Auctions ==
In repeated auctions, bidders might participate in a tacit collusion to keep bids low. A profitable collusion is possible, if the number of bidders is finite and the identity of the winner is publicly observable. It can be very difficult or even impossible for the seller to detect such collusion from the distribution of bids only. In case of spectrum auctions, some sources claim that a tacit collusion is easily upset:"It requires that all the bidders reach an implicit agreement about who should get what. With thirty diverse bidders unable to communicate about strategy except through their bids, forming such unanimous agreement is difficult at best."
Nevertheless, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) experimented with precautions for spectrum auctions like restricting visibility of bids, limiting the number of bids and anonymous bidding. So called click-box bidding used by governmental agencies in spectrum auctions restricts the number of valid bids and offers them as a list to a bidder to choose from. Click-box bidding was invented in 1997 by FCC to prevent bidders from signalling bidding information by embedding it into digits of the bids. Economic theory predicts a higher difficulty for tacit collusions due to those precautions. In general, transparency in auctions always increases the risk of a tacit collusion.
== Algorithms ==
Once the competitors are able to use algorithms to determine prices, a tacit collusion between them imposes a much higher danger. E-commerce is one of the major premises for algorithmic tacit collusion. Complex pricing algorithms are essential for the development of e-commerce. European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager mentioned an early example of algorithmic tacit collusion in her speech on "Algorithms and Collusion" on 16 March 2017, described as follows:
"A few years ago, two companies were selling a textbook called The Making of a Fly. One of those sellers used an algorithm which essentially matched its rival’s price. That rival had an algorithm which always set a price 27% higher than the first. The result was that prices kept spiralling upwards, until finally someone noticed what was going on, and adjusted the price manually. By that time, the book was selling – or rather, not selling – for 23 million dollars a copy."
An OECD Competition Committee Roundtable "Algorithms and Collusion" took place in June 2017 in order to address the risk of possible anti-competitive behaviour by algorithms.
It is important to distinguish between simple algorithms intentionally programmed to raise price according to the competitors and more sophisticated self-learning AI algorithms with more general goals. Self-learning AI algorithms might form a tacit collusion without the knowledge of their human programmers as result of the task to determine optimal prices in any market situation.
== Duopoly example ==
Tacit collusion is best understood in the context of a duopoly and the concept of game theory (namely, Nash equilibrium). Let's take an example of two firms A and B, who both play an advertising game over an indefinite number of periods (effectively saying 'infinitely many'). Both of the firms' payoffs are contingent upon their own action, but more importantly the action of their competitor. They can choose to stay at the current level of advertising or choose a more aggressive advertising strategy. If either firm chooses low advertising while the other chooses high, then the low-advertising firm will suffer a great loss in market share while the other experiences a boost. If they both choose high advertising, then neither firms' market share will increase but their advertising costs will increase, thus lowering their profits. If they both choose to stay at the normal level of advertising, then sales will remain constant without the added advertising expense. Thus, both firms will experience a greater payoff if they both choose normal advertising (this set of actions is unstable, as both are tempted to defect to higher advertising to increase payoffs). A payoff matrix is presented with numbers given:
Notice that Nash's equilibrium is set at both firms choosing an aggressive advertising strategy. This is to protect themselves against lost sales. This game is an example of a prisoner's dilemma.
In general, if the payoffs for colluding (normal, normal) are greater than the payoffs for cheating (aggressive, aggressive), then the two firms will want to collude (tacitly). Although this collusive arrangement is not an equilibrium in the one-shot game above, repeating the game allows the firms to sustain collusion over long time periods. This can be achieved, for example if each firm's strategy is to undertake normal advertising so long as its rival does likewise, and to pursue aggressive advertising forever as soon as its rival has used an aggressive advertising campaign at least once (see: grim trigger) (this threat is credible since symmetric use of aggressive advertising is a Nash equilibrium of each stage of the game). Each firm must then weigh the short term gain of $30 from 'cheating' against the long term loss of $35 in all future periods that comes as part of its punishment. Provided that firms care enough about the future, collusion is an equilibrium of this repeated game.
To be more precise, suppose that firms have a discount factor
δ
{\displaystyle \delta }
. The discounted value of the cost to cheating and being punished indefinitely are
∑
t
=
1
∞
δ
t
35
=
δ
1
−
δ
35
{\displaystyle \sum _{t=1}^{\infty }\delta ^{t}35={\frac {\delta }{1-\delta }}35}
.
The firms therefore prefer not to cheat (so that collusion is an equilibrium) if
30
<
δ
1
−
δ
35
⇔
δ
>
6
13
{\displaystyle 30<{\frac {\delta }{1-\delta }}35\Leftrightarrow \delta >{\frac {6}{13}}}
.
== See also ==
== References == | Wikipedia/Algorithmic_tacit_collusion |
Crossover in evolutionary algorithms and evolutionary computation, also called recombination, is a genetic operator used to combine the genetic information of two parents to generate new offspring. It is one way to stochastically generate new solutions from an existing population, and is analogous to the crossover that happens during sexual reproduction in biology. New solutions can also be generated by cloning an existing solution, which is analogous to asexual reproduction. Newly generated solutions may be mutated before being added to the population. The aim of recombination is to transfer good characteristics from two different parents to one child.
Different algorithms in evolutionary computation may use different data structures to store genetic information, and each genetic representation can be recombined with different crossover operators. Typical data structures that can be recombined with crossover are bit arrays, vectors of real numbers, or trees.
The list of operators presented below is by no means complete and serves mainly as an exemplary illustration of this dyadic genetic operator type. More operators and more details can be found in the literature.
== Crossover for binary arrays ==
Traditional genetic algorithms store genetic information in a chromosome represented by a bit array. Crossover methods for bit arrays are popular and an illustrative example of genetic recombination.
=== One-point crossover ===
A point on both parents' chromosomes is picked randomly, and designated a 'crossover point'. Bits to the right of that point are swapped between the two parent chromosomes. This results in two offspring, each carrying some genetic information from both parents.
=== Two-point and k-point crossover ===
In two-point crossover, two crossover points are picked randomly from the parent chromosomes. The bits in between the two points are swapped between the parent organisms.
Two-point crossover is equivalent to performing two single-point crossovers with different crossover points. This strategy can be generalized to k-point crossover for any positive integer k, picking k crossover points.
=== Uniform crossover ===
In uniform crossover, typically, each bit is chosen from either parent with equal probability. Other mixing ratios are sometimes used, resulting in offspring which inherit more genetic information from one parent than the other.
In a uniform crossover, we don’t divide the chromosome into segments, rather we treat each gene separately. In this, we essentially flip a coin for each chromosome to decide whether or not it will be included in the off-spring.
== Crossover for integer or real-valued genomes ==
For the crossover operators presented above and for most other crossover operators for bit strings, it holds that they can also be applied accordingly to integer or real-valued genomes whose genes each consist of an integer or real-valued number. Instead of individual bits, integer or real-valued numbers are then simply copied into the child genome. The offspring lie on the remaining corners of the hyperbody spanned by the two parents
P
1
=
(
1.5
,
6
,
8
)
{\displaystyle P_{1}=(1.5,6,8)}
and
P
2
=
(
7
,
2
,
1
)
{\displaystyle P_{2}=(7,2,1)}
, as exemplified in the accompanying image for the three-dimensional case.
=== Discrete recombination ===
If the rules of the uniform crossover for bit strings are applied during the generation of the offspring, this is also called discrete recombination.
=== Intermediate recombination ===
In this recombination operator, the allele values of the child genome
a
i
{\displaystyle a_{i}}
are generated by mixing the alleles of the two parent genomes
a
i
,
P
1
{\displaystyle a_{i,P_{1}}}
and
a
i
,
P
2
{\displaystyle a_{i,P_{2}}}
:
α
i
=
α
i
,
P
1
⋅
β
i
+
α
i
,
P
2
⋅
(
1
−
β
i
)
w
i
t
h
β
i
∈
[
−
d
,
1
+
d
]
{\displaystyle \alpha _{i}=\alpha _{i,P_{1}}\cdot \beta _{i}+\alpha _{i,P_{2}}\cdot \left(1-\beta _{i}\right)\quad {\mathsf {with}}\quad \beta _{i}\in \left[-d,1+d\right]}
randomly equally distributed per gene
i
{\displaystyle i}
The choice of the interval
[
−
d
,
1
+
d
]
{\displaystyle [-d,1+d]}
causes that besides the interior of the hyperbody spanned by the allele values of the parent genes additionally a certain environment for the range of values of the offspring is in question. A value of
0.25
{\displaystyle 0.25}
is recommended for
d
{\displaystyle d}
to counteract the tendency to reduce the allele values that otherwise exists at
d
=
0
{\displaystyle d=0}
.
The adjacent figure shows for the two-dimensional case the range of possible new alleles of the two exemplary parents
P
1
=
(
3
,
6
)
{\displaystyle P_{1}=(3,6)}
and
P
2
=
(
9
,
2
)
{\displaystyle P_{2}=(9,2)}
in intermediate recombination. The offspring of discrete recombination
C
1
{\displaystyle C_{1}}
and
C
2
{\displaystyle C_{2}}
are also plotted. Intermediate recombination satisfies the arithmetic calculation of the allele values of the child genome required by virtual alphabet theory. Discrete and intermediate recombination are used as a standard in the evolution strategy.
== Crossover for permutations ==
For combinatorial tasks, permutations are usually used that are specifically designed for genomes that are themselves permutations of a set. The underlying set is usually a subset of
N
{\displaystyle \mathbb {N} }
or
N
0
{\displaystyle \mathbb {N} _{0}}
. If 1- or n-point or uniform crossover for integer genomes is used for such genomes, a child genome may contain some values twice and others may be missing. This can be remedied by genetic repair, e.g. by replacing the redundant genes in positional fidelity for missing ones from the other child genome.
In order to avoid the generation of invalid offspring, special crossover operators for permutations have been developed which fulfill the basic requirements of such operators for permutations, namely that all elements of the initial permutation are also present in the new one and only the order is changed. It can be distinguished between combinatorial tasks, where all sequences are admissible, and those where there are constraints in the form of inadmissible partial sequences. A well-known representative of the first task type is the traveling salesman problem (TSP), where the goal is to visit a set of cities exactly once on the shortest tour. An example of the constrained task type is the scheduling of multiple workflows. Workflows involve sequence constraints on some of the individual work steps. For example, a thread cannot be cut until the corresponding hole has been drilled in a workpiece. Such problems are also called order-based permutations.
In the following, two crossover operators are presented as examples, the partially mapped crossover (PMX) motivated by the TSP and the order crossover (OX1) designed for order-based permutations. A second offspring can be produced in each case by exchanging the parent chromosomes.
=== Partially mapped crossover (PMX) ===
The PMX operator was designed as a recombination operator for TSP like Problems. The explanation of the procedure is illustrated by an example:
=== Order crossover (OX1) ===
The order crossover goes back to Davis in its original form and is presented here in a slightly generalized version with more than two crossover points. It transfers information about the relative order from the second parent to the offspring. First, the number and position of the crossover points are determined randomly. The resulting gene sequences are then processed as described below:
Among other things, order crossover is well suited for scheduling multiple workflows, when used in conjunction with 1- and n-point crossover.
=== Further crossover operators for permutations ===
Over time, a large number of crossover operators for permutations have been proposed, so the following list is only a small selection. For more information, the reader is referred to the literature.
cycle crossover (CX)
order-based crossover (OX2)
position-based crossover (POS)
edge recombination
voting recombination (VR)
alternating-positions crossover (AP)
maximal preservative crossover (MPX)
merge crossover (MX)
sequential constructive crossover operator (SCX)
The usual approach to solving TSP-like problems by genetic or, more generally, evolutionary algorithms, presented earlier, is either to repair illegal descendants or to adjust the operators appropriately so that illegal offspring do not arise in the first place. Alternatively, Riazi suggests the use of a double chromosome representation, which avoids illegal offspring.
== See also ==
Evolutionary algorithm
Genetic representation
Fitness function
Selection (genetic algorithm)
== Bibliography ==
John Holland (1975). Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems, PhD thesis, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan. ISBN 0-262-58111-6.
Schwefel, Hans-Paul (1995). Evolution and Optimum Seeking. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-57148-2.
Davis, Lawrence (1991). Handbook of genetic algorithms. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. ISBN 0-442-00173-8. OCLC 23081440.
Eiben, A.E.; Smith, J.E. (2015). Introduction to Evolutionary Computing. Natural Computing Series. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-44874-8. ISBN 978-3-662-44873-1. S2CID 20912932.
Yu, Xinjie; Gen, Mitsuo (2010). Introduction to Evolutionary Algorithms. Decision Engineering. London: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-84996-129-5. ISBN 978-1-84996-128-8.
Bäck, Thomas; Fogel, David B.; Michalewicz, Zbigniew, eds. (1999). Evolutionary computation. Vol. 1, Basic algorithms and operators. Bristol: Institute of Physics Pub. ISBN 0-585-30560-9. OCLC 45730387.
== References ==
== External links ==
Newsgroup: comp.ai.genetic FAQ - see section on crossover (also known as recombination). | Wikipedia/Recombination_(evolutionary_algorithm) |
An evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) is a strategy (or set of strategies) that is impermeable when adopted by a population in adaptation to a specific environment, that is to say it cannot be displaced by an alternative strategy (or set of strategies) which may be novel or initially rare. Introduced by John Maynard Smith and George R. Price in 1972/3, it is an important concept in behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology, mathematical game theory and economics, with applications in other fields such as anthropology, philosophy and political science.
In game-theoretical terms, an ESS is an equilibrium refinement of the Nash equilibrium, being a Nash equilibrium that is also "evolutionarily stable." Thus, once fixed in a population, natural selection alone is sufficient to prevent alternative (mutant) strategies from replacing it (although this does not preclude the possibility that a better strategy, or set of strategies, will emerge in response to selective pressures resulting from environmental change).
== History ==
Evolutionarily stable strategies were defined and introduced by John Maynard Smith and George R. Price in a 1973 Nature paper. Such was the time taken in peer-reviewing the paper for Nature that this was preceded by a 1972 essay by Maynard Smith in a book of essays titled On Evolution. The 1972 essay is sometimes cited instead of the 1973 paper, but university libraries are much more likely to have copies of Nature. Papers in Nature are usually short; in 1974, Maynard Smith published a longer paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. Maynard Smith explains further in his 1982 book Evolution and the Theory of Games. Sometimes these are cited instead. In fact, the ESS has become so central to game theory that often no citation is given, as the reader is assumed to be familiar with it.
Maynard Smith mathematically formalised a verbal argument made by Price, which he read while peer-reviewing Price's paper. When Maynard Smith realized that the somewhat disorganised Price was not ready to revise his article for publication, he offered to add Price as co-author.
The concept was derived from R. H. MacArthur and W. D. Hamilton's work on sex ratios, derived from Fisher's principle, especially Hamilton's (1967) concept of an unbeatable strategy. Maynard Smith was jointly awarded the 1999 Crafoord Prize for his development of the concept of evolutionarily stable strategies and the application of game theory to the evolution of behaviour.
Uses of ESS:
The ESS was a major element used to analyze evolution in Richard Dawkins' bestselling 1976 book The Selfish Gene.
The ESS was first used in the social sciences by Robert Axelrod in his 1984 book The Evolution of Cooperation. Since then, it has been widely used in the social sciences, including anthropology, economics, philosophy, and political science.
In the social sciences, the primary interest is not in an ESS as the end of biological evolution, but as an end point in cultural evolution or individual learning.
In evolutionary psychology, ESS is used primarily as a model for human biological evolution.
== Motivation ==
The Nash equilibrium is the traditional solution concept in game theory. It depends on the cognitive abilities of the players. It is assumed that players are aware of the structure of the game and consciously try to predict the moves of their opponents and to maximize their own payoffs. In addition, it is presumed that all the players know this (see common knowledge). These assumptions are then used to explain why players choose Nash equilibrium strategies.
Evolutionarily stable strategies are motivated entirely differently. Here, it is presumed that the players' strategies are biologically encoded and heritable. Individuals have no control over their strategy and need not be aware of the game. They reproduce and are subject to the forces of natural selection, with the payoffs of the game representing reproductive success (biological fitness). It is imagined that alternative strategies of the game occasionally occur, via a process like mutation. To be an ESS, a strategy must be resistant to these alternatives.
Given the radically different motivating assumptions, it may come as a surprise that ESSes and Nash equilibria often coincide. In fact, every ESS corresponds to a Nash equilibrium, but some Nash equilibria are not ESSes.
== Nash equilibrium ==
An ESS is a refined or modified form of a Nash equilibrium. (See the next section for examples which contrast the two.) In a Nash equilibrium, if all players adopt their respective parts, no player can benefit by switching to any alternative strategy. In a two player game, it is a strategy pair. Let E(S,T) represent the payoff for playing strategy S against strategy T. The strategy pair (S, S) is a Nash equilibrium in a two player game if and only if for both players, for any strategy T:
E(S,S) ≥ E(T,S)
In this definition, a strategy T≠S can be a neutral alternative to S (scoring equally well, but not better).
A Nash equilibrium is presumed to be stable even if T scores equally, on the assumption that there is no long-term incentive for players to adopt T instead of S. This fact represents the point of departure of the ESS.
Maynard Smith and Price specify two conditions for a strategy S to be an ESS. For all T≠S, either
E(S,S) > E(T,S), or
E(S,S) = E(T,S) and E(S,T) > E(T,T)
The first condition is sometimes called a strict Nash equilibrium. The second is sometimes called "Maynard Smith's second condition". The second condition means that although strategy T is neutral with respect to the payoff against strategy S, the population of players who continue to play strategy S has an advantage when playing against T.
There is also an alternative, stronger definition of ESS, due to Thomas. This places a different emphasis on the role of the Nash equilibrium concept in the ESS concept. Following the terminology given in the first definition above, this definition requires that for all T≠S
E(S,S) ≥ E(T,S), and
E(S,T) > E(T,T)
In this formulation, the first condition specifies that the strategy is a Nash equilibrium, and the second specifies that Maynard Smith's second condition is met. Note that the two definitions are not precisely equivalent: for example, each pure strategy in the coordination game below is an ESS by the first definition but not the second.
In words, this definition looks like this: The payoff of the first player when both players play strategy S is higher than (or equal to) the payoff of the first player when he changes to another strategy T and the second player keeps his strategy S and the payoff of the first player when only his opponent changes his strategy to T is higher than his payoff in case that both of players change their strategies to T.
This formulation more clearly highlights the role of the Nash equilibrium condition in the ESS. It also allows for a natural definition of related concepts such as a weak ESS or an evolutionarily stable set.
=== Examples of differences between Nash equilibria and ESSes ===
In most simple games, the ESSes and Nash equilibria coincide perfectly. For instance, in the prisoner's dilemma there is only one Nash equilibrium, and its strategy (Defect) is also an ESS.
Some games may have Nash equilibria that are not ESSes. For example, in harm thy neighbor (whose payoff matrix is shown here) both (A, A) and (B, B) are Nash equilibria, since players cannot do better by switching away from either. However, only B is an ESS (and a strong Nash). A is not an ESS, so B can neutrally invade a population of A strategists and predominate, because B scores higher against B than A does against B. This dynamic is captured by Maynard Smith's second condition, since E(A, A) = E(B, A), but it is not the case that E(A,B) > E(B,B).
Nash equilibria with equally scoring alternatives can be ESSes. For example, in the game Harm everyone, C is an ESS because it satisfies Maynard Smith's second condition. D strategists may temporarily invade a population of C strategists by scoring equally well against C, but they pay a price when they begin to play against each other; C scores better against D than does D. So here although E(C, C) = E(D, C), it is also the case that E(C,D) > E(D,D). As a result, C is an ESS.
Even if a game has pure strategy Nash equilibria, it might be that none of those pure strategies are ESS. Consider the Game of chicken. There are two pure strategy Nash equilibria in this game (Swerve, Stay) and (Stay, Swerve). However, in the absence of an uncorrelated asymmetry, neither Swerve nor Stay are ESSes. There is a third Nash equilibrium, a mixed strategy which is an ESS for this game (see Hawk-dove game and Best response for explanation).
This last example points to an important difference between Nash equilibria and ESS. Nash equilibria are defined on strategy sets (a specification of a strategy for each player), while ESS are defined in terms of strategies themselves. The equilibria defined by ESS must always be symmetric, and thus have fewer equilibrium points.
== Vs. evolutionarily stable state ==
In population biology, the two concepts of an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) and an evolutionarily stable state are closely linked but describe different situations.
In an evolutionarily stable strategy, if all the members of a population adopt it, no mutant strategy can invade. Once virtually all members of the population use this strategy, there is no 'rational' alternative. ESS is part of classical game theory.
In an evolutionarily stable state, a population's genetic composition is restored by selection after a disturbance, if the disturbance is not too large. An evolutionarily stable state is a dynamic property of a population that returns to using a strategy, or mix of strategies, if it is perturbed from that initial state. It is part of population genetics, dynamical system, or evolutionary game theory. This is now called convergent stability.
B. Thomas (1984) applies the term ESS to an individual strategy which may be mixed, and evolutionarily stable population state to a population mixture of pure strategies which may be formally equivalent to the mixed ESS.
Whether a population is evolutionarily stable does not relate to its genetic diversity: it can be genetically monomorphic or polymorphic.
== Stochastic ESS ==
In the classic definition of an ESS, no mutant strategy can invade. In finite populations, any mutant could in principle invade, albeit at low probability, implying that no ESS can exist. In an infinite population, an ESS can instead be defined as a strategy which, should it become invaded by a new mutant strategy with probability p, would be able to counterinvade from a single starting individual with probability >p, as illustrated by the evolution of bet-hedging.
== Prisoner's dilemma ==
A common model of altruism and social cooperation is the Prisoner's dilemma. Here a group of players would collectively be better off if they could play Cooperate, but since Defect fares better each individual player has an incentive to play Defect. One solution to this problem is to introduce the possibility of retaliation by having individuals play the game repeatedly against the same player. In the so-called iterated Prisoner's dilemma, the same two individuals play the prisoner's dilemma over and over. While the Prisoner's dilemma has only two strategies (Cooperate and Defect), the iterated Prisoner's dilemma has a huge number of possible strategies. Since an individual can have different contingency plan for each history and the game may be repeated an indefinite number of times, there may in fact be an infinite number of such contingency plans.
Three simple contingency plans which have received substantial attention are Always Defect, Always Cooperate, and Tit for Tat. The first two strategies do the same thing regardless of the other player's actions, while the latter responds on the next round by doing what was done to it on the previous round—it responds to Cooperate with Cooperate and Defect with Defect.
If the entire population plays Tit-for-Tat and a mutant arises who plays Always Defect, Tit-for-Tat will outperform Always Defect. If the population of the mutant becomes too large — the percentage of the mutant will be kept small. Tit for Tat is therefore an ESS, with respect to only these two strategies. On the other hand, an island of Always Defect players will be stable against the invasion of a few Tit-for-Tat players, but not against a large number of them. If we introduce Always Cooperate, a population of Tit-for-Tat is no longer an ESS. Since a population of Tit-for-Tat players always cooperates, the strategy Always Cooperate behaves identically in this population. As a result, a mutant who plays Always Cooperate will not be eliminated. However, even though a population of Always Cooperate and Tit-for-Tat can coexist, if there is a small percentage of the population that is Always Defect, the selective pressure is against Always Cooperate, and in favour of Tit-for-Tat. This is due to the lower payoffs of cooperating than those of defecting in case the opponent defects.
This demonstrates the difficulties in applying the formal definition of an ESS to games with large strategy spaces, and has motivated some to consider alternatives.
== Human behavior ==
The fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology attempt to explain animal and human behavior and social structures, largely in terms of evolutionarily stable strategies. Sociopathy (chronic antisocial or criminal behavior) may be a result of a combination of two such strategies.
Evolutionarily stable strategies were originally considered for biological evolution, but they can apply to other contexts. In fact, there are stable states for a large class of adaptive dynamics. As a result, they can be used to explain human behaviours that lack any genetic influences.
== See also ==
Antipredator adaptation
Behavioral ecology
Evolutionary psychology
Fitness landscape
Hawk–dove game
Koinophilia
Sociobiology
War of attrition (game)
Farsightedness (game theory)
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Weibull, Jörgen (1997). Evolutionary game theory. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-73121-8. Classic reference textbook.
Hines, W. G. S. (1987). "Evolutionary stable strategies: a review of basic theory". Theoretical Population Biology. 31 (2): 195–272. Bibcode:1987TPBio..31..195H. doi:10.1016/0040-5809(87)90029-3. PMID 3296292.
Leyton-Brown, Kevin; Shoham, Yoav (2008). Essentials of Game Theory: A Concise, Multidisciplinary Introduction. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Publishers. ISBN 978-1-59829-593-1.. An 88-page mathematical introduction; see Section 3.8. Free online Archived 2000-08-15 at the Wayback Machine at many universities.
Parker, G. A. (1984) Evolutionary stable strategies. In Behavioural Ecology: an Evolutionary Approach (2nd ed) Krebs, J. R. & Davies N.B., eds. pp 30–61. Blackwell, Oxford.
Shoham, Yoav; Leyton-Brown, Kevin (2009). Multiagent Systems: Algorithmic, Game-Theoretic, and Logical Foundations. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-89943-7. Archived from the original on 2011-05-01. Retrieved 2008-12-17.. A comprehensive reference from a computational perspective; see Section 7.7. Downloadable free online.
Maynard Smith, John. (1982) Evolution and the Theory of Games. ISBN 0-521-28884-3. Classic reference.
== External links ==
Evolutionarily Stable Strategies at Animal Behavior: An Online Textbook by Michael D. Breed.
Game Theory and Evolutionarily Stable Strategies, Kenneth N. Prestwich's site at College of the Holy Cross.
Evolutionarily stable strategies knol Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20091005015811/http://knol.google.com/k/klaus-rohde/evolutionarily-stable-strategies-and/xk923bc3gp4/50# | Wikipedia/Evolutionary_strategy |
The Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS) is a worldwide nonprofit professional membership organization associated with acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and relational frame theory (RFT) among other topics. The term "contextual behavioral science" refers to the application of functional contextualism to human behavior, including contextual forms of applied behavior analysis, cognitive behavioral therapy, and evolution science. In the applied area, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is perhaps the best known wing of contextual behavioral science, and is an emphasis of ACBS, along with other types of contextual CBT, and efforts in education, organizational behavior, and other areas. ACT is considered an empirically validated treatment by the American Psychological Association, with the status of "Modest Research Support" in depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, mixed anxiety disorders, and psychosis, and "Strong Research Support" in chronic pain. ACT is also listed as evidence-based by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the United States federal government which has examined randomized trials for ACT in the areas of psychosis, work site stress, and obsessive compulsive disorder, including depression outcomes. In the basic area, Relational Frame Theory is a research program in language and cognition that is considered part of contextual behavioral science, and is a focus of ACBS. Unlike the better known behavioral approach proposed by B.F. Skinner in his book Verbal Behavior, experimental RFT research has emerged in a number of areas traditionally thought to be beyond behavioral perspectives, such as grammar, metaphor, perspective taking, implicit cognition and reasoning.
== History ==
Established in 2005, ACBS has about 9,000 members. Slightly more than one half are outside of the United States. There are 45 ACBS chapters covering many areas of the world including Italy, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, Brazil, Australia/New Zealand, France, the United Kingdom, Türkiye, Malaysia, and more. Chapters exist in the United States and Canada as well, including the mid-Atlantic, New England, Washington, Ontario, and several other areas. There are also over 40 Special Interest Groups covering a wide range of basic and applied areas such as children and adolescents, veteran's affairs, ACT for Health, social work, and many other areas.
== Activities ==
ACBS sponsors an annual conference, the ACBS World Conference. The 2023 (21st annual) meeting was held 24–28 July, in Nicosia, Cyprus. 2024 July, it will be held in Buenos Aires Argentina, and in 2025 July, it will be held in New Orleans, USA.
In 2012 Elsevier began publishing the official journal of ACBS, the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. In 2022 JCBS Impact Factor was 5.00.
Other activities:
A scholarship program that sponsors participants from the developing world to attend the World Conferences.
Listservs for professionals and the public. Most Special Interest Groups maintain email listservs as well. The largest listserv is on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and is for professionals who are ACBS members, with the second largest listserv focusing on Relational Frame Theory (the ACT listserv for professionals spawned its own reference books of popular questions/topics called Talking ACT published by New Harbinger Publications and Context Press.). There is also a free listserv for members of the public who are reading ACT self-help books.
A grant program for projects in contextual behavioral science.
The association's website contains resources such as therapist tools, workshops, metaphors, protocols, and assessment materials, and provides information on recent books on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), Relational Frame Theory (RFT), and Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS).
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Association for Contextual Behavioral Science homepage | Wikipedia/Association_for_Contextual_Behavioral_Science |
Theory of language is a topic in philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics. It has the goal of answering the questions "What is language?"; "Why do languages have the properties they do?"; or "What is the origin of language?". In addition to these fundamental questions, the theory of language also seeks to understand how language is acquired and used by individuals and communities. This involves investigating the cognitive and neural processes involved in language processing and production, as well as the social and cultural factors that shape linguistic behavior.
Even though much of the research in linguistics is descriptive or prescriptive, there exists an underlying assumption that terminological and methodological choices reflect the researcher's opinion of language. These choices often stem from the theoretical framework a linguist subscribes to, shaping their interpretation of linguistic phenomena. For instance, within the generative grammar framework, linguists might focus on underlying syntactic structures, while cognitive linguists might emphasize the role of conceptual metaphor. Linguists are divided into different schools of thinking, with the nature–nurture debate as the main divide. Some linguistics conferences and journals are focussed on a specific theory of language, while others disseminate a variety of views.
Like in other human and social sciences, theories in linguistics can be divided into humanistic and sociobiological approaches. Same terms, for example 'rationalism', 'functionalism', 'formalism' and 'constructionism', are used with different meanings in different contexts.
== Humanistic theories ==
Humanistic theories consider people as having an agentive role in the social construction of language. Language is primarily seen as a sociocultural phenomenon. This tradition emphasises culture, nurture, creativity and diversity. A classical rationalist approach to language stems from the philosophy Age of Enlightenment. Rationalist philosophers argued that people had created language in a step-by-step process to serve their need to communicate with each other. Thus, language is thought of as a rational human invention.
=== Logical grammar ===
Many philosophers of language, since Plato and Aristotle, have considered language as a manmade tool for making statements or propositions about the world on the basis of a predicate-argument structure. Especially in the classical tradition, the purpose of the sentence was considered to be to predicate about the subject. Aristotle's example is "Man is a rational animal", where Man is the subject and is a rational animal is the predicate, which attributes the subject. In the twentieth century, classical logical grammar was defended by Edmund Husserl's "pure logical grammar". Husserl argues, in the spirit of seventeenth-century rational grammar, that the structures of consciousness are compositional and organized into subject-predicate structures. These give rise to the structures of semantics and syntax cross-linguistically. Categorial grammar is another example of logical grammar in the modern context.
More lately, in Donald Davidson's event semantics, for example, the verb serves as the predicate. Like in modern predicate logic, subject and object are arguments of the transitive predicate. A similar solution is found in formal semantics. Many modern philosophers continue to consider language as a logically based tool for expressing the structures of reality by means of predicate-argument structure. Examples include Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Winfrid Sellars, Hilary Putnam, and John Searle.
=== Cultural–historical approaches ===
During the 19th century, when sociological questions remained under psychology, languages and language change were thought of as arising from human psychology and the collective unconscious mind of the community, shaped by its history, as argued by Moritz Lazarus, Heymann Steinthal and Wilhelm Wundt. Advocates of Völkerpsychologie ('folk psychology') regarded language as Volksgeist; a social phenomenon conceived as the 'spirit of the nation'.
Wundt claimed that the human mind becomes organised according to the principles of syllogistic reasoning with social progress and education. He argued for a binary-branching model for the description of the mind, and syntax. Folk psychology was imported to North American linguistics by Franz Boas and Leonard Bloomfield who were the founders of a school of thought which was later nicknamed 'American structuralism'.
Folk psychology became associated with German nationalism, and after World War I Bloomfield apparently replaced Wundt's structural psychology with Albert Paul Weiss's behavioral psychology; although Wundtian notions remained elementary for his linguistic analysis. The Bloomfieldian school of linguistics was eventually reformed as a sociobiological approach by Noam Chomsky (see 'generative grammar' below).
Since generative grammar's popularity began to wane towards the end of the 20th century, there has been a new wave of cultural anthropological approaches to the language question sparking a modern debate on the relationship of language and culture. Participants include Daniel Everett, Jesse Prinz, Nicholas Evans and Stephen Levinson.
=== Structuralism: a sociological–semiotic theory ===
The study of culture and language developed in a different direction in Europe where Émile Durkheim successfully separated sociology from psychology, thus establishing it as an autonomous science. Ferdinand de Saussure likewise argued for the autonomy of linguistics from psychology. He created a semiotic theory which would eventually give rise to the movement in human sciences known as structuralism, followed by functionalism or functional structuralism, post-structuralism and other similar tendencies. The names structuralism and functionalism are derived from Durkheim's modification of Herbert Spencer's organicism which draws an analogy between social structures and the organs of an organism, each necessitated by its function.
Saussure approaches the essence of language from two sides. For the one, he borrows ideas from Steinthal and Durkheim, concluding that language is a 'social fact'. For the other, he creates a theory of language as a system in and for itself which arises from the association of concepts and words or expressions. Thus, language is a dual system of interactive sub-systems: a conceptual system and a system of linguistic forms. Neither of these can exist without the other because, in Saussure's notion, there are no (proper) expressions without meaning, but also no (organised) meaning without words or expressions. Language as a system does not arise from the physical world, but from the contrast between the concepts, and the contrast between the linguistic forms.
=== Functionalism: language as a tool for communication ===
There was a shift of focus in sociology in the 1920s, from structural to functional explanation, or the adaptation of the social 'organism' to its environment. Post-Saussurean linguists, led by the Prague linguistic circle, began to study the functional value of the linguistic structure, with communication taken as the primary function of language in the meaning 'task' or 'purpose'. These notions translated into an increase of interest in pragmatics, with a discourse perspective (the analysis of full texts) added to the multilayered interactive model of structural linguistics. This gave rise to functional linguistics. Some of its main concepts include information structure and economy.
=== Formalism: language as a mathematical–semiotic system ===
Structural and formal linguist Louis Hjelmslev considered the systemic organisation of the bilateral linguistic system fully mathematical, rejecting the psychological and sociological aspect of linguistics altogether. He considered linguistics as the comparison of the structures of all languages using formal grammars – semantic and discourse structures included. Hjelmslev's idea is sometimes referred to as 'formalism'.
Although generally considered as a structuralist, Lucien Tesnière regarded meaning as giving rise to expression, but not vice versa, at least as regards the relationship between semantics and syntax. He considered the semantic plane as psychological, but syntax as being based on the necessity to break the two-dimensional semantic representation into linear form.
=== Post-structuralism: language as a societal tool ===
The Saussurean idea of language as an interaction of the conceptual system and the expressive system was elaborated in philosophy, anthropology and other fields of human sciences by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva and many others. This movement was interested in the Durkheimian concept of language as a social fact or a rule-based code of conduct; but eventually rejected the structuralist idea that the individual cannot change the norm. Post-structuralists study how language affects our understanding of reality thus serving as a tool of shaping society.
=== Language as an artificial construct ===
While the humanistic tradition stemming from 19th century Völkerpsychologie emphasises the unconscious nature of the social construction of language, some perspectives of post-structuralism and social constructionism regard human languages as man-made rather than natural. At this end of the spectrum, structural linguist Eugenio Coșeriu laid emphasis on the intentional construction of language. Daniel Everett has likewise approached the question of language construction from the point of intentionality and free will.
There were also some contacts between structural linguists and the creators of constructed languages. For example, Saussure's brother René de Saussure was an Esperanto activist, and the French functionalist André Martinet served as director of the International Auxiliary Language Association. Otto Jespersen created and proposed the international auxiliary language Novial.
== Sociobiological theories ==
In contrast to humanistic linguistics, sociobiological approaches consider language as biological phenomena. Approaches to language as part of cultural evolution can be roughly divided into two main groups: genetic determinism which argues that languages stem from the human genome; and social Darwinism, as envisioned by August Schleicher and Max Müller, which applies principles and methods of evolutionary biology to linguistics. Because sociobiogical theories have been labelled as chauvinistic in the past, modern approaches, including Dual inheritance theory and memetics, aim to provide more sustainable solutions to the study of biology's role in language.
=== Language as a genetically inherited phenomenon ===
==== Strong version ('rationalism') ====
The role of genes in language formation has been discussed and studied extensively. Proposing generative grammar, Noam Chomsky argues that language is fully caused by a random genetic mutation, and that linguistics is the study of universal grammar, or the structure in question. Others, including Ray Jackendoff, point out that the innate language component could be the result of a series of evolutionary adaptations; Steven Pinker argues that, because of these, people are born with a language instinct.
The random and the adaptational approach are sometimes referred to as formalism (or structuralism) and functionalism (or adaptationism), respectively, as a parallel to debates between advocates of structural and functional explanation in biology. Also known as biolinguistics, the study of linguistic structures is parallelised with that of natural formations such as ferromagnetic droplets and botanic forms. This approach became highly controversial at the end of the 20th century due to a lack of empirical support for genetics as an explanation of linguistic structures.
More recent anthropological research aims to avoid genetic determinism. Behavioural ecology and dual inheritance theory, the study of gene–culture co-evolution, emphasise the role of culture as a human invention in shaping the genes, rather than vice versa.
==== Weak version ('empiricism') ====
Some former generative grammarians argue that genes may nonetheless have an indirect effect on abstract features of language. This makes up yet another approach referred to as 'functionalism' which makes a weaker claim with respect to genetics. Instead of arguing for a specific innate structure, it is suggested that human physiology and neurological organisation may give rise to linguistic phenomena in a more abstract way.
Based on a comparison of structures from multiple languages, John A. Hawkins suggests that the brain, as a syntactic parser, may find it easier to process some word orders than others, thus explaining their prevalence. This theory remains to be confirmed by psycholinguistic studies.
Conceptual metaphor theory from George Lakoff's cognitive linguistics hypothesises that people have inherited from lower animals the ability for deductive reasoning based on visual thinking, which explains why languages make so much use of visual metaphors.
=== Languages as species ===
It was thought in early evolutionary biology that languages and species can be studied according to the same principles and methods. The idea of languages and cultures as fighting for living space became highly controversial as it was accused of being a pseudoscience that caused two world wars, and social Darwinism was banished from humanities by 1945. In the concepts of Schleicher and Müller, both endorsed by Charles Darwin, languages could be either organisms or populations.
A neo-Darwinian version of this idea was introduced as memetics by Richard Dawkins in 1976. In this thinking, ideas and cultural units, including words, are compared to viruses or replicators. Although meant as a softer alternative to genetic determinism, memetics has been widely discredited as pseudoscience, and it has failed to establish itself as a recognised field of scientific research. The language–species analogy nonetheless continues to enjoy popularity in linguistics and other human sciences. Since the 1990s there have been numerous attempts to revive it in various guises. As Jamin Pelkey explains,Theorists who explore such analogies usually feel obliged to pin language to some specific sub-domain of biotic growth. William James selects "zoölogical evolution", William Croft prefers botanical evolution, but most theorists zoom in to more microbiotic levels – some claiming that linguistic phenomena are analogous to the cellular level and others arguing for the genetic level of biotic growth. For others, language is a parasite; for others still, language is a virus ... The disagreements over grounding analogies do not stop here.Like many other approaches to linguistics, these, too, are collectively called 'functionalism'. They include various frameworks of usage-based linguistics, language as a complex adaptive system, construction grammar, emergent linguistics, and others.
== See also ==
Philosophy of language
== References == | Wikipedia/Theory_of_language |
In mathematics, a graph partition is the reduction of a graph to a smaller graph by partitioning its set of nodes into mutually exclusive groups. Edges of the original graph that cross between the groups will produce edges in the partitioned graph. If the number of resulting edges is small compared to the original graph, then the partitioned graph may be better suited for analysis and problem-solving than the original. Finding a partition that simplifies graph analysis is a hard problem, but one that has applications to scientific computing, VLSI circuit design, and task scheduling in multiprocessor computers, among others. Recently, the graph partition problem has gained importance due to its application for clustering and detection of cliques in social, pathological and biological networks. For a survey on recent trends in computational methods and applications see Buluc et al. (2013).
Two common examples of graph partitioning are minimum cut and maximum cut problems.
== Problem complexity ==
Typically, graph partition problems fall under the category of NP-hard problems. Solutions to these problems are generally derived using heuristics and approximation algorithms. However, uniform graph partitioning or a balanced graph partition problem can be shown to be NP-complete to approximate within any finite factor. Even for special graph classes such as trees and grids, no reasonable approximation algorithms exist, unless P=NP. Grids are a particularly interesting case since they model the graphs resulting from Finite Element Model (FEM) simulations. When not only the number of edges between the components is approximated, but also the sizes of the components, it can be shown that no reasonable fully polynomial algorithms exist for these graphs.
== Problem ==
Consider a graph G = (V, E), where V denotes the set of n vertices and E the set of edges. For a (k,v) balanced partition problem, the objective is to partition G into k components of at most size v · (n/k), while minimizing the capacity of the edges between separate components. Also, given G and an integer k > 1, partition V into k parts (subsets) V1, V2, ..., Vk such that the parts are disjoint and have equal size, and the number of edges with endpoints in different parts is minimized. Such partition problems have been discussed in literature as bicriteria-approximation or resource augmentation approaches. A common extension is to hypergraphs, where an edge can connect more than two vertices. A hyperedge is not cut if all vertices are in one partition, and cut exactly once otherwise, no matter how many vertices are on each side. This usage is common in electronic design automation.
=== Analysis ===
For a specific (k, 1 + ε) balanced partition problem, we seek to find a minimum cost partition of G into k components with each component containing a maximum of (1 + ε)·(n/k) nodes. We compare the cost of this approximation algorithm to the cost of a (k,1) cut, wherein each of the k components must have the same size of (n/k) nodes each, thus being a more restricted problem. Thus,
max
i
|
V
i
|
≤
(
1
+
ε
)
⌈
|
V
|
k
⌉
.
{\displaystyle \max _{i}|V_{i}|\leq (1+\varepsilon )\left\lceil {\frac {|V|}{k}}\right\rceil .}
We already know that (2,1) cut is the minimum bisection problem and it is NP-complete. Next, we assess a 3-partition problem wherein n = 3k, which is also bounded in polynomial time. Now, if we assume that we have a finite approximation algorithm for (k, 1)-balanced partition, then, either the 3-partition instance can be solved using the balanced (k,1) partition in G or it cannot be solved. If the 3-partition instance can be solved, then (k, 1)-balanced partitioning problem in G can be solved without cutting any edge. Otherwise, if the 3-partition instance cannot be solved, the optimum (k, 1)-balanced partitioning in G will cut at least one edge. An approximation algorithm with a finite approximation factor has to differentiate between these two cases. Hence, it can solve the 3-partition problem which is a contradiction under the assumption that P = NP. Thus, it is evident that (k,1)-balanced partitioning problem has no polynomial-time approximation algorithm with a finite approximation factor unless P = NP.
The planar separator theorem states that any n-vertex planar graph can be partitioned into roughly equal parts by the removal of O(√n) vertices. This is not a partition in the sense described above, because the partition set consists of vertices rather than edges. However, the same result also implies that every planar graph of bounded degree has a balanced cut with O(√n) edges.
== Graph partition methods ==
Since graph partitioning is a hard problem, practical solutions are based on heuristics. There are two broad categories of methods, local and global. Well-known local methods are the Kernighan–Lin algorithm, and Fiduccia-Mattheyses algorithms, which were the first effective 2-way cuts by local search strategies. Their major drawback is the arbitrary initial partitioning of the vertex set, which can affect the final solution quality. Global approaches rely on properties of the entire graph and do not rely on an arbitrary initial partition. The most common example is spectral partitioning, where a partition is derived from approximate eigenvectors of the adjacency matrix, or spectral clustering that groups graph vertices using the eigendecomposition of the graph Laplacian matrix.
== Multi-level methods ==
A multi-level graph partitioning algorithm works by applying one or more stages. Each stage reduces the size of
the graph by collapsing vertices and edges, partitions the smaller graph, then maps back and refines this partition of the original graph. A wide variety of partitioning and refinement methods can be applied within the overall multi-level scheme. In many cases, this approach can give both fast execution times and very high quality results.
One widely used example of such an approach is METIS, a graph partitioner, and hMETIS, the corresponding partitioner for hypergraphs.
An alternative approach originated from
and implemented, e.g., in scikit-learn is spectral clustering with the partitioning determined from eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian matrix for the original graph computed by LOBPCG solver with multigrid preconditioning.
== Spectral partitioning and spectral bisection ==
Given a graph
G
=
(
V
,
E
)
{\displaystyle G=(V,E)}
with adjacency matrix
A
{\displaystyle A}
, where an entry
A
i
j
{\displaystyle A_{ij}}
implies an edge between node
i
{\displaystyle i}
and
j
{\displaystyle j}
, and degree matrix
D
{\displaystyle D}
, which is a diagonal matrix, where each diagonal entry of a row
i
{\displaystyle i}
,
d
i
i
{\displaystyle d_{ii}}
, represents the node degree of node
i
{\displaystyle i}
. The Laplacian matrix
L
{\displaystyle L}
is defined as
L
=
D
−
A
{\displaystyle L=D-A}
. Now, a ratio-cut partition for graph
G
=
(
V
,
E
)
{\displaystyle G=(V,E)}
is defined as a partition of
V
{\displaystyle V}
into disjoint
U
{\displaystyle U}
, and
W
{\displaystyle W}
, minimizing the ratio
|
E
(
G
)
∩
(
U
×
W
)
|
|
U
|
⋅
|
W
|
{\displaystyle {\frac {|E(G)\cap (U\times W)|}{|U|\cdot |W|}}}
of the number of edges that actually cross this cut to the number of pairs of vertices that could support such edges. Spectral graph partitioning can be motivated by analogy with partitioning of a vibrating string or a mass-spring system and similarly extended to the case of negative weights of the graph.
=== Fiedler eigenvalue and eigenvector ===
In such a scenario, the second smallest eigenvalue (
λ
2
{\displaystyle \lambda _{2}}
) of
L
{\displaystyle L}
, yields a lower bound on the optimal cost (
c
{\displaystyle c}
) of ratio-cut partition with
c
≥
λ
2
n
{\displaystyle c\geq {\frac {\lambda _{2}}{n}}}
. The eigenvector (
V
2
{\displaystyle V_{2}}
) corresponding to
λ
2
{\displaystyle \lambda _{2}}
, called the Fiedler vector, bisects the graph into only two communities based on the sign of the corresponding vector entry. Division into a larger number of communities can be achieved by repeated bisection or by using multiple eigenvectors corresponding to the smallest eigenvalues. The examples in Figures 1,2 illustrate the spectral bisection approach.
=== Modularity and ratio-cut ===
Minimum cut partitioning however fails when the number of communities to be partitioned, or the partition sizes are unknown. For instance, optimizing the cut size for free group sizes puts all vertices in the same community. Additionally, cut size may be the wrong thing to minimize since a good division is not just one with small number of edges between communities. This motivated the use of Modularity (Q) as a metric to optimize a balanced graph partition. The example in Figure 3 illustrates 2 instances of the same graph such that in (a) modularity (Q) is the partitioning metric and in (b), ratio-cut is the partitioning metric.
== Applications ==
=== Conductance ===
Another objective function used for graph partitioning is Conductance which is the ratio between the number of cut edges and the volume of the smallest part. Conductance is related to electrical flows and random walks. The Cheeger bound guarantees that spectral bisection provides partitions with nearly optimal conductance. The quality of this approximation depends on the second smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian λ2.
=== Immunization ===
Graph partition can be useful for identifying the minimal set of nodes or links that should be immunized in order to stop epidemics.
== Other graph partition methods ==
Spin models have been used for clustering of multivariate data wherein similarities are translated into coupling strengths. The properties of ground state spin configuration can be directly interpreted as communities. Thus, a graph is partitioned to minimize the Hamiltonian of the partitioned graph. The Hamiltonian (H) is derived by assigning the following partition rewards and penalties.
Reward internal edges between nodes of same group (same spin)
Penalize missing edges in same group
Penalize existing edges between different groups
Reward non-links between different groups.
Additionally, Kernel-PCA-based Spectral clustering takes a form of least squares Support Vector Machine framework, and hence it becomes possible to project the data entries to a kernel induced feature space that has maximal variance, thus implying a high separation between the projected communities.
Some methods express graph partitioning as a multi-criteria optimization problem which can be solved using local methods expressed in a game theoretic framework where each node makes a decision on the partition it chooses.
For very large-scale distributed graphs classical partition methods might not apply (e.g., spectral partitioning, Metis) since they require full access to graph data in order to perform global operations. For such large-scale scenarios distributed graph partitioning is used to perform partitioning through asynchronous local operations only.
== Software tools ==
scikit-learn implements spectral clustering with the partitioning determined from eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian matrix for the original graph computed by ARPACK, or by LOBPCG solver with multigrid preconditioning.
METIS is a graph partitioning family by Karypis and Kumar. Among this family, kMetis aims at greater partitioning speed, hMetis, applies to hypergraphs and aims at partition quality, and ParMetis is a parallel implementation of the Metis graph partitioning algorithm.
KaHyPar is a multilevel hypergraph partitioning framework providing direct k-way and recursive bisection based partitioning algorithms. It instantiates the multilevel approach in its most extreme version, removing only a single vertex in every level of the hierarchy. By using this very fine grained n-level approach combined with strong local search heuristics, it computes solutions of very high quality.
Scotch is graph partitioning framework by Pellegrini. It uses recursive multilevel bisection and includes sequential as well as parallel partitioning techniques.
Jostle is a sequential and parallel graph partitioning solver developed by Chris Walshaw.
The commercialized version of this partitioner is known as NetWorks.
Party implements the Bubble/shape-optimized framework and the Helpful Sets algorithm.
The software packages DibaP and its MPI-parallel variant PDibaP by Meyerhenke implement the Bubble framework using diffusion; DibaP also uses AMG-based techniques for coarsening and solving linear systems arising in the diffusive approach.
Sanders and Schulz released a graph partitioning package KaHIP (Karlsruhe High Quality Partitioning) that implements for example flow-based methods, more-localized local searches and several parallel and sequential meta-heuristics.
The tools Parkway by Trifunovic and
Knottenbelt as well as Zoltan by Devine et al. focus on hypergraph
partitioning.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Bichot, Charles-Edmond; Siarry, Patrick (2011). Graph Partitioning: Optimisation and Applications. ISTE – Wiley. ISBN 978-1-84821-233-6. | Wikipedia/Graph_partition |
The Deployable Joint Command and Control system, commonly known as DJC2, is an integrated military command and control headquarters system which enables a commander to set up a self-contained, self-powered, computer network-enabled temporary headquarters facility anywhere in the world within 6 – 24 hours of arrival at a location.
DJC2 is produced and fielded by the U.S. military to support Joint warfare. The DJC2 Joint Program Office developed the system, and it is integrated and produced by a U.S. Government integrator, the Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division.
The base DJC2 system consists of a linked group of self-powered and climate-controlled tents which house computer network servers, computer workstations with furniture, satellite communications equipment, voice and data encryption equipment, a video teleconferencing system, video display screens, printers, fax machines, etc. Utilizing a fielded DJC2 system, the commander and his staff can securely communicate across the world, send and receive information across five different computer networks (including secure networks and the Internet), participate in video teleconferences with remote locations, and use a fully integrated command and control/collaboration software tool suite to plan and execute missions.
In addition to the base system, DJC2 includes some additional specialized configurations designed to support a commander's need for command and control capabilities in specialized circumstances. These configurations include: a "suitcase" communications suite which can be hand-carried and used on short notice by a first responder/small control team; and a small, air-certified headquarters suite which can operate aboard a military aircraft while in flight. The DJC2 system also includes an experimental concept demonstration suite with DJC2 workstations installed in shipboard containers for operation aboard a ship while underway.
Currently, the Department of Defense has produced and fielded six fully deployable DJC2 systems to commands in the United States and Europe. A DJC2 system was used in a Joint Task Force effort supporting the relief efforts in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana, as well as in the Joint Task Force providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to victims of the May 2008 Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma). The DJC2 systems have also been used in military exercises around the world, including the United States, Europe, Africa, Central America, and Asia.
== Design ==
=== Subsystems ===
The DJC2 design provides the capabilities of its four configurations by integrating components from three different subsystems:
Infrastructure Support (IS) – Includes such components as climate-controlled tents; generators for power; environmental control units for heating/cooling; furniture for workstations; framework for mounting tools such as large video display screens; lighting, etc.
Information Technology (IT) – Includes such components as laptop workstations with network connectivity and desktop peripherals; five different networks (including a combination of secure and non-secure) with supporting computer servers; command and control software applications, including the Department of Defense's standardized command and control suite, Global Command and Control – Joint (GCCS-J); collaboration software applications, an online portal which provides access to software applications and data; voice communications; video display technology with large screen displays; video teleconferencing; cryptographic components and other information assurance (security) tools, etc.
Communications – Includes such components as satellite dishes, radios, communications interfaces, etc.
=== Architecture ===
The DJC2 command and control architecture is an open architecture based on Service Oriented Architecture principles. The architecture utilizes several technologies – including Internet Protocol Convergence (IPC) and virtualization – to reconcile the DJC2 system's robust IT requirements (i.e., five different networks, C2 and collaboration software applications, and communications) with its stringent deployability and rapid set-up requirements.
The DJC2 system's IPC Suite uses IPC technology to provide IP-based services and flexible bandwidth utilization. The system uses virtualization technology in both hardware (computer servers) and software. Virtualization of the DJC2 hardware allows one DJC2 computer server to do the job of multiple servers by creating "virtual machines" (VMs) that can run their own operating systems and applications just like a "real" server, and then can be hosted with many other VMs on one physical server to more effectively utilize computer server capacity. Virtualization of the DJC2 software allows for better portability of applications to differing hardware sets. Through virtualization, the DJC2 program reduced the size of its system (e.g., reducing the number of servers per network from an original nine to three plus one spare), which decreases both the amount of space required for the system to be set up (footprint) and the transportation assets needed to transport it (lift), as well as decreased cost and set-up time.
=== Refresh ===
The DJC2 program is currently in its Technology Refresh and Technology Insertion phase, which will include inserting such technologies as Secure Wireless Networking into the existing DJC2 systems.
== Configurations ==
The DJC2 system includes four distinct DJC2 configurations, each designed to meet different mission needs ranging from the mission of a two-person first responder team up to the mission of a major Joint Task Force.
=== Core ===
The baseline configuration of the DJC2 system is the Core configuration, which enables a commander to rapidly deploy a fully capable temporary command and control headquarters. The Core is a 60-operator suite housed in tents which can be set up and fully operational with communications and network connectivity in less than 24 hours after arrival on-site. Each operator workstation includes two laptops to provide an operator with simultaneous access to two networks, and telephone and intercom capability. The Core is flexible and scalable, and can be tailored to an individual mission (i.e., a commander can take only what he needs for a particular mission and leave the rest behind).
The DJC2 Core can support a small Joint Task Force, or can be combined with other Cores to support a larger Joint Task Force. Though the Core provides physical space and workstations for 60 operator workstations, its computer servers can support more than 750 simultaneous users, so additional non-DJC2 computers can be connected to the DJC2 system when needed. Though the Core has organic communications capabilities, establishing a full Core requires supplemental communications support at the site, such as that provided by a military communications unit. The Core has its own generators for power and environmental control units for heating/cooling. However, it can be connected to external power when available. It also can be set up inside an available building instead of the tents.
=== Early Entry ===
Embedded within the Core is the Early Entry configuration, which enables a commander to deploy an early (first 72–96 hours) command and control presence and develop situational awareness at a location prior to setting up a full temporary headquarters (when needed). The Early Entry configuration is a 20/40-operator suite, housed in just two of the Core's rectangular tents, which can be set up and providing limited communications and network connectivity within 4 – 6 hours of arrival at a location. When the rest of the Core arrives, it can be quickly connected to the Early Entry components to provide full Core functionality within 24 hours. Like the Core, the Early Entry configuration has its own generators for power and environmental control units for heating/cooling, but can be connected to external power when available. It also can be set up inside an available building instead of the tents.
=== En Route ===
The En Route configuration is a stand-alone DJC2 suite which enables the commander to establish and sustain effective command and control and situational awareness while traveling by air from the garrison headquarters to a deployed location. It provides 6 – 12 workstations, mounted to a special aircraft pallet, which allow operators to communicate, connect to two networks (one secure and one non-secure), and perform command and control functions while in flight on a C-130 or C-17 aircraft. Specially designed "roller carts" house the primary networking and communications equipment and at least one system administrator position to manage the network and communication interfaces. The En Route configuration can be marshaled from short-term storage and ready for aircraft installation within 3 hours of notification. The workstations are also operable on the ground, and onboard while the aircraft is on the flight line. The En Route configuration requires an external power source, such as power from the aircraft.
=== Rapid Response Kit ===
The Rapid Response Kit is a stand-alone DJC2 suite which enables a commander to deploy a lightweight communications package anywhere in the world at a moment's notice by a very small team carrying it on a military or commercial aircraft. The Rapid Response Kit supports 2 – 15 operators. It has no computer servers; instead, it "reaches back" electronically to established U.S. Department of Defense networks via satellite connectivity. It provides two networks simultaneously, chosen from among four network options, including both secure and non-secure networks. It provides both voice and data communications, as well as a video teleconferencing capability. The Rapid Response Kit requires an external power source, such as commercial power from a building. It can also connect to other networks, such as a network in a commercial hotel.
=== Maritime Demonstrator ===
In partnership with the U.S. Navy Second Fleet, the DJC2 program has also produced and demonstrated a prototype configuration of a Joint Task Force headquarters afloat command and control capability, called the DJC2 Maritime Demonstrator. The demonstrator is a totally self-contained Joint Task Force Headquarters suite which can be installed aboard a ship. It requires nothing from the ship other than physical space, electrical power, and hotel services for the command staff. The demonstrator (which is a repackaging of the DJC2 architecture) consists of a group of climate-controlled ISO containers of two types: Staff Modules, which house 10 operator workstations per container; and Tech Control Modules, which house the networking, communications, and video distribution hardware that supports the operators.
The ISO containers are secured for sea using normal ship's tie-down points in any appropriate open space. The design also includes satellite communication antennas for connectivity to DISA's Global Information Grid. This connectivity may also be provided via the ship's organic satellite communications system. The demonstrator, which has been successfully tested, can easily be scaled larger when the mission requires it by adding more ISO containers of each type. In addition, the C2 architecture is sufficiently robust to support a large number of additional external users in other ship spaces (e.g., embarked unit spaces). The demonstrator can be installed on a designated ship of opportunity – including Navy, Military Sealift Command, Maritime Pre-Positioning Force Units, Coalition Force ships – or ashore. Since it is self-contained and easy to install/uninstall, it can be moved as needed among ships and installed wherever space and power are available.
== Users ==
The DJC2 system is fielded to U.S. Combatant Commands and/or their component commands for their use in standing up Joint Task Forces in response to military and humanitarian crises. Currently, the commands that own a DJC2 system include: U.S. Southern Command; U.S. Pacific Command; U.S. European Command; Southern European Task Force/U.S. Army Africa; U.S. Army South, and III Marine Expeditionary Force.
The DJC2 system's command and control capabilities also have utility for non-military applications such as supporting Homeland Security efforts responding to natural disasters. As noted, DJC2 was used in a Joint Task Force supporting the rescue and relief effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the U.S. Gulf Coast and of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma).
=== Certifications ===
The DJC2 system is a fully tested, fully certified U.S. military system. Its certifications include:
Transportability (air, sea, road, and rail)
Information Assurance
Joint Interoperability
Authority to Operate
== References ==
== External links ==
DJC2 System
DJC2 Rapid Response Kit
DJC2 En Route Configuration
DJC2 Maritime Variant Demonstrator
DJC2 Deployable Joint Command and Control, official U.S. Navy web site (GILS Number: 001883) | Wikipedia/Deployable_Joint_Command_and_Control |
Airborne forces are ground combat units carried by aircraft and airdropped into battle zones, typically by parachute drop. Parachute-qualified infantry and support personnel serving in airborne units are also known as paratroopers.
The main advantage of airborne forces is their ability to be deployed into combat zones without a land passage, as long as the airspace is accessible. Formations of airborne forces are limited only by the number and size of their transport aircraft; a sizeable force can appear "out of the sky" behind enemy lines in merely hours if not minutes, an action known as vertical envelopment.
Airborne forces typically lack enough supplies for prolonged combat and so they are used for establishing an airhead to bring in larger forces before carrying out other combat objectives. Some infantry fighting vehicles have also been modified for paradropping with infantry to provide heavier firepower.
Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions protects parachutists in distress, but not airborne troops. Their necessarily-slow descent causes paratroopers to be vulnerable to anti-air fire from ground defenders, but combat jumps are at low altitude (400–500 ft) and normally carried out a short distance away (or directly on if lightly defended) from the target area at night. Airborne operations are also particularly sensitive to weather conditions, which can be dangerous to both the paratroopers and airlifters, and so extensive planning is critical to the success of an airborne operation.
Advances in VTOL technologies (helicopter and tiltrotor) since World War II have brought increased flexibility, and air assaults have largely been the preferred method of insertion for recent conflicts, but airborne insertion is still maintained as a rapid response capability to get troops on the ground anywhere in the world within hours for a variety of missions.
== Early history ==
Benjamin Franklin envisioned the danger of airborne attack in 1784, only a few months after the first manned flight in a hot air balloon:
Five Thousand Balloons capable of raising two Men each, would not cost more than Five Ships of the Line: And where is the Prince who can afford so to cover his Country with Troops for its Defense, as that Ten Thousand Men descending from the Clouds, might not in many Places do an infinite deal of Mischief, before a Force could be brought together to repel them?
An early modern operation was first envisioned by Winston Churchill who proposed the creation of an airborne force to assault behind the German lines in 1917 during the First World War. Later in late 1918. Major Lewis H. Brereton and his superior Brigadier General Billy Mitchell suggested dropping elements of the U.S. 1st Division behind German lines near Metz. The operation was planned for February 1919 but the war ended before the attack could be seriously planned. Mitchell conceived that US troops could be rapidly trained to utilize parachutes and drop from converted bombers to land behind Metz in synchronisation with a planned infantry offensive.
Following the war, the United States Army Air Service experimented with the concept of carrying troops on the wings of aircraft, with them pulled off by the opening of their parachutes. The first true paratroop drop was by Italy in November 1927. Within a few years, several battalions were raised and eventually formed into two 185th Infantry Division "Folgore" and 184th Infantry Division "Nembo" divisions. Although they later fought with distinction in World War II, they were never used in a parachute drop. Men drawn from the Italian parachute forces were dropped in a special-forces operation in North Africa in 1943 in an attempt to destroy parked aircraft of the United States Army Air Forces.
At about the same time, the Soviet Union was also experimenting with the idea, planning to drop entire units complete with vehicles and light tanks. To help train enough experienced jumpers, parachute clubs were organized with the aim of transferring into the armed forces if needed. Planning progressed to the point that Corps-size drops were demonstrated to foreign observers, including the British Military Attaché Archibald Wavell, in the Kiev military district maneuvers of 1935.
One of the observing parties, Nazi Germany, was particularly interested. In 1936, Major F. W. Immans was ordered to set up a parachute school at Stendal (Borstel), and was allocated a number of Junkers Ju 52 aircraft to train on. The military had already purchased large numbers of Junkers Ju 52s which were slightly modified for use as paratroop transports in addition to their other duties. The first training class was known as Ausbildungskommando Immans. They commenced the first course on May 3, 1936.
Other nations, including Argentina, Peru, Japan, France and Poland also organized airborne units around this time. France became the first nation to organize women in an airborne unit, recruiting 200 nurses who during peacetime would parachute into natural disaster zones but also as reservists who would be a uniformed medical unit during wartime.
== World War II ==
=== Axis operations ===
Several groups within the German armed forces attempted to raise their own paratroop formations, resulting in confusion. As a result, Luftwaffe General Kurt Student was put in overall command of developing a paratrooper force to be known as the Fallschirmjäger.
During the invasions of Norway and Denmark in Operation Weserübung, the Luftwaffe dropped paratroopers on several locations. In Denmark, a small unit dropped on the Masnedøfort on the small island of Masnedø to seize the Storstrøm Bridge linking the islands of Falster and Zealand. A paratroop detachment also dropped at the airfield of Aalborg which was crucial for the Luftwaffe for operations over Norway. In Norway, a company of paratroopers dropped at Oslo's undefended airstrip. Over the course of the morning and early afternoon of April 9, 1940, the Germans flew in sufficient reinforcements to move into the capital in the afternoon, but by that time the Norwegian government had fled.
In the Battle of France, members of the Brandenburg Regiment landed by Fieseler Fi 156 Storch light reconnaissance planes on the bridges immediately to the south of the 10th Panzer Division's route of march through the southern Ardennes. In Belgium, a small group of German glider-borne troops landed on top of the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael on the morning of May 10, 1940, and disabled the majority of its artillery. The fort held on for another day before surrendering. This opened up Belgium to attack by German Army Group B.
The Dutch were exposed to the first large scale airborne attack in history. During the invasion of the Netherlands, the Germans threw into battle almost their entire Luftlandekorps, an airborne assault army corps that consisted of one parachute division and one division of airlanding troops plus the necessary transport capacity. The existence of this formation had been carefully kept secret until then. Two simultaneous airborne operations were launched. German paratroopers landed at three airfields near The Hague, hoping to seize the Dutch government. From one of these airfields, they were driven out after the first wave of reinforcements, brought in by Ju 52s, was annihilated by anti-aircraft fire and fierce resistance by some remaining Dutch defenders. As a result, numerous crashed and burning aircraft blocked the runway, preventing further reinforcements from landing. This was one of the few occasions where an airfield captured by paratroops has been recaptured. The other two airfields were recaptured as well. Simultaneously, the Germans dropped small packets of paratroopers to seize the crucial bridges that led directly across the Netherlands and into the heart of the country. They opened the way for the 9th Panzer Division. Within a day, the Dutch position became hopeless. Nevertheless, Dutch forces inflicted high losses on German transportation aircraft. Moreover, 1200 German elite troops from the Luftlandekorps taken prisoner around The Hague, were shipped to England just before the capitulation of the Dutch armed forces.
The Fallschirmjägers' greatest victory and greatest losses occurred during the Battle of Crete. Signals intelligence, in the form of Ultra, enabled the British to wait on each German drop zone, yet despite compromised secrecy, surviving German paratroops and airlanded mountain troops pushed the Commonwealth forces off the island in part by unexpected fire support from their light 75 mm guns, though seaborne reinforcements were destroyed by the Royal Navy. However, the losses were so great that Adolf Hitler forbade their use in such operations in the future. He felt that the main strength of the paratroopers was novelty, and now that the British had clearly figured out how to defend against them, there was no real point to using them any more.
One notable exception was the use of airborne forces in special operations. On September 12, 1943, Otto Skorzeny led a daring glider-based assault on the Gran Sasso Hotel, high in the Apennines mountains, and rescued Benito Mussolini from house arrest with very few shots being fired. On May 25, 1944, paratroopers were dropped as part of a failed attempt to capture Josip Broz Tito, the head of the Yugoslav Partisans and later postwar leader of Yugoslavia.
Before the Pacific War began, the Imperial Japanese Army formed Teishin Dan ("Raiding Brigades") and the Imperial Japanese Navy trained marine (Rikusentai) paratroopers. They used paratroops in several battles in the Dutch East Indies campaign of 1941–1942.
Rikusentai airborne troops were first dropped at the Battle of Manado, Celebes in January 1942, and then near Usua, during the Timor campaign, in February 1942. Teishin made a jump at the Battle of Palembang, on Sumatra in February 1942. Japanese airborne units suffered heavy casualties during the Dutch East Indies campaign, and were rarely used as parachute troops afterward.
On 6 December 1944, a 750-strong detachment from Teishin Shudan ("Raiding Division") and the Takachiho special forces unit, attacked U.S. airbases in the Burauen area on Leyte, in the Philippines. The force destroyed some planes and inflicted casualties, but was eventually wiped out.
Japan built a combat strike force of 825 gliders but never committed it to battle.
=== Allied operations ===
Ironically, the battle that ended Germany's paratrooper operations had the opposite effect on the Allies. Convinced of the effectiveness of airborne assaults after Crete, the Allies hurried to train and organize their own airborne units. The British established No.1 Parachute Training School at RAF Ringway near Manchester, which trained all 60,000 European paratroopers recruited by the Allies during World War II.
An Airlanding School was also set up in New Delhi, India, in October/November 1941, at the then-Welllingdon Airport (now the defunct Safdarjang Airport) to train paratroopers for the British Indian Army which had been authorised to raise an airborne-capable formation earlier, resulting in the formation of the 50th Indian Parachute Brigade. The Indian airborne forces expanded during the war to the point that an airborne corps was planned bringing together the 2nd Indian Airborne Division and the British 6th Airborne Division, but the war ended before it could materialize.
A fundamental decision was whether to create small airborne units to be used in specific coup-de-main type operations, or to organize entire airborne divisions for larger operations. Many of the early successful airborne operations were small, carried out by a few units, such as seizing a bridge. After seeing success of other units and observing smokejumper training methods on how training can be done in June 1940, General William C. Lee of the U.S. Army established the Army's first airborne division. The 101st would be reorganized into the 101st Airborne Division.
The Allies eventually formed two British and five American divisions: the British 1st and 6th Airborne Divisions, and the U.S. 11th, 13th, 17th, 82nd, and 101st Airborne Divisions. By 1944, the British divisions were grouped into the 1st Airborne Corps under Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Browning, while the American divisions in the European Theatre (the 17th, 82nd, and 101st) were organized into the XVIII Airborne Corps under Major General Matthew Ridgway. Both corps fell under the First Allied Airborne Army under U.S. Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton.
The first U.S. airborne operation was by the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion in November 1942, as part of Operation Torch in North Africa. The U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions saw the most action in the European Theater, with the former in Sicily and Italy in 1943, and both in Normandy and the Netherlands in 1944. The 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team was the principal force in Operation Dragoon in Southern France. The 17th Airborne Division deployed to England in 1944 but did not see combat until the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945 where they, along with the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were deployed as ground troops.
The U.S. 11th and 13th Airborne Divisions were held in reserve in the United States until 1944 when the 11th Airborne Division was deployed to the Pacific, but mostly used as ground troops or for smaller airborne operations. The 13th Airborne Division was deployed to France in January 1945 but never saw combat as a unit.
==== Soviet operations ====
The Soviets mounted only one large-scale airborne operation in World War II, despite their early leadership in the field in the 1930s. Russia also pioneered the development of combat gliders, but used them only for cargo during the war.
Axis air superiority early in the conflict limited the ability of the Soviets to mount such operations, whilst later in the conflict ongoing shortages of materiel, including silk for parachutes, was also a problem. Nonetheless, the Soviets maintained their doctrinal belief in the effectiveness of airborne forces, as part of their concept of "deep battle", throughout the war. The largest drop during the war was corp-sized (the Vyazma airborne Operation, the 4th Airborne Corps). It was unsuccessful. Airborne formations were used as elite infantry units however, and played a critical role in several battles. For example, at the Battle of Kursk, the Guards Airborne defended the eastern shoulder of the southern penetration and was critical to holding back the German penetration.
The Soviets sent at least one team of observers to the British and American airborne planning for D-Day, but did not reciprocate the liaison.
==== Early commando raids ====
===== Operation Colossus: Raid on the Tragino Aqueduct =====
Britain's first airborne assault took place on February 10, 1941, when 'X' Troop, No 11 Special Air Service Battalion (which was formed from No 2 Commando and subsequently became 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment) dropped into southern Italy from converted Whitley bombers flying from Malta and demolished a span of the aqueduct near Tragino in a daring night raid named Operation Colossus.
===== Operation Squatter: Raid on Axis airfields in Libya =====
54 effectives of 'L' Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade (largely drawn from the disbanded Layforce) mounted a night parachute insertion onto two drop zones in Bir Temrad, North Africa on the night of November 16/17 1941 in preparation for a stealthy attack on the forward airfields of Gambut and Tmimi in order to destroy the Axis fighter force on the ground before the start of Operation Crusader, a major offensive by the British Eighth Army.
===== Operation Biting: The Bruneval raid =====
A Würzburg radar site on the coast of France was attacked by a company of 120 British paratroopers from 2 Battalion, Parachute Regiment, commanded by Major John Frost, in Operation Biting on February 27, 1942. The key electronic components of the system were dismantled by an English radar mechanic and brought back to Britain for examination so that countermeasures could be devised. The result was a British victory. Of the 120 paratroopers who dropped in the dead of night, there were two killed, six wounded, and six captured.
==== Mediterranean ====
===== Operation Mercury: Crete =====
This was the last large-scale airborne assault by Hitler and the Germans. The German paratroopers had such a high casualty rate that Hitler forbade any further large-scale airborne attacks. The Allies, on the other hand, were very impressed by the potential of paratroopers, and started to build their own airborne divisions.
===== Operation Torch: North Africa =====
The first United States airborne combat mission occurred during Operation Torch in North Africa on 8 November 1942. 531 men of the 2nd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment flew over 1,600 miles (2,600 km) at night from Britain, over Spain, intending to drop near Oran and capture two airfields. Navigation errors, communications problems, and bad weather scattered the forces. Seven of the 39 C-47s landed far from Oran from Gibraltar to Tunisia, and only ten actually delivered their troops by parachute drop. The remainder off-loaded after 28 C-47 troop carriers, short on fuel, landed on the Sebkra d'Oran dry lake, and marched overland to their objectives.
One week later, after repacking their own chutes, 304 men of the battalion conducted a second combat jump on 15 November 1942 to secure the airfield at Youk-les-Bains near the Tunisian border. From this base, the battalion conducted combined operations with various French forces against the German Afrika Korps in Tunisia. A unit of French Algerian infantry, the 3rd Regiment of Zouaves, was present at Youk-les-Bains and awarded the American paratroopers their own regimental crest as a gesture of respect. This badge was awarded to the battalion commander on 15 November 1942 by the 3rd Zouaves' regimental commander, and is worn today by all members of the 509th Infantry.
===== Operation Husky: Sicily =====
As part of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of the island of Sicily, four airborne operations (two British and two American) were carried out, landing during the nights of July 9 and 10 1943. The American paratroopers were from the 82nd Airborne Division, mainly Colonel James Gavin's 505th Parachute Regimental Combat Team (consisting of the 3rd Battalion of the 504th PIR, Company 'B' of the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion and the 456th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, with other supporting units), making their first combat jump. Strong winds encountered en route blew the dropping aircraft off course and scattered them widely. The result was that around half the paratroopers failed to make it to their rallying points. The British airborne troops from the 1st Airborne Division were glider infantry of the 1st Airlanding Brigade, commanded by Brigadier Philip Hicks, and they fared little better. Only 12 out of 137 gliders in Operation Ladbroke landed on target, with more than half landing in the sea. Nevertheless, the scattered airborne troops maximised their opportunities, attacking patrols and creating confusion wherever possible. On the night of 11 July, a reinforcement drop of the 82nd, consisting of the 504th Parachute Regimental Combat Team (composed of the 1st and 2nd Battalions, the 376th Parachute Field Artillery and Company 'A' of the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion), under Colonel Reuben Tucker, behind American lines at Farello airfield resulted in heavy friendly fire casualties when, despite forewarnings, Allied anti-aircraft fire both ashore and aboard U.S Navy ships shot down 23 of the transports as they flew over the beachhead.
Despite a catastrophic loss of gliders and troops loads at sea, the British 1st Airlanding Brigade captured the Ponte Grande bridge south of Syracuse. Before the German counterattack, the beach landings took place unopposed and the 1st Airlanding Brigade was relieved by the British 5th Infantry Division as it swept inland towards Catania and Messina.
On the evening of July 13, 1943, more than 112 aircraft carrying 1,856 men and 16 gliders with 77 artillerymen and ten 6 pounder guns, took off from North Africa in Operation Fustian. The initial target of the British 1st Parachute Brigade, under Brigadier Gerald Lathbury, was to capture the Primosole bridge and the high ground around it, providing a pathway for the Eighth Army, but heavy anti-aircraft fire shot down many of the Dakotas before they reached their target. Only 295 officers and men were dropped close enough to carry out the assault. They captured the bridge, but the German 4th Parachute Regiment recaptured it. They held the high ground until relieved by the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division of the Eighth Army, which re-took the bridge at dawn on 16 July.
The Allied commanders were forced to reassess the use of airborne forces after the many misdrops and the deadly friendly fire incident.
===== Swing Board and the Knollwood Maneuver =====
General Dwight D. Eisenhower reviewed the airborne role in Operation Husky and concluded that large-scale formations were too difficult to control in combat to be practical. Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, the overall commander of Army Ground Forces, had similar misgivings: once an airborne supporter, he had been greatly disappointed by the performance of airborne units in North Africa and more recently Sicily. However, other high-ranking officers, including the Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, believed otherwise. Marshall persuaded Eisenhower to set up a review board and to withhold judgement until the outcome of a large-scale maneuver, planned for December 1943, could be assessed.
McNair ordered 11th Airborne Division commander Major general Joseph May Swing to form a committee—the Swing Board—composed of air force, parachute, glider infantry and artillery officers, whose arrangements for the maneuver would effectively decide the fate of divisional-sized airborne forces. As the 11th Airborne Division was in reserve in the United States and had not yet been earmarked for combat, the Swing Board selected it as the test formation. The maneuver would additionally provide the 11th Airborne and its individual units with further training, as had occurred several months previously in an earlier large-scale exercise conducted by the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions.
The 11th Airborne, as the attacking force, was assigned the objective of capturing Knollwood Army Auxiliary Airfield near Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The force defending the airfield and its environs was a combat team composed of elements of the 17th Airborne Division and a battalion from the 541st Parachute Infantry Regiment. The entire operation was observed by McNair, who would ultimately have a significant say in deciding the fate of the parachute infantry divisions.
The Knollwood Maneuver took place on the night of 7 December 1943, with the 11th Airborne Division being airlifted to thirteen separate objectives by 200 C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft and 234 Waco CG-4A gliders. The transport aircraft were divided into four groups, two of which carried paratroopers while the other two towed gliders. Each group took off from a different airfield in the Carolinas. The four groups deployed a total of 4,800 troops in the first wave. Eighty-five percent were delivered to their targets without navigational error, and the airborne troops seized the Knollwood Army Auxiliary Airfield and secured the landing area for the rest of the division before daylight. With its initial objectives taken, the 11th Airborne Division then launched a coordinated ground attack against a reinforced infantry regiment and conducted several aerial resupply and casualty evacuation missions in coordination with United States Army Air Forces transport aircraft. The exercise was judged by observers to be a great success. McNair, pleased by its results, attributed this success to the great improvements in airborne training that had been implemented in the months following Operation Husky. As a result of the Knollwood Maneuver, division-sized airborne forces were deemed to be feasible and Eisenhower permitted their retention.
===== Italy =====
Italy agreed to an armistice with the Allies on September 3, 1943, with the stipulation that the Allies would provide military support to Italy in defending Rome from German occupation. Operation Giant II was a planned drop of one regiment of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division northwest of Rome, to assist four Italian divisions in seizing the Italian capital. An airborne assault plan to seize crossings of the Volturno river during the Allied invasion of Italy, called Operation Giant, was abandoned in favor of the Rome mission. However, doubts about the willingness and capability of Italian forces to cooperate, and the distance of the mission far beyond support by the Allied military, resulted in the 82nd Airborne artillery commander, Brigadier General Maxwell Taylor (future commander of the 101st Airborne Division), being sent on a personal reconnaissance mission to Rome to assess the prospects of success. His report via radio on September 8 caused the operation to be postponed (and canceled the next day) as troop carriers loaded with two battalions of the 504th PIR were warming up for takeoff.
With Giant II cancelled, Operation Giant I was reactivated to drop two battalions of the 504th PIR at Capua on September 13. However, significant German counterattacks, beginning on September 12, resulted in a shrinking of the American perimeter and threatened destruction of the Salerno beachhead. As a result, Giant I was cancelled and the 504th PIR instead dropped into the beachhead on the night of September 13 using transponding radar beacons as a guide. The next night the 505th PIR was also dropped into the beachhead as reinforcement. In all, 3,500 paratroopers made the most concentrated mass night drop in history, providing the model for the American airborne landings in Normandy in June 1944. An additional drop on the night of September 14–15 of the 509th PIB to destroy a key bridge at Avellino, to disrupt German motorized movements, was badly dispersed and failed to destroy the bridge before the Germans withdrew to the north.
In April 1945, Operation Herring, an Italian commando-style airborne drop aimed at disrupting German rear area communications and movement over key areas in Northern Italy, took place. However the Italian troops were not dropped as a unit, but as a series of small (8–10 man) groups. Another operation, Operation Potato, was mounted by men drawn from the Folgore and Nembo divisions, operating with British equipment and under British command as No. 1 Italian Special Air Service Regiment. The men dropped in small groups from American C-47s and carried out a successful railway sabotage operation in northern Italy.
==== Western Europe ====
The Allies had learned better tactics and logistics from their earlier airborne drops, and these lessons were applied for the assaults along the Western Front.
===== Operation Neptune =====
One of the most famous of airborne operations was Operation Neptune, the assault of Normandy, part of Operation Overlord of the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944. The task of the airborne forces was to secure the flanks and approaches of the landing beaches in Normandy. The British glider transported troops and paratroopers of the 6th Airborne Division, which secured the eastern flank during Operation Tonga. This operation included the capture of the Caen canal and Orne river bridges, and the attack on the Merville gun battery. The American glider and parachute infantry of the 82nd (Operation Detroit) and 101st Airborne Divisions (Operation Chicago), though widely scattered by poor weather and poorly marked landing zones in the American airborne landings in Normandy, secured the western flank of U.S. VII Corps with heavy casualties. All together, airborne casualties in Normandy on D-Day totaled around 2,300.
Operation Dingson (5–18 June 1944) was conducted by about 178 Free French paratroops of the 4th Special Air Service (SAS), commanded by Colonel Pierre-Louis Bourgoin, who jumped into German-occupied France near Vannes, Morbihan, southern Brittany, in Plumelec, at 1130 on the night of 5 June and Saint-Marcel (8–18 June). At this time, there was approximately 100,000 German troops and artillery preparing to move to the Normandy landing areas. Immediately upon landing, 18 Free French went into action near Plumelec against German troops (Vlassov's army). The Free French established a base at Saint-Marcel and began to arm and equip local resistance fighters, operating with up to 3,000 Maquis. However, their base was heavily attacked by a German paratroop division on 18 June, and the men were forced to disperse. Captain Pierre Marienne with 17 of his companions (six paratroopers, eight resistance fighters and three farmers) died a few weeks later in Kerihuel, Plumelec, at dawn of 12 July. The Dingson team was joined by the men who had just completed Operation Cooney. Dingson was conducted alongside Operation Samwest and Operation Lost as part of Overlord.
In Operation Dingson 35A, on 5 August 1944, 10 Waco CG-4A gliders towed by aircraft of 298 Squadron and 644 Squadron transported Free French SAS men and armed jeeps to Brittany near Vannes (Locoal-Mendon), each glider carrying three Free French troopers and a jeep. One glider was lost with the death of the British pilot. The SAS teams remained behind enemy lines until the Allies arrived.
===== Operation Dragoon: Southern France =====
On August 15, 1944, airborne units of the 6th Army Group provisional airborne division, commanded by U.S. Major General Robert T. Frederick, opened Operation Dragoon, the invasion of Southern France, with a dawn assault. Called the "1st Airborne Task Force", the force was composed of the 1st Special Services Forces, British 2nd Independent Parachute Brigade, the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team, the 509th and 551st Parachute Infantry Battalions, the glider-borne 550th Airborne Infantry Battalion, and supporting units. Nearly 400 aircraft delivered 5,600 paratroopers and 150 guns to three drops zones surrounding Le Muy, between Fréjus and Cannes, in phase 1, Operation Albatross. Once they had captured their initial targets, they were reinforced by 2,600 soldiers and critical equipment carried in 408 gliders daylight missions code-named Operation Bluebird, phase 2, simultaneous with the beach landings, and Operation Dove, phase 3. A second daylight parachute drop, Operation Canary, dropped 736 men of the 551st PIB with nearly 100% effectiveness late on the afternoon of August 15. The airborne objective was to capture the area, destroy all enemy positions and hold the ground until the U.S. Seventh Army came ashore.
===== Operation Market Garden: "A Bridge Too Far" =====
Operation Market Garden of September 1944, involved 35,000 airborne troops dropped up to 100 miles (160 km) behind German lines in an attempt to capture a series of bridges over the Maas, Waal and Rhine Rivers, in an attempt to outflank German fortifications and penetrate into Germany. The operation was hastily planned and many key planning tasks were inadequately completed. Three complete airborne divisions executed Operation Market, the airborne phase. These were the British 1st Airborne Division, the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, as well as the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade. All units were landed or dropped at various points along Highway 69 ("Hell's Highway") in order to create a "carpet" over which the British XXX Corps could rapidly advance in Operation Garden, the land phase. It was a daylight assault, with little initial opposition, and most units achieved high accuracy on drop and landing zones. In the end, after strong German counterattacks, the overall plan failed: the British 1st Airborne Division was all but destroyed at Arnhem, and the final Rhine bridge remained in German hands.
===== Operation Repulse: re-supply of Bastogne =====
Operation Repulse, which took place in Bastogne on December 23, 24, 26, and 27, 1944, as part of the Battle of the Bulge, glider pilots, although flying directly through enemy fire, were able to land, delivering the badly needed ammunition, gasoline and medical supplies that enabled defenders against the German offensive to persevere and secure the ultimate victory.
===== Operation Varsity: The Rhine Crossing =====
Operation Varsity was a daylight assault conducted by two airborne divisions, the British 6th Airborne Division and the U.S. 17th Airborne Division, both of which were part of the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps. Conducted as a part of Operation Plunder, the operation took place on 24 March 1945 in aid of an attempt by the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group to cross the Rhine River. Having learnt from the heavy casualties inflicted upon the airborne formations in Operation Market Garden, the two airborne divisions were dropped several thousand yards forward of friendly positions, and only some thirteen hours after Operation Plunder had begun and Allied ground forces had already crossed the Rhine. There was heavy resistance in some of the areas that the airborne troops landed in, with casualties actually statistically heavier than those incurred during Operation Market Garden. The British military historian Max Hastings has labelled the operation both costly and unnecessary, writing that "Operation Varsity was a folly for which more than a thousand men paid for with their lives ..."
==== Pacific Theater ====
The following airborne operations against the Japanese are famous.
===== New Guinea =====
In September 1943, in New Guinea, the U.S. Army's 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment and elements of the Australian Army's 2/4th Field Regiment made a highly successful, unopposed landing at Nadzab, during the Salamaua-Lae campaign. This was the first Allied airborne assault in the Pacific Theater.
In July 1944, the 503rd jumped again, onto Noemfoor Island, off Dutch New Guinea, in the Battle of Noemfoor.
===== Philippines =====
The honors for recapturing the Rock went to the 503rd Parachute Regimental Combat Team of Lieutenant Colonel George M. Jones and elements of Major General Roscoe B. Woodruff's 24th Infantry Division, the same units which undertook the capture of Mindoro island. The U.S. 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment's most famous operation was a landing on Corregidor ("The Rock") in February 1945, during the Philippines campaign of 1944–45.
The U.S. Army's 11th Airborne Division saw a great deal of action in the Philippines as a ground unit. The 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment made the division's first jump near Tagaytay Ridge on 3 February 1945, meeting no resistance at the drop zone. Elements of the division also jumped to liberate 2,000 Allied civilians interned at Los Baños, 23 February 1945. The final operation of the division was conducted on 23 June 1945, in conjunction with an advance by U.S. ground forces in northern Luzon. A task force from the 11th was formed and jumped on Camalaniugan Airfield, south of Aparri.
===== Burma =====
A large British force, known as the Chindits, operated behind Japanese lines during 1944. In Operation Thursday, most of the units were flown into landing grounds which had been seized by glider infantry transported by the American First Air Commando Group, commencing on March 5. Aircraft continued to land reinforcements at captured or hastily constructed landing strips until monsoon rains made them unusable. Small detachments were subsequently landed by parachute. The operation eventually wound down in July, with the exhausted Chindits making their way overland to link up with advancing American and Chinese forces.
For Operation Dracula, an ad hoc parachute battalion group made up of personnel from the 153 and 154 (Gurkha) Parachute Battalions of the Indian Army secured Japanese coastal defences, which enabled the seaborne assault by the 26th Indian Infantry Division to attain its objectives with a minimum of casualties and time.
== Ecuadorian–Peruvian War ==
During the Ecuadorian–Peruvian War, the Peruvian army established its own paratrooper unit and used it to great effect by seizing the Ecuadorian port city of Puerto Bolívar, on July 27, 1941, marking the first time in the Americas that airborne troops were used in combat.
== After World War II ==
=== Indonesian War of Independence ===
The Dutch Korps Speciale Troepen made two combat jumps during the Indonesian War of Independence. The first jump was as part of Operation Kraai: the capture of Yogyakarta, and the capture of Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta on 19 and 20 December 1948.
The second combat jump happened during Operation Ekster: the capture of Jambi and the oilfields surrounding is, on Sumatra from 29 December 1948 to 23 January 1949. From the Indonesian side, the first airborne operation was an airborne-infiltration operation by 14 paratroopers on 17 October 1947, in Kotawaringin, Kalimantan.
=== Korean War ===
The 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team ("Rakkasans") made two combat jumps in Korea during the Korean War. The first combat jump was made on October 20, 1950, at Sunchon and Sukchon, North Korea. The missions of the 187th were to cut the road north going to China, preventing North Korean leaders from escaping from Pyongyang; and to rescue American prisoners of war.
The second combat jump was made on Wednesday, March 21, 1951, at Munsan-ni, South Korea codenamed Operation Tomahawk. The mission was to get behind Chinese forces and block their movement north. The Indian Army 60th Parachute Field Ambulance provided the medical cover for the operations, dropping an ADS and a surgical team totalling 7 officers and 5 other ranks, treating over 400 battle casualties apart from the civilian casualties that formed the core of their objective as the unit was on a humanitarian mission. The unit was to become the longest-serving military unit in any UN operation till date, serving from October 1950 till May 1953, a total of three and a half years, returning home to a heroes' welcome.
The 187th served in six campaigns in Korea. Shortly after the war the 187th ARCT was considered for use in an Airborne drop to relieve the surrounded French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam but the United States, at that time, decided not to send its troops into the combat zone.
The unit was assigned to the reactivated 101st Airborne Division and subsequently inactivated as a combat team in 1956 as part of the division's reorganization into the Pentomic structure, which featured battle groups in place of regiments and battalions. The 1st and 3rd Battalions, 187th Infantry, bearing the lineages of the former Co A and Co C, 187AIR, are now with the 101st Airborne Division as air assault units.
=== First Indochina War ===
The French used paratroopers extensively during their 1946-54 war against the Viet Minh. Troupes de marine, Foreign Legion and local Vietnamese units took part in numerous operations such as Operation Lea (1947), One of the first large-scale airborne operations in the conflict, French paratroopers landed at Bắc Kạn in an attempt to capture General Võ Nguyên Giáp and disrupt Viet Minh command, While tactically successful in scattering the Viet Minh and capturing equipment, Giáp escaped, and the operation failed to deliver a decisive blow, The Battle of Nà Sản (1952), where they were able to secure a key defensive victory using the Hedgehog Defense tactic or (le hérisson) for the first time in Indochina, Operation Hirondelle (1953) was a focused raid to destroy Viet Minh supply depots near Lạng Sơn, Paratroopers successfully disrupted Viet Minh logistics by destroying hidden supply caches, Despite achieving several tactical successes through their elite training and mobility, the paratroopers’ efforts were frequently countered by the Viet Minh’s adaptability and logistical constraints, were to culminate in the disastrous siege of Dien Bien Phu.
=== Suez crisis: Operations Machbesh & Musketeer ===
Launching the 1956 Suez War, on October 29, 1956, Israeli paratroopers led by Ariel Sharon dropped onto the important Mitla Pass to cut off and engage Egyptian forces. Operation Machbesh (Press) was the IDF's first and largest combat parachute drop.
A few days later, Operation Musketeer needed the element of total surprise to succeed, and all 660 men had to be on the ground at El Gamil airfield and ready for action within four and a half minutes. At 04.15 hours on November 5, 1956, British 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment jumped in and although opposition was heavy, casualties were few. Meanwhile, French paratroopers of the 2nd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment under the command of Colonel Chateau-Jobert jumped on the water treatment factory South of Port Said.
The landings from the sea the next day saw the first large-scale heliborne assault, as 45 Commando, Royal Marines were landed by helicopters in Port Said from ships offshore. Both the British and the French accomplished total military victory against the disorganized Egyptian military and local armed civilians but political events forced total retreat of these forces after 48 hours of fighting.
=== Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 ===
Paratroopers were used in combat in South Asia after the Second World War during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1947, Indian Annexation of Goa in 1961 and Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. The war in 1965 had the largest use of paratrooper forces, and unlike in previous conflicts, they were used in their intended capacity fully (They were not used in the airborne capacity in 1961, and it is unconfirmed in 1947). A covert operation was launched by the Pakistani Army with the intention of infiltrating Indian airbases and sabotaging them. The SSG (Special Service Group) commandos, were parachuted into Indian territory. Of the 180 para-commandos dropped, 138, including all officers but one, were captured and safely taken to prisoner of war (POW) camps. Twenty-two were killed, or rather lynched by joint combing teams of villagers armed with sticks, police and even bands of muleteers released by the Army, from the animal transport battalion of the nearby Corps headquarters.
Only 20 para-commandos were unaccounted for and most escaped back to Pakistan under the fog. Most of these were from the Pathankot group, dropped less than 10 km from the border in an area that had plenty of ravines, riverine tracks to navigate back along.
The War also saw the establishment of the first Indian Airborne Special Forces Unit - The Meghdoot Force - which was tasked with operations behind Pakistani Lines. This force is the predecessor to the modern India Para commando (SF) units, and had a major influence on modern Indian Special forces units.
=== Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 ===
During the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, the Parachute Regiment of the Indian Army fought in numerous contacts in both the Eastern and Western Theatres. On 11 December, India airdropped the 2nd battalion (2 Para) in what is now famous as the Tangail airdrop. The paratroop unit was instrumental in denying the retreat and regrouping of the Pakistani Army and contributed substantially to the early collapse of Dhaka via covert operations. The regiment earned the battle honours of Poongli Bridge, Chachro and Defence of Poonch—during these operations.
=== Indonesian Invasion of East Timor ===
The Indonesian Army used airborne troops in their 1975 invasion of East Timor. Following a naval bombardment of Dili, on December 7, 1975, Indonesian seaborne troops landed in the city while paratroops simultaneously descended on the city. 641 Indonesian paratroopers jumped into Dili, where they engaged in six-hours combat with East Timorese gunmen.
=== Vietnam War ===
In 1963, in the Battle of Ap Bac, ARVN forces delivered airborne troops by helicopter and air drop. The use of helicopter-borne airmobile troops by the United States Army in the Vietnam War was widespread, and became an iconic image featuring in newsreels and movies about the conflict.
In February 1967 Operation Junction City was launched, it would be the largest operation the Allied forces would assemble. During this operation, 845 members of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Airmen (Airborne), the 319th Artillery (Airborne), and elements of H&H company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade made the only combat jump in Vietnam.
=== Rhodesian Bush War ===
The men of the Rhodesian Light Infantry made more parachute jumps than any other military unit in history. While an Allied paratrooper of the Second World War would be considered a "veteran" after one operational jump, an RLI paratrooper could make three operational jumps in a single day, each in a different location, and each preceding a successful contact with the enemy. Between 1976 and 1980, over 14,000 jumps were recorded by the Rhodesian Security Forces as a whole.
The world record for operational jumps by an individual soldier is held by Corporal Des Archer of 1 Commando, RLI, who made 73 operational jumps between 1977 and the end of the war.
Fireforce is a variant of the tactic of vertical envelopment of a target by helicopter-borne and small groups of parachute infantry developed by the Rhodesian Security Force.
Fireforce counter-insurgency missions were designed to trap and eliminate insurgents before they could flee. The Rhodesian Security Force could react quickly to insurgent ambushes, farm attacks, Observation Post sightings, and could also be called in as reinforcements by trackers or patrols which made contact with the enemy. It was first deployed in January 1974 and saw its first action a month later on 24 February 1974. By the end of Rhodesian operations with internal peace agreements, Fireforce was a well-developed counterinsurgency tactic.
Fireforce was an operational assault or response usually composed of a first wave of 32 soldiers carried to the scene by three Alouette III helicopters and one Dakota transport aircraft, with another Alouette III helicopter as a command/gunship aircraft and a light attack aircraft in support. One of the advantages of the Fireforce was its flexibility as all that was needed was a reasonable airstrip. It was such a successful tactic that some Rhodesian Light Infantry soldiers reputedly made as many as three parachute combat jumps in one day.
=== Angolan Bush War: Cassinga ===
During the War in Angola, paratroopers of the South African Army attacked a South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) military base at the former town of Cassinga, Angola on 4 May 1978. Conducted as one of the three major actions of Operation Reindeer during the South African Border War, it was the South African Army's first major airborne assault.
=== Soviet and Russian VDV ===
The Soviet Union maintained the world's largest airborne force during the Cold War, consisting of seven airborne divisions and a training division. The VDV was subordinated directly to the Ministry of Defense of USSR, and was a 'prestige service' in the armed forces of the USSR and Russia to reflect its strategic purpose. Recruits received much more rigorous training and better equipment than ordinary Soviet units. Unlike most airborne forces, which are a light infantry force, VDV has evolved into a fully mechanized parachute-deployed force thanks to its use of BMD-series light IFVs, BTR-D armoured carriers, 2S9 Nona self-propelled 120 mm gun-howitzer-mortars and 2S25 Sprut-SD 125 mm tank destroyers.
The VDV have participated in virtually all Soviet and Russian conflicts since the Second World War, including the Soviet–Afghan War. As an elite force, the VDV developed two distinctive items of clothing: the telnyashka, or striped shirt, and the famous blue beret. Airborne assault (десантно-штурмовые войска or DShV) units wore similar striped shirts (as did the naval infantry) but used helicopters, rather than the Military Transport Aviation's An-12s, An-22s, and Il-76s, which carried the airborne troops and their equipment.
=== Soviet Glider Infantry ===
The Soviets maintained three glider infantry regiments until 1965.
=== Operation Meghdoot ===
Operation Meghdoot (lit. "Operation Cloud Messenger"), launched in the early hours of 13 April 1984, was the codename given to the preemptive strike launched by the Indian Armed Forces' to gain control of the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir, precipitating the Siachen conflict.
Executed in the highest battlefield in the world, Meghdoot was the first ever military offensive of its kind. The operation was a success, resulting in Indian forces gaining control of the Siachen Glacier in its entirety.
=== Recent history ===
With the advantages of helicopter use, airborne forces have dwindled in numbers in recent years.
On July 20, 1974, several landings took place at north of Nicosia, during Operation Atilla.
The Battle of Kolwezi was an airborne operation by the French 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment and Belgian Paracommando Regiment that took place in May 1978 in Zaire during the Shaba II invasion of Zaire by the Front for the National Liberation of the Congo (FLNC). It aimed at rescuing European and Zairean hostages held by FLNC rebels after they conquered the city of Kolwezi. The operation succeeded with the liberation of the hostages and light military casualties.
During the 1983 Invasion of Grenada, the 75th Ranger Regiment made a combat jump on Point Salines International Airport.
In 1989 during the U.S invasion of Panama the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division made its first combat jump in over 40 years. The 1st Brigade of the 82nd secured Omar Torrijos International Airport in Tocumen, Panama. The jump followed the 1st Ranger Battalion(+) of the 75th Ranger Regiment's combat jump onto the airfield. M551 Sheridan tanks were also dropped by air, the only time this capability was used in combat. At the same time as the combat jump onto Omar Torrijos International Airport, the 2nd and 3rd(-) Ranger Battalions, along with the 75th Ranger Regiment regimental headquarters, conducted a combat jump onto Rio Hato Airport.
On September 16, 1994, elements of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division planned to jump into Port-au-Prince Airport in Haiti as part of Operation Restore Democracy, an effort to overthrow the military dictatorship of Raoul Cédras, and to restore the democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. As they were already in the air to be deployed over the target, Cédras finally stepped down from his rule in part due to the diplomatic efforts led by former President Jimmy Carter, averting the entire mission.
On October 19, 2001, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the 3rd Ranger Battalion and a small command and control element from the regimental headquarters of the 75th Ranger Regiment jumped into Kandahar to secure an airfield.
On March 23, 2003, 3/75 Ranger Regiment conducted a combat jump into northern Iraq to seize a desert airfield.
On March 26, 2003, the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade conducted a combat jump into northern Iraq, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to seize an airfield and support special forces (Task Force Viking). The paratroopers departed from Aviano Air Base, Italy on fifteen C-17s.
On May 14, 2008, the People's Liberation Army Air Force Airborne Corps was deployed to provide intel and aid to Mao County and Wenchuan County which became inaccessible due to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
In 2009, Pakistan Army's paratroopers conducted combat jump operations during Operation Black Thunderstorm and Operation Rah-e-Nijat against the Pakistani Taliban in northwest Pakistan, to seize control of strategic mountain areas in order to support special forces and infantry troops.
In January 2013, 250 French paratroopers from the 11th Parachute Brigade jumped into northern Mali to support an offensive to capture the city of Timbuktu.
== Doctrine ==
NATO Tactical Air Doctrine ATP-33 B
== See also ==
Airborne gun
High-altitude military parachuting
List of airborne artillery units
List of paratrooper forces
Pathfinder (military)
== Notes ==
== References ==
Hastings, Max, Armageddon – The Battle For Germany 1944–45, Macmillan, 2004
L, Klemen (1999–2000). "Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942". Archived from the original on 2011-07-26.
== Further reading ==
Ambrose, Stephen E., Pegasus Bridge. Pocket Books, 2003
Ambrose, Stephen E., Band of Brothers. Pocket Books, 2001
Arthur, Max, Forgotten Voices Of The Second World War. Edbury Press, 2005
Balkoski, Joseph, Utah Beach: The Amphibious Landing and Airborne Operations on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Stackpole Books US, 2006
Bando, Mark A., 101st Airborne: The Screaming Eagles at Normandy. Motorbooks International, 2001
Blair, Clay, Ridgway's Paratroopers – The American Airborne In World War II. The Dial Press, 1985
Buckingham, William F., Arnhem 1944. Tempus Publishing Limited, 2004
Buckingham, William F., D-Day – The First 72 Hours. Tempus Publishing Limited, 2004
Calvocoressi, Peter, The Penguin History of the Second World War, Penguin Books Ltd, 1999
Department Of The Army, Pamphlet No. 20-232, Historical Study – Airborne Operations – A German Appraisal, 1951, Department Of The Army
Devlin, Gerard M., Paratrooper – The Saga Of Parachute And Glider Combat Troops During World War II, Robson Books, 1979
DeVore, Marc, When Failure Thrives: Institutions and the Evolution of Postwar Airborne Forces. The Army Press, 2015
Dover, Victor, The Sky Generals, Cassell Ltd, 1981
Flanagan, E.M. Jr., Airborne – A Combat History Of American Airborne Forces, The Random House Publishing Group, 2002
Flint, Keith, Airborne Armour: Tetrarch, Locust, Hamilcar and the 6th Airborne Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment, 1938–50, Helion & Company, 2004
French, David, Raising Churchill's Army – The British Army And The War Against Germany 1919–1945, Oxford University Press, 2000
Frost, John, A Drop Too Many, Leo Cooper Ltd, 1994
Gregory, Barry, British Airborne Troops, Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd, 1974
Harclerode, Peter, Arnhem – A Tragedy Of Errors, Caxton Editions, 2000
Harclerode, Peter, Para! – Fifty Years Of The Parachute Regiment, Orion Books Ltd, 1996
Harclerode, Peter, Wings Of War – Airborne Warfare 1918–1945, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005
Hastings, Max, Overlord, Pan Books, 1999
Hibbert, Christopher, Arnhem, B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1998
Horrocks, Brian, A Full Life, Collins, 1960
Huston, James A., Out Of The Blue – U.S Army Airborne Operations In World War II, Purdue University Press, 1998
Jewell, Brian, "Over The Rhine" – The Last Days Of War In Europe, Spellmount Ltd, 1985
Keegan, John, The Second World War, Pimlico, 1997
Kershaw, Robert J., It Never Snows In September – The German View Of MARKET-GARDEN And The Battle Of Arnhem, September 1944, Ian Allan Publishing Ltd, 2004
Koskimaki, George E., D-Day With The Screaming Eagles, Presidio Press, 2002
Koskimaki, George E., Hell's Highway – A Chronicle Of The 101st Airborne In The Holland Campaign, September–November 1944, Presidio Press, 2002
Lunteren, Frank van, Birth of a Regiment: The 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in Sicily and Salerno, Permuted Press LLC, 2022
Jones, Robert, The History of the 101st Airborne Division, Turner Publishing Company, 2005
Middlebrook, Martin, Arnhem 1944 – The Airborne Battle, Penguin Books, 1995
Ministry Of Information, By Air To Battle – The Official Account Of The British Airborne Divisions, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1945
Nordyke, Phil, All American, All the Way: The Combat History Of The 82nd Airborne Division In World War II, Motorbooks International, 2005
Nordyke, Phil, Four Stars of Valour: The Combat History of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II, Motorbooks, 2006
Norton, G.G., The Red Devils – The Story Of The British Airborne Forces, Pan Books Ltd, 1973
Otway, T.B.H, Airborne Forces, Adlib Books, 1990
Rawson, Andrew, The Rhine Crossing – 9th US Army & 17th US Airborne, Pen & Sword Military, 2006
Ryan, Cornelius, A Bridge Too Far, Coronet Books, 1984
Saunders, Hilary St. George, The Red Beret – The Story Of The Parachute Regiment 1940–1945, Michael Joseph Ltd, 1954
Saunders, Tim, Operation Plunder – The British & Canadian Rhine Crossing, Pen & Sword Military, 2006
Tanase, Mircea, The airborne troops during the World War II, Military Publishing House Romania, 2006
Tugwell, Maurice, Airborne To Battle – A History Of Airborne Warfare 1918–1971, William Kimber & Co Ltd, 1971
Urquhart, R.E., Arnhem, Pan Books, 1960
Weeks, John, Assault From The Sky – The History Of Airborne Warfare, David & Charles Publisher plc, 1988
Whiting, Charles, American Eagles – The 101st Airborne's Assault On Fortress Europe 1944/45, Eskdale Publishing, 2001
Whiting, Charles, "Bounce The Rhine" – The Greatest Airborne Operation In History, Grafton Books, 1987
Whiting, Charles Slaughter Over Sicily, Leo Cooper, 1992
== External links ==
Nga-airborne-assoc.org: NGA Airborne Association website
ArmyParatrooper.org website
AirborneSappers.org: Airborne Engineers Association website
Historynet.com: World War II History Magazine — "Airborne Operations During World War II" (2004)
Historynet.com: World War II History Magazine — "Operation Varsity: Allied Airborne Assault Over the Rhine River" (1998)
Historynet.com: Military History Quarterly — "101st Airborne Division Participate in Operation Overlord" (2004)
Theparas.co.uk: The Paras website Archived 2015-03-02 at the Wayback Machine
Pathfindergroupuk.com: Pathfinder Parachute Group website – WWII parachute jump reenactments. | Wikipedia/Airborne_forces |
Security forces are statutory organizations with internal security mandates. In the legal context of several countries, the term has variously denoted police and military units working in concert, or the role of irregular military and paramilitary forces (such as gendarmerie) tasked with public security duties.
== List of security forces ==
Examples of formally designated security forces include:
Afghan National Security Forces
Airports Security Force of Pakistan
Border Security Force of India
Central Industrial Security Force of India
Central Security Forces of Egypt
Federal Security Force of Pakistan
Israeli Security Forces
Internal Security Forces of Lebanon
Iraqi Security Forces
Kurdistan Region Security Forces
Irish Security Forces
Kosovo Security Force
Macau Security Force
National Public Security Force of Brazil
Palestinian National Security Forces
Public Security Forces of Bahrain
Puntland Security Force
Galmudug Security Force
Rhodesian Security Forces
RNZAF Security Forces
Security Forces Command of Northern Cyprus
Social Security Forces of North Korea
Sri Lanka Civil Security Force
United States Air Force Security Forces
United States Marine Corps Security Force
== See also ==
Airport security force
Air Force Security Forces
Internal Troops
Naval Security Forces
Public Security Force (disambiguation)
== References == | Wikipedia/Security_forces |
In international relations, the security dilemma (also referred to as the spiral model) is when the increase in one state's security (such as increasing its military strength) leads other states to fear for their own security (because they do not know if the security-increasing state intends to use its growing military for offensive purposes). Consequently, security-increasing measures can lead to tensions, escalation or conflict with one or more other parties, producing an outcome which no party truly desires; a political instance of the prisoner's dilemma.
The security dilemma is particularly intense in situations when (1) it is hard to distinguish offensive weapons from defensive weapons, and (2) offense has the advantage in any conflict over defense. Military technology and geography strongly affect the offense-defense balance.
The term was first coined by the German scholar John H. Herz in a 1950 study. At the same time British historian Herbert Butterfield described the same situation in his History and Human Relations, but referred to it as the "absolute predicament and irreducible dilemma". The security dilemma is a key concept in international relations theory, in particular among realist scholars to explain how security-seeking states can end up in conflict.
== Basic components ==
Tang identified the following core components between interpretations of the security dilemma by Herbert Butterfield, John H. Herz, and Robert Jervis:
Butterfield viewed the security dilemma as the root cause of all war, but he did not view anarchy as being the ultimate source of the security dilemma. Instead he attributed the source to fear and the "universal sin" of humanity — that humanity can commit evil. Herz and Jervis did not view the security dilemma as being the root cause of all war. A counterexample frequently given is the Second World War, where there was no dilemma over war with a malign Nazi Germany.
== Defensive realism ==
The security dilemma is the core assumption of defensive realism. According to Kenneth Waltz, because the world does not have a common government and is "anarchic", survival is the main motivation of states. States are distrustful of other states' intentions and as a consequence always try to maximize their own security. The security dilemma explains why security-seeking (as opposed to non-security seeking) states could end up in conflict, even though they have benign intentions.
The offense-defense balance accounts for why the security dilemma is more intense in certain circumstances. Defensive realists argue that in situations where offensive actions have the advantage (for example, due to geography or military technology), the security dilemma will be particularly intensive because states will be more distrustful of each other and be more encouraged to take preemptive offensive actions. In situations where the defense has the advantage, security-seeking states can afford to focus strictly on their defense without as much fear of being attacked. Security-seeking states can also signal benign intentions without adversely affecting their own security.
Defensive realists often regard the success of the United States in World War I as being a result of the defensive approach taken by the United States. Had the United States taken an offensive stance, defensive realists argue that the United States would not have been secure. The conclusion from defensive realism is that in some circumstances states can escape the security dilemma.
== Offensive realism ==
Offensive realism and defensive realism are variants of structural realism. They share the basic beliefs of survivalism, statism (state as the primary unit), self-help and anarchy. (See international relations theory.) However, contrary to defensive realism, offensive realism regards states as aggressive power maximizers and not as security maximizers. According to John Mearsheimer, "Uncertainty about the intentions of other states is unavoidable, which means that states can never be sure that other states do not have offensive intentions to go along with their offensive capabilities". According to Mearsheimer, though achieving hegemony by any state is not likely in today's international system, there is no such thing as a status quo and "the world is condemned to perpetual great power competition".
Supporting the belief that the international system is anarchic and that each state must independently seek its own survival, Waltz argues that weaker states try to find a balance with their rivals and to form an alliance with a stronger state to obtain a guarantee of security against offensive action by an enemy state. On the other hand, Mearsheimer and other offensive realists argue that anarchy encourages all states to always increase their own power because one state can never be sure of other states' intentions. In other words, defensive realism contends that security can be balanced in some cases and that the security dilemma is escapable. While offensive realists do not disagree, they do not agree fully with the defensive view instead contending that if states can gain an advantage over other states then they will do so. In short, since states want to maximize their power in this anarchic system and since states cannot trust one another, the security dilemma is inescapable.
Offensive realists dispute that the offense-defense is a major determinant of state behavior, arguing the concept is vague, that offense and defense cannot be distinguished, that the offense-defense balance does not vary significantly over time, perceptions among leaders of the offense-defense balance varies even within the same time periods, and attackers and defender can use most types of weapons to achieve their goals.
== Offense–defense theory ==
The offense–defense theory of Robert Jervis helps decide the intensity of the security dilemma. Jervis uses four scenarios to describe the intensity of the security dilemma:
When offensive and defensive behaviour are not distinguishable but offense has an advantage, the security dilemma is "very intense" and environment is "doubly dangerous". Status quo states will behave in an aggressive manner and they will arise the possibility of an arms race. Chances of cooperation between states are low.
Where offensive and defensive behavior are not distinguishable but defense has an advantage, the security dilemma is "intense" in explaining states' behaviour but not as intense as in the first case. In such situation, a state might be able to increase its security without being a threat to other states and without endangering the security of other states.
Where offensive and defensive behavior are distinguishable but offense has an advantage, the security dilemma is "not intense" but security issues exist. The environment is safe, but offensive behaviour has an advantage that might result in aggression at some future time.
Where offensive and defensive behavior are distinguishable and defense has advantage, the security dilemma has little or no intensity, and the environment is "doubly safe". Since there is little danger of offensive action by other states, a state would be able to expend some of its defense budget and other resources on useful development within the state.
According to Jervis, the technical capabilities of a state and its geographical position are two essential factors in deciding whether offensive or defensive action is advantageous. He argues that at a strategic level, technical and geographical factors are of greater favor to the defender. For example, in the 19th century railway and roads construction were rapidly changing the composition of capabilities of states to attack or defend themselves from other states. Thus, considerable effort in diplomatic relations and intelligence were specifically focused on this issue.
The spiral model identifies the next step in reasoning about states' behavior after identifying the intensity of the security dilemma. In particular, under given circumstances of the security dilemma, what steps might a threatened state take to derive advantage by attacking first. In other words, the spiral model seeks to explain war. In the spiral model of Jervis, there are two reasons why a state might end up in war. Preventive war might take place as one state might decide to attack first when it perceives the balance of power shifting to the other side creating an advantage in attacking sooner rather than later as conditions may not be as favorable in the future as in the present. Preemptive war might take place as a state might decide to attack another state first to prevent the other state from attacking or to obstruct the other state's attack because it fears the other state is preparing to attack.
The deterrence model is contrary to the spiral model, but also purports to explain war. While the spiral model presumes that states are fearful of each other, the deterrence model is based on the belief that states are greedy. Paul K. Huth divides deterrence into three main types:
Preventing armed attack against a country's own territory ("direct deterrence")
Preventing armed attack against the territory of another country ("extended deterrence")
Using deterrence against a short-term threat of attack ("immediate deterrence")
Under some circumstances attempts at deterrence can "backfire" when a potential attacker misinterprets the state's deterrence measures as a "prelude to offensive measures". In such cases the security dilemma can arise generating perceptions of a "first strike advantage". According to Huth "most effective deterrence policies are those that decrease the expected utility of using force while not reducing the expected utility of the status quo; optimally deterrent policies would even increase the utility of not using the force." It is more likely that deterrence will succeed if the attacker finds deterrence threat "credible" and a credible deterrence threat might not necessarily be a military threat.
Jervis claims that the security dilemma can lead to arms races and alliance formation.
=== Arms race ===
According to Robert Jervis, since the world is anarchic, a state might, for defensive purposes, build its military capability. However, since states are not aware of each other's intentions, other states might interpret a defensive buildup as offensive; if so and if offensive action against the state that is only building its defenses is advantageous, the other states might prefer to take an aggressive stance, which will "make the situation unstable". In such situation, an arms race may become a strong possibility. Robert Jervis gives the example of Germany and Britain before World War I. "Much of the behaviour in this period was the product of technology and beliefs that magnified the security dilemma". In that example, strategists believed that offense would be more advantageous than defense, but that ultimately turned out to not be the case. Competition on nuclear weapons construction between the United States and the Soviet Union, during the Cold War, is a well-known example of an arms race.
=== Alliance formation ===
The security dilemma might force states to form new alliances or to strengthen existing alliances. "If offense has less advantage, stability and cooperation are likely". According to Glenn H. Snyder, under a security dilemma there are two reasons that alliances will form. First, a state that is dissatisfied with the amount of security it has forms alliances in order to bolster its security. Second, a state is in doubt about the reliability of existing allies in coming to its aid, and thus decides to court another ally or allies. According to Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder, in a multipolar world two types of alliance dilemma exist which are contrary in nature. These alliance dilemmas are known as chain ganging and buck passing.
==== Chain ganging ====
In a multipolar world, alliance security is interconnected. When one ally decides to participate in war, it pulls its alliance partners into the war too, which is referred to as chain ganging. If the partner does not participate in the war fully, it will endanger the security of its ally. For example, in World War I, to the alliance between Austria-Hungary and Germany, according to Waltz, did this: "If Austria-Hungary marched, Germany had to follow: the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would have left Germany alone in the middle of Europe". On the other side, if "France marched, Russia had to follow; a German victory over France would be a defeat for Russia. And so it was all around the vicious circle, because the defeat or defection of a major alliance would have shaken the balance, each alliance partner would have shaken the balance, each state was constrained to adjust its strategy".
==== Buck passing ====
In the face of a rising threat, balancing alignments fail to form in a timely fashion as states try to freeride on other states. States might do so to avoid the expense of war for themselves. For example, to use Waltz's example, in World War II, the French Foreign Minister told the British Prime Minister that Britain was justified in taking "the lead in opposing Germany" when the Nazis had taken over the Rhineland, but as "the German threat grew", France and Britain hoped that Germany and the Soviet Union "would balance each other off or fight to the finish. Uncertainties about... who will gain or lose from the action of other states accelerate as number of states increases".
== Criticisms and responses ==
According to Alexander Wendt, "Security dilemmas are not given by anarchy or nature" but, rather, are "a social structure composed of intersubjective understandings in which states are so distrustful that they make worst-case assumptions about each other's intentions". Jennifer Mitzen mirrors Wendt's critique, arguing that the security dilemma can be caused and maintained by the pursuit for ontological security rather than rationalist security-seeking.
Glaser argues that Wendt mischaracterised the security dilemma. "Wendt is using the security dilemma to describe the result of states' interaction whereas Jervis and the literature he has spawned use the security dilemma to refer to a situation created by the material conditions facing states, such as geography and prevailing technology". According to Wendt because the security dilemma is the result of one state's interaction with another, a state can adopt policies which hinder the security dilemma. Glaser blames Wendt for "exaggerating the extent to which structural realism calls for competitive policies and, therefore, the extent to which it leads to security dilemmas". Glaser argues that though offensive realists presume that in an international system a state has to compete for power, the security dilemma is a concept mainly used by defensive realists and according to defensive realists it is beneficial for nations to cooperate under certain circumstances.
Another mode of criticism of the security dilemma concept is to question the validity of the offence-defense balance. Since weapons of offense and of defense are the same, how can the distinction between the two be connected with a state's intentions? As a result, critics have questioned whether the offense-defense balance can be used as a variable in explaining international conflicts.
According to Charles Glaser, criticisms of the offense-defense balance are based on two misunderstandings. First, the sameness or difference of offensive weapons compared with defensive weapons does not impact the offense-defense balance itself. Offense-defense theory assumes that both parties in conflict will use those weapons that suit their strategy and goals. Second, whether both states involved in the conflict have some common weapons between them is the wrong question to ask in seeking to understand the offense-defense balance. Instead, critics should focus on the influence or net effect of weapons used in the conflict. According to Glaser, "Distinguishability should be defined by comparative net assessment" or the comparison of the balance of offense-defense when both sides use weapons versus when neither side is using weapons.
== See also ==
Balance of power in international relations
Escalation of commitment
Hobbesian trap
Red Queen's race
Prisoner's dilemma
Zero-risk bias
== References == | Wikipedia/Security_dilemma |
A military reserve force is a military organization whose members (reservists) have military and civilian occupations. They are not normally kept under arms, and their main role is to be available when their military requires additional manpower. Reserve forces are generally considered part of a permanent standing body of armed forces, and allow a nation to reduce its peacetime military expenditures and maintain a force prepared for war. During peacetime, reservists typically serve part-time alongside a civilian job, although most reserve forces have a significant permanent full-time component as well. Reservists may be deployed for weeks or months-long missions during peacetime to support specific operations. During wartime, reservists may be kept in service for months or years at a time, although typically not for as long as active duty soldiers.
In countries with a volunteer military, reserve forces maintain military skills by training periodically (typically one weekend per month). They may do so as individuals or as members of standing reserve regiments—for example, the UK's Army Reserve. A militia, home guard, state guard or state military may constitute part of a military reserve force, such as the United States National Guard and the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish Home Guard. In some countries (including Colombia, Israel, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, and Taiwan), reserve service is compulsory for a number of years after completing national service. In countries with conscription, such as Switzerland and Finland, reserve forces are citizens who have completed active duty military service but have not reached the upper age limit established by law. These citizens are subject to mandatory mobilization in wartime and short-term military training in peacetime.
In countries which combine conscription and a volunteer military, such as Russia, "military reserve force" has two meanings. In a broad sense, a military reserve force is a group of citizens who can be mobilized as part of the armed forces. In a narrow sense, a military reserve force is a group of citizens who have signed contracts to perform military service as reservists, who were appointed to positions in particular military units, and who are involved in all operational, mobilization, and combat activities of these units (active reserve). Other citizens who do not sign a contract (the inactive reserve) can be mobilized and deployed on an involuntary basis.
== History ==
Some countries' 18th-century military systems included practices and institutions which functioned as a reserve force, even if they were not designated as such. For example, the half-pay system in the British Army provided the country with trained, experienced officers not on active duty during peacetime but available during wartime. The Militia Act 1757 gave Britain an institutional structure for a reserve force. Although contemporaries debated the effectiveness of the British militia, its mobilization in several conflicts increased Britain's strategic options by freeing regular forces for overseas theaters.
Reservists first played a significant role in Europe after the Prussian defeat in the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt. On 9 July 1807, in the Treaties of Tilsit, Napoleon forced Prussia to drastically reduce its military strength and cede large amounts of territory. The Prussian army was limited to a maximum of 42,000 men.
The Krumpersystem, introduced to the Prussian Army by military reformer Gerhard von Scharnhorst, gave recruits a brief period of training which could be expanded during wartime. Prussia could draw upon a large number of trained soldiers in subsequent wars, and the system was retained by the Imperial German Army into the First World War. By the time of the German Empire, reservists were given "war arrangements" after completion of their military service with instructions for the conduct of reservists in wartime.
== Sources of reserve personnel ==
In countries such as the United States, reservists are often former military members who reached the end of their enlistment or resigned their commission. Service in the reserve for a number of years after leaving active service is required in the enlistment contracts and commissioning orders of many nations.
Reservists can also be civilians who undertake basic and specialized training in parallel with regular forces while retaining their civilian roles. They can be deployed independently, or their personnel may make up shortages in regular units. Ireland's Army Reserve is an example of such a reserve.
With universal conscription, most of the male population may be reservists. All men in Finland belong to the reserve until 60 years of age, and 65 percent of each age cohort of men are drafted and receive at least six months of military training. Ten percent of conscripts are trained as reserve officers. Reservists and reserve officers are occasionally called up for refresher exercises, but receive no monthly salary or position. South Korean males who finish their national service in the armed forces or in the national police are automatically placed on the reserve roster, and are obligated to take several days of annual military training for seven years.
== Uses ==
In wartime, reserve personnel may provide replacements for combat losses or be used to form new units. Reservists can provide garrison duty, manning air defense, internal security and guarding of important points such as supply depots, prisoner of war camps, communications nodes, air and sea bases and other vital areas, freeing regular troops for service on the front.
In peacetime, reservists can be used for internal-security duties and disaster relief, sparing the regular military forces. In many countries where military roles outside warfare are restricted, reservists are exempted from these restrictions.
== Personnel ==
=== Enlisted personnel ===
In countries with a volunteer army, reserve enlisted personnel are soldiers, sailors, and airmen who have signed contracts to perform military service on a part-time basis. They have civilian status, except for the days when they are carrying out their military duties (usually two or three days each month and attendance at a two-to-four-week military training camp once per year). Most reserve enlisted personnel are former active duty soldiers, sailors, and airmen, but some join the reserve without an active-duty background. When their contract expires, a reserve soldier, sailor or airman becomes a retired soldier, sailor or airman.
In countries with conscription, reserve enlisted personnel are soldiers, sailors, and airmen who are not on active duty and have not reached the upper age limit established by law. In addition to the upper age limit, intermediate age limits determine the priority of wartime mobilization (younger ages are more subject to mobilization). These limits divide the reserve into categories, such as the Swiss Auszug, Landwehr, and Landsturm. Reserve soldiers, sailors, and airmen are subject to mandatory short-term military training in peacetime, as regulated by law. Reserve soldiers, sailors, and airmen have civilian status, except for military training in peacetime and wartime mobilization. A reserve soldier, sailor or airman becomes a retired soldier, sailor or airman at the upper age limit.
In countries which combine conscription and a volunteer military, reserve soldiers, sailors, and airmen are divided into two categories: reservists and reserve enlisted personnel. Reservists sign a contract to perform military service on a part-time basis. Reserve enlisted personnel are not on active duty, have not signed a contract to perform military service as reservists, and have not reached the upper age limit. Reservists have civilian status, except when they are performing military duties. Reserve enlisted personnel have civilian status, except for military training in peacetime and wartime mobilization. Reservists are first subject to mobilization in wartime. Reserve enlisted soldiers, sailors, and airmen are divided into categories which determine the priority of wartime mobilization (younger personnel are mobilized first), such as Первый разряд (first category), Второй разряд (second category) and Третий разряд (third category) in Russia. A reservist becomes a reserve soldier, sailor or airman when their contract expires, and retires at the upper age limit.
=== Non-commissioned officers ===
In countries with a volunteer military, reserve non-commissioned officers are military personnel with relevant rank who have contracted to perform military service on a part-time basis. They have civilian status, except for military duty. Most reserve non-commissioned officers are former active-duty NCOs, but some become reserve NCOs without an active-duty background. When the contract expires, a reserve NCO becomes a retired NCO. The main sources of reserve NCOs are:
Movement from active-duty to reserve service, preserving NCO rank
Military schools, which prepare career NCOs who join the reserve after their active-duty service
Promotion from enlisted rank during reserve service
Reserve NCO courses
In countries with conscription, reserve NCOs are military personnel with relevant rank who are not on active duty and have not reached the upper age limit. In addition to the upper age limit, intermediate age limits determine the priority of wartime mobilization (younger ages are subject to mobilization first). Reserve NCOs are subject to mandatory short-term military training in peacetime. They have civilian status, except for military training in peacetime and wartime mobilization. A reserve NCO becomes a retired NCO at the upper age limit. Their main sources of NCOs are:
Promotion from enlisted rank during active-duty service, following demobilization
Promotion from enlisted rank during short-term military training in peacetime
Military schools
Reserve NCO courses
In countries which combine conscription and a volunteer military, reserve NCOs are divided into two categories: non-commissioned officers-reservists and reserve non-commissioned officers. Non-commissioned officers-reservists have signed a contract to perform military service on a part-time basis. Reserve non-commissioned officers are not on active duty, have not signed a contract to perform military service as reservists, and have not reached the upper age limit. Non-commissioned officers-reservists have civilian status, except for the days when they are carrying out their military duties. Reserve non-commissioned officers have civilian status, except for military training in peacetime and wartime mobilization. Non-commissioned officers-reservists are subject to mobilization in wartime first. Reserve non-commissioned officers (non-reservists) are divided into categories which determine the priority of wartime mobilization (younger ages are subject to mobilization first) – Первый разряд, Второй разряд, and Третий разряд in Russia. Upon expiration of the contract, a non-commissioned officer-reservist becomes a reserve non-commissioned officer. A reserve NCO becomes a retired NCO at the upper age limit. The main sources of reserve NCOs are:
Promotion from enlisted rank during active duty service, following demobilization
Promotion from enlisted rank during short-term military training in peacetime
Military schools
Promotion from enlisted rank during reserve service
Reserve NCO courses
=== Warrant officers ===
In countries with a volunteer military, reserve warrant officers are military personnel with relevant rank who have signed a contract to perform military service on a part-time basis. They have civilian status, except for the days when they are carrying out their military duties. Most reserve warrant officers are former active duty warrant officers. The main sources of reserve warrant officers are military schools and reserve warrant-officers courses.
In countries with conscription, reserve warrant officers are military personnel with the relevant rank who are not on active duty and have not reached the upper age limit. In addition to the upper-age limit, intermediate age limits determine wartime mobilization priority; younger officers are mobilized first. The main sources of reserve warrant officers are promotion during active-duty service or short-term peacetime training, assessment after demobilization, military schools, and reserve warrant-officer courses.
=== Commissioned officers ===
In countries with a volunteer military, reserve officers are personnel with an officer's commission who have signed a contract to perform part-time military service. They have civilian status, except when carrying out their military duties. Most reserve officers are former active-duty officers, but some become reserve officers after promotion. The main sources of reserve officers are:
Military schools, colleges and academies, which prepare career officers (who join the reserve after concluding active duty)
Military educational units in civilian higher-education institutions of higher education, such as the US' Reserve Officers' Training Corps
Reserve officer's courses
Direct commission
In countries with conscription, reserve officers are officers who are not on active duty and have not reached the upper age limit. The main sources of reserve officers are:
Training and assessment at the end of conscript service. About eight percent of Finnish conscripts become reserve officers after one year of service.
Military educational units in civilian higher-education institutions, such as military departments (Ukrainian: військова кафедра) in Ukraine and military faculties (Belarusian: ваенны факультэт) in Belarus
Military schools, colleges and academies, which prepare career officers (who join the reserve after concluding active duty)
Reserve-officer courses
In countries with conscription and volunteers, the main sources of reserve officers are:
Military educational units in civilian higher-education institutions such as Russia's military training centers (Russian: военный учебный центр), which prepare officers (who join the reserve after graduation or after concluding active duty)
Military schools, colleges and academies, which prepare career officers (who join the reserve after concluding active duty)
Reserve-officer courses
Training and assessment at the conclusion of conscript service
== Advantages ==
Military reserve personnel quickly increase available manpower substantially with trained personnel. Reservists may contain experienced combat veterans who can increase the quantity and quality of a force. Reservists also tend to have training in professions outside the military, and skills attained in a number of professions are useful in the military. In many countries, reserve forces have capable people who would not otherwise consider a career in the military.
A large reserve pool can allow a government to avoid the costs, political and financial, of new recruits or conscripts. Reservists are usually more economically effective than regular troops, since they are called up as needed, rather than being always on duty. Preparations to institute a call-up (obvious to adversaries) can display determination, boost morale, and deter aggression.
Many reservists see voluntary training as merely for supplemental income or a hobby, and so reservists are inexpensive to maintain, their cost being limited to training and occasional deployments. The skills of reservists have been valuable in peacekeeping because they can be employed for the reconstruction of infrastructure, and tend to have better relations with the civilian population than career soldiers.
== Disadvantages ==
Reservists are usually provided with second-line equipment which is no longer used by the regular army, or is an older version of that in current service. Reservists also have little experience with newer weapons systems. Reservists who are retired service personnel are sometimes considered less motivated than regular troops. Reservists who combine a military and civilian career, such as members of the United Kingdom's Army Reserve, experience time demands not experienced by regular troops which affect their availability and length of service.
== Forces by country ==
== See also ==
Military reserve
National Guard
State defense force
Militia
Maritime militia
== References ==
== Further reading == | Wikipedia/Military_reserve_force |
The Manned Ground Vehicles (MGV) was a family of lighter and more transportable ground vehicles developed by Boeing and subcontractors BAE Systems and General Dynamics as part of the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. The MGV program was intended as a successor to the Stryker of the Interim Armored Vehicle program.
The MGV program was set in motion in 1999 by Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki.
The MGVs were based on a common tracked vehicle chassis. The lead vehicle, and the only one to be produced as a prototype, was the XM1203 non-line-of-sight cannon. Seven other vehicle variants were to follow.
The MGV vehicles were conceived to be exceptionally lightweight (initially capped at 18 tons base weight) to meet the Army's intra-theatre air mobility requirements. The vehicles that the Army sought to replace with the MGVs ranged from 30 to 70 tons. In order to reduce weight, the Army substituted armor with passive and active protection systems.
The FCS program was terminated in 2009 due to concerns about the program's affordability and technology readiness. The MGV program was succeeded by the Ground Combat Vehicle program, which was canceled in 2014.
== History ==
Initial Technology Demonstrator Vehicle by United Defense yielded both tracked and wheeled prototypes. Only the tracked variant was pursued further.
FCS-Wheeled (FCS-W) was an early concept designed to demonstrate a hybrid-electric drive system and two-man cockpit workstations. A Technology Demonstrator Vehicle was built by United Defense and was unveiled in 2002.
FCS-W was designed to deliver a top road speed of 75 mph and a top cross-country speed of 40 mph. The vehicle's armor utilized armor similar to the tracked variant but was lighter. The vehicle would have also had some type of active protection system. The arrangement of the turbine and drive motor provided for a two-man, side-by-side cockpit and a sizable payload compartment.
In May 2000, DARPA awarded four contracts to four industry teams to develop Future Combat Systems designs and in March 2002, the Army chose Boeing and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to serve as the "lead systems integrators" to oversee the development and eventual production of the FCS’ 18 systems. In October 2002 United Defense (UD) and Boeing/SAIC signed a memorandum of understanding to bring the Objective Force non-line-of-sight cannon under the FCS umbrella.
In January 2003, Boeing and SAIC reached an agreement with General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) and United Defense LP (UDLP) to develop the MGVs. UDLP was responsible for leading development of five of the vehicles (including the NLOS-C) while GDLS took responsibility for leading development of the other three.
In May 2003 the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) approved the FCS’ next acquisition phase, and in August 2004 Boeing and SAIC awarded contracts to 21 companies to design and build its various platforms and hardware and software.
In December 2003, GDLS received a $2 billion MGV design contract from Boeing. Per the contract, GDLS would produce 8 Mounted Combat Systems, 6 command and control vehicles, and 4 reconnaissance and surveillance vehicle prototypes.
In March 2005, the Army's acquisition chief Claude Bolton told the House Armed Services subcommittee that getting the MGV's weight to under 19-tons was proving difficult. In 2005 the Army relented on the vehicle's requirement for roll-off C-130 transportability. Relaxing the C-130 requirement to allow vehicles to be transported in a stripped-down configuration allowed the weight cap to be increased from 18 tons per vehicle to 24 tons.
In August 2005, GDLS selected Detroit Diesel's 5L890 to power the eight variants.
The Department of Defense announced budget cuts in April 2009, which resulted in the cancellation of the FCS Manned Ground Vehicles family. The Army issued a stop-work order for MGV and NLOS-C efforts in June. In July the army terminated the MGV, but not the NLOS-C. In the news release the Army said cancelation would "negatively impact" NLOS-C development but said it was seeking a "viable path forward" for the NLOS-C.
The DoD determined that the proposed FCS vehicle designs would not provide sufficient protection against IEDs.
The Army planned to restart from the beginning on manned ground vehicles. The program's heavier successor, the Ground Combat Vehicle, was cancelled in 2014.
== Design ==
In order to reduce weight, the Army substituted armor with passive and active protection systems. This was hoped to provide a level of protection similar to the legacy armored vehicles being replaced.
Most vehicles were protected with hard-kill active protection systems capable of defeating most threats. The armor was a unique secret matrix that may be utilized by industry in the Ground Combat Vehicle program.
The common MGV chassis was required to provide full protection from 30 mm and 45 mm cannon fire in a 60-degree arc opening towards the front of the vehicle. 360-degree protection from small arms fire up to 14.5 mm heavy machine gun and 155 mm artillery shell air-bursts was planned. Protection from higher caliber rounds as well as anti-tank guided missiles would be provided by an active protection system manufactured by Raytheon known as "Quick Kill".
Use of a common chassis was to reduce the need for specialized training of personnel and allow for faster fielding of repairs. The MGV platform utilized a hybrid diesel-electric propulsion system. The MGV also employed numerous weight-saving features, including composite armor, composite and titanium structural elements, and continuous band tracks.
The 30 mm Mk44 Bushmaster II chain gun on the reconnaissance and surveillance vehicle and infantry carrier vehicle provided greater firepower, yet weighed 25% less than the M242 Bushmaster it would replace.
=== Weight growth ===
Weight at full combat capability (FCC) was raised to 24 tons in June 2006, then to 27.4 tons in January. According to a former program official, MGV chassis weights entered a "death spiral," as any weight growth to the subsystems cascaded to the whole system (e.g. heavier armor required a stronger suspension to carry it). FCC weight was eventually raised to 30 tons.
TRADOC was slow to update its expectations for the MGV. TRADOC recommended removing C-130 transportability requirements in 2007 and raising the weight limit to 27.4 tons in requirements drafted in 2007. However, TRADOC's essential combat configuration MGV weight remained capped at 38,000 pounds (19 tons) until the program's cancelation.
== Armor and countermeasures ==
MGVs in essential combat configuration were required to have all-around protection from 14.5 mm caliber ammunition, and 30 mm from the front. This requirement was changed later that year to 14.5 mm protection with add-on armor.
In 2008, the Army added a requirement for an add-on V-hull kit.
== Vehicles ==
=== Reconnaissance and surveillance vehicle ===
The XM1201 reconnaissance and surveillance vehicle (RSV) featured a suite of advanced sensors to detect, locate, track, classify and automatically identify targets under all climatic conditions, day or night.
The suite included a mast-mounted, long-range optoelectronic infrared sensor, an emitter mapping sensor for radio frequency interception and direction finding, chemical sensor and a multifunction radio frequency sensor.
The RSV also features the onboard capability to conduct automatic target detection, aided target recognition and level-one sensor fusion. To further enhance the scout capabilities, the RSV was also to be equipped with Unattended Ground Sensors, a Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle with various payloads and two unmanned aerial vehicles. It was to be armed with a 30 mm MK44 autocannon and a coaxial 7.62 mm M240 machine gun.
=== Mounted combat system ===
The XM1202 mounted combat system (MCS) was planned as a successor to the M1 Abrams main battle tank.
The MCS was to provide both direct and beyond-line-of-sight ('indirect') firepower capability and allowed for in-depth destruction of point targets up to 8 km (5.0 mi) away.
As of 2009 the MCS was to have had a crew of two and to be armed with an autoloaded 120 mm main gun, a 12.7 mm (.50) caliber machine gun, and a 40 mm automatic grenade launcher.
The MCS was intended to deliver precision fire at a rapid rate, in order to destroy multiple targets at standoff ranges quickly, and would complement the other systems in the unit of action. It would be capable of providing direct support to the dismounted infantry in an assault, defeating bunkers, and breaching walls during tactical assaults. It was also intended to be highly mobile, in order to maneuver out of contact and into positions of advantage; given the vehicle's light weight, this was especially important.
In May 2003, Army officials revealed a computer model of the MCS, allowing reporters to view the inside of the vehicle through a Cave automatic virtual environment. This concept used a crew of three.
The Picatinny Arsenal XM360 tank gun had been selected by September 2006. The gun underwent test firing at Aberdeen Proving Ground beginning in March 2008. General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products was awarded a $14 million contract in 2007 to develop the ammunition handling system. In January 2008, Raytheon was awarded a $232 million contract to develop the XM1111 Mid-Range Munition. The munition had been test-fired from an M1 Abrams as early as March 2007. The Army tested a 27-round magazine ammunition handling system at Aberdeen Proving Ground by July 2008.
This was considered the most complex of the three vehicles GDLS was contracted to build.
=== Non-line-of-sight cannon ===
The XM1203 non-line-of-sight cannon (NLOS-C) was a 155 mm self-propelled howitzer to succeed the M109 howitzer. This was the lead vehicle effort, and most far along when the program was terminated in 2009. The NLOS-C used technology from the canceled XM2001 Crusader project.
The NLOS-C incorporated the autoloader from the Crusader project. The NLOS-C featured an improved fire rate over the M109. It was capable of multiple rounds simultaneous impact (MRSI), where the cannon fires a sequence of several rounds at different trajectories such that the rounds all hit the same target at the same time. The system had the ability to switch shell types quickly on a one-by-one basis.
Improvements in the refueling arrangements and automation of ammunition reloading reduced the amount of time spent on resupply and during which the gun would be unavailable for combat support. This also allowed the system to use a crew of two instead of five.
The NLOS-C had a high commonality with the NLOS-Mortar vehicle.
The first NLOS-C prototype was rolled out in May 2008. Eight prototypes were delivered to the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona by 2009.
Although Defense Secretary Robert Gates ended the MGV program in April 2009, Congress had directed that the Army continue working on the NLOS-C as a separate initiative. The Pentagon directed the Army to cancel the NLOS-C in December.
=== Non-line-of-sight mortar ===
The XM1204 non-line-of-sight mortar (NLOS-M) was a turreted mortar carrier with a crew of four.
The NLOS-M had a breech-loading, gun-mortar that fired 120 mm munitions including the Precision Guided Mortar Munition (PGMM). It had a fully automated firing control system and a manually assisted, semi-automated ammunition loading system.
The NLOS-M would carry an 81 mm mortar for dismounted operations away from the carrier.
The NLOS-M provides fires on-demand to engage complex and simultaneous target sets. As part of an NLOS-M battery, individual NLOS-M vehicles would have provided precision-guided rounds to destroy high-value targets, protective fires to suppress and obscure the enemy, and illumination fires.
The FCS command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) network would have enabled the NLOS-M fire control system to conduct semi- to autonomous computation of technical fire direction, automatic gun lay, preparation of the ammunition for firing, and mortar round firing.
In January 2003 United Defense, now part of BAE Systems, was selected by the Army and the FCS lead systems integrators (Boeing and SAIC) to develop and build the NLOS-M.
The NLOS mortar had high commonality with the NLOS cannon.
=== Recovery and maintenance vehicle ===
The XM1205 field recovery and maintenance vehicle (FRMV) was the armoured recovery vehicle and maintenance system for employment within both the unit of action (UA) and unit of employment (UE).
The recovery vehicle was designed to hold a crew of three with additional space for three additional recovered crew.
Each UA would have a small number of 2–3 soldier combat repair teams within the organic Forward Support Battalion to perform field maintenance requirements beyond the capabilities of the crew chief/crew, more in-depth battle damage assessment repair, and limited recovery operations.
The FRMV was armed with a close combat support weapon (CCSW) and a 40 mm Mk 19 grenade launcher.
The FMRV was deferred in 2003, then restored in July 2004.
=== Infantry carrier vehicle ===
The XM1206 infantry carrier vehicle (ICV) was a set of similar infantry fighting vehicles for transporting and supporting ground troops. The ICV featured a crew of 2 and space for 9 passengers.
It was armed with a 30 mm or 40 mm cannon and a 7.62 mm machine gun.
The ICV family consists of four versions fitted for the specific roles of: a company commander; a platoon leader; rifle squad; and a weapons squad. All were visually similar to prevent targeting of a specific ICV versions.
A platoon would consist of a platoon leader vehicle, three rifle squad vehicles and a weapon squad vehicle.
The rifle squad ICV and weapons squad ICV each carry a 9-person infantry squad into close battle and support the squad by providing offensive and defensive fire, while carrying the majority of the soldiers' equipment. The ICV can move, shoot, communicate, detect threats, and protect crew and critical components under all weather conditions, day or night.
The squad would have access to Army and joint fire delivery systems from external sources (e.g. the NLOS-Cannon) to enhance the squad's range, precision, or quantity of fire. FCS Networking with other components of the unit of action permits rapid identification of targets and improves situational awareness.
=== Medical vehicle ===
The XM1207 and XM1208 medical vehicle was an armoured ambulance designed to provide advanced trauma life support within one hour to critically injured soldiers. The medical vehicle serves as the primary medical system within the unit of action (UA) with two mission modules: "evacuation" and "treatment".
The XM1207 medical vehicle – evacuation (MV-E) vehicle allows trauma specialists, maneuvering with combat forces, to be closer to the casualty's point-of-injury and was to be used for casualty evacuation.
The XM1208 medical vehicle – treatment (MV-T) vehicle enhances the ability to provide advanced trauma management (ATM)/advanced trauma life support (ATLS) treatments and procedures forward for more rapid casualty interventions and clearance of the battlespace.
Both would have crews of four and the capability to carry four patients. Both medical vehicle mission modules were intended to be capable of conducting medical procedures and treatments using installed networked telemedicine interfaces: Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care, and the Theater Medical Information Program (TMIP).
=== Command and control vehicle ===
The XM1209 command and control vehicle (C2V) was to provide for information management of the integrated network of communications and sensor capability within the unit of action and provide the tools for commanders to synchronize their knowledge with leadership.
The C2V was to have had a crew of two and carry four staff officers.
It was to be located within the headquarters sections at each echelon of the unit of action down to the company level, and with its integrated command, control, and communications equipment suite, was to make command and control on the move possible.
The C2Vs were to contain all the interfaces required to enable the commander to use the C4ISR network. In addition, the C2Vs were meant to make possible the establishment, maintenance and distribution of a common operating picture fused from the friendly, enemy, civilian, weather and terrain situations, while on the move. The crew was to use its integrated C4ISR suite (communication, computers and sensor systems) to receive, analyze and transmit tactical information via voice, video and data inside and outside the unit of action.
The C2V was also planned to employ unmanned systems, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
== See also ==
Interim Armored Vehicle, a U.S. Army program that resulted in the acquisition of the Stryker
Armored Systems Modernization, a wide-ranging U.S. Army combat vehicle acquisition program cancelled after the end of the Cold War
XM2001 Crusader, a canceled U.S. Army self-propelled howitzer
Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked), similar British equivalent
Armata Universal Combat Platform Similar Russian program
== References ==
== Sources ==
Pernin, Christopher; Axelband, Elliot; Drezner, Jeffrey; Dille, Brian; Gordon IV, John; Held, Bruce; McMahon, Scott; Perry, Walter; Rizzi, Christopher; Shah, Akhil; Wilson, Peter; Sollinger, Sollinger (2012). Lessons from the Army's Future Combat Systems Program (PDF) (Report). RAND Corporation. Archived (PDF) from the original on March 25, 2020 – via Defense Technical Information Center.
The Army's Future Combat Systems Program and Alternatives (PDF) (Report). Congressional Budget Office. August 2006. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
"FCS Whitepaper" Archived 2007-03-14 at the Wayback Machine. U.S. Army, 11 April 2006.
Non-Line-Of-Sight Mortar (NLOS-M). Globalsecurity.org
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Army.
== External links ==
Manned Ground Vehicles page on GlobalSecurity.org
StrategyPage.com article
First Round fired from 38-Calibre NLOS Cannon | Wikipedia/Future_Combat_Systems_Command_and_Control_Vehicle |
The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy harasses its enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply and affect morale. Employment of this strategy implies that the side adopting this strategy believes time is on its side, usually because the side employing the strategy is fighting in, or close to, their homeland and the enemy is far from home and by necessity has long and costly supply lines. It may also be adopted when no feasible alternative strategy can be devised.
By extension, the term is also applied to other situations in which a large, ambitious goal is seen as being out of reach, but may be accomplished in small steps.
== Rome versus Carthage: The Second Punic War ==
This strategy derives its name from Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the dictator of the Roman Republic given the task of defeating the great Carthaginian general Hannibal in southern Italy during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC). At the start of the war, Hannibal boldly crossed the Alps and invaded Italy. Due to his skill as a general, Hannibal repeatedly inflicted devastating losses on the Romans—quickly achieving two crushing victories over Roman armies at Trebia in 218 BC and Lake Trasimene in 217 BC. After these disasters, the Romans gave full authority to Fabius Maximus as dictator. Fabius initiated a war of attrition, fought through constant skirmishes, limiting the ability of the Carthaginians to forage for food and denying them significant victories.
Hannibal was handicapped by being a commander of an invading foreign army (on Italian soil), and was effectively cut off from his home country in North Africa due to the difficulty of seaborne resupply over the Mediterranean Sea. As long as Rome's allies remained loyal, there was little he could do to win. Hannibal tried to convince the allies of Rome that it was more beneficial for them to side with Carthage (through a combination of victory and negotiation). Fabius calculated that, in order to defeat Hannibal, he had to avoid engaging him altogether (so as to deprive him of victories). He determined that Hannibal's largely extended supply lines (as well as the cost of maintaining the Carthaginian army in the field) meant that Rome had time on its side.
Fabius avoided battle as a deliberate strategy. He sent out small military units to attack Hannibal's foraging parties while keeping the Roman army in hilly terrain to nullify Carthaginian cavalry superiority. Residents of small villages in the path of the Carthaginians were ordered by Fabius to burn their crops creating scorched earth and take refuge in fortified towns. Fabius used interior lines to ensure that Hannibal could not march directly on Rome without having to first abandon his Mediterranean ports (supply lines). At the same time, Fabius began to inflict constant, small, debilitating defeats on the Carthaginians. This, Fabius had concluded, would wear down the invaders' endurance and discourage Rome's allies from switching sides, without challenging the Carthaginians to major battles. Once the Carthaginians were sufficiently weakened and demoralized by lack of food and supplies, Fabius and his well-fed legions would then fight a decisive battle in the hope of crushing the Carthaginians once and for all.
Hannibal's second weakness was that much of his army was made up of Spanish mercenaries and Gaulish allies. Their loyalty to Hannibal was shallow; though they disliked Rome, they mainly desired quick battles and raids for plunder. They were unsuited for long sieges, and possessed neither the equipment nor the patience for such tactics. The tedium of countless small-skirmish defeats sapped their morale, causing them to desert.
With no main Roman army to attack, Hannibal's army became virtually no threat to Rome, which was a walled city that required a long siege to take. Fabius's strategy struck at the heart of Hannibal's weakness. Time, not major battles, would cripple Hannibal.
=== Political opposition ===
Fabius's strategy, though a military success and tolerable to wiser minds in the Roman Senate, was unpopular; the Romans had been long accustomed to facing and besting their enemies directly on the field of battle. The Fabian strategy was, in part, ruined because of a lack of unity in the command of the Roman army. The magister equitum, Marcus Minucius Rufus, a political enemy of Fabius, famously exclaiming:
Are we come here to see our allies butchered, and their property burned, as a spectacle to be enjoyed? And if we are not moved with shame on account of any others, are we not on account of these citizens... which now not the neighboring Samnite wastes with fire, but a Carthaginian foreigner, who has advanced even this far from the remotest limits of the world, through our dilatoriness and inactivity?
As the memory of the shock of Hannibal's victories grew dimmer, the Roman populace gradually started to question the wisdom of the Fabian strategy, the very thing which had given them time to recover. It was especially frustrating to the mass of the people, who were eager to see a quick conclusion to the war. Moreover, it was widely believed that if Hannibal continued plundering Italy unopposed, the allies, believing that Rome was incapable of protecting them, might defect to the Carthaginians.
Since Fabius won no large-scale victories, the Senate removed him from command in 216 BC. Their chosen replacement, Gaius Terentius Varro, led the Roman army into a debacle at the Battle of Cannae. The Romans, after experiencing this catastrophic defeat and losing countless other battles, had by this point learned their lesson. They utilized the strategies that Fabius had taught them, which, they finally realized, were the only feasible means of driving Hannibal from Italy.
This strategy of attrition earned Fabius the cognomen "Cunctator" (The Delayer).
== Later examples ==
During Antony's Atropatene campaign, the Parthians first destroyed the isolated baggage train and siege engines of the invaders. As Antony proceeded to lay siege on the Atropatenian capital, they began harassing the besiegers, forcing them to retreat.
During the Hanzhong Campaign in 219 AD, one year before the fall of ancient China's Han dynasty, the warlord Liu Bei and his strategist Fa Zheng captured strategic locations from the forces of the rival warlord Cao Cao, resulting in the death of one of Cao Cao's top generals, Xiahou Yuan. Cao Cao attempted to recapture those locations but Liu Bei's forces refused to engage.
Nearly a decade later, the Fabian strategy was used by Sima Yi as part of Zhuge Liang's Northern campaigns. Zhuge Liang's campaigns had some success but often lacked supplies to capitalise on gains. By the time of the fifth expedition (234 AD), Sima Yi maintained a defensive stance and did not engage Zhuge Liang's Shu troops. Zhuge Liang fell ill while trying to push through the defensive lines and died at the Wuzhang Plains that same year.
During the Roman campaign against Persia prosecuted by Julian in 363 AD, the main Persian army under Shapur II let the numerically superior Romans advance deep into their territory, avoiding a full-scale battle at the expense of the destruction of their fortresses. As the fortified Persian capital seemed impregnable, Julian was lured into Persia's interior, where the Persians employed scorched earth tactics. Shapur II's army appeared later and engaged in continuous skirmishes only after the starving Romans were in retreat, resulting in a disastrous Roman defeat.
The Fabian strategy was used by King Robert the Bruce in combination with scorched earth tactics in the First War of Scottish Independence against the English after the disastrous defeats at the Battle of Dunbar, Battle of Falkirk, and Battle of Methven. Eventually King Robert was able to regain the entire kingdom of Scotland which had been conquered by the English.
The strategy was used by the medieval French general Bertrand du Guesclin during the Hundred Years' War against the English following a series of disastrous defeats in pitched battles against Edward, the Black Prince. Eventually du Guesclin was able to recover most of the territory that had been lost.
During the Italian Wars, after a first defeat in pitched battle in Seminara, Spanish general Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba used Fabian tactics to retake southern Italy from Charles VIII of France's army, compelling the French to withdraw after the Siege of Atella. Despite his success, he took to reform his army in pike and shot manner.
The most noted use of Fabian strategy in American history was by George Washington, sometimes called the "American Fabius" for his use of the strategy during the first year of the American Revolutionary War. While Washington had initially pushed for traditional direct engagements using battle lines, he was convinced of the merits of using his army to harass the British rather than engage them, both by the urging of his generals in his councils of war, and by the pitched-battle disasters of 1776, especially the Battle of Long Island. In addition, given his background as a colonial officer who had participated in asymmetric campaigns against Native Americans, Washington predicted that this style would aid in defeating the traditional tactics of the British Army (his predictions were proven correct). John Adams' dissatisfaction with Washington's conduct of the war led him to declare, "I am sick of Fabian systems in all quarters."
Throughout history, the Fabian strategy has been employed all over the world. Used against Napoleon's Grande Armée in combination with scorched earth and guerrilla war, it proved decisive in defeating the French invasion of Russia. Sam Houston effectively employed a Fabian defense in the aftermath of the Battle of the Alamo, using delaying tactics and small-unit harrying against Santa Anna's much larger force, to give time for the Army of Texas to grow into a viable fighting force. When he finally met Santa Anna at San Jacinto, the resulting victory ensured the establishment of the Republic of Texas. During the First World War in German East Africa, Generals Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and Jan Smuts both used the Fabian strategy in their campaigns.
During the First Indochina War, the Viet Minh used the strategy by utilizing delaying and hit-and-run tactics and scorched-earth strategy against the better-equipped French forces, which prolonged the war and caused both the French high command and home front to grow weary of the fighting, ending with the decisive Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu. The Viet Cong and the PAVN would later use this strategy against the Americans and ARVN forces during the Vietnam War.
There are some indications that the Ukraine strategy in the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a war of attrition.
== Fabian socialism ==
Fabian socialism, the ideology of the Fabian Society (founded in 1884), significantly influenced the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. It utilizes the same strategy of a "war of attrition" to facilitate the society's aim to bring about a socialist state. The advocation of gradualism distinguished this brand of socialism from those who favor revolutionary action.
== See also ==
Battle of annihilation
Fleet in being
Guerrilla warfare
U.S. Army Strategist
== References == | Wikipedia/Fabian_strategy |
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a distinct military uniform. They may consist of one or more military branches such as an army, navy, air force, space force, marines, or coast guard. The main task of a military is usually defined as defence of their state and its interests against external armed threats.
In broad usage, the terms "armed forces" and "military" are often synonymous, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country's armed forces may include other paramilitary forces such as armed police.
Beyond warfare, the military may be employed in additional sanctioned and non-sanctioned functions within the state, including internal security threats, crowd control, promotion of political agendas, emergency services and reconstruction, protecting corporate economic interests, social ceremonies, and national honour guards.
A nation's military may function as a discrete social subculture, with dedicated infrastructure such as military housing, schools, utilities, logistics, hospitals, legal services, food production, finance, and banking services.
The profession of soldiering is older than recorded history. Some images of classical antiquity portray the power and feats of military leaders. The Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC from the reign of Ramses II, features in bas-relief monuments. The first Emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang, created the Terracotta Army to represent his military might.
The Ancient Romans wrote many treatises and writings on warfare, as well as many decorated triumphal arches and victory columns.
== Etymology and definitions ==
The first recorded use of the word "military" in English, spelled militarie, was in 1582. It comes from the Latin militaris (from Latin miles 'soldier') through French, but is of uncertain etymology, one suggestion being derived from *mil-it- – going in a body or mass.
As a noun phrase, "the military" usually refers generally to a country's armed forces, or sometimes, more specifically, to the senior officers who command them. In general, it refers to the physicality of armed forces, their personnel, equipment, and the physical area which they occupy.
As an adjective, military originally referred only to soldiers and soldiering, but it broadened to apply to land forces in general, and anything to do with their profession. The names of both the Royal Military Academy (1741) and United States Military Academy (1802) reflect this. However, at about the time of the Napoleonic Wars, military began to be used in reference to armed forces as a whole, such as "military service", "military intelligence", and "military history". As such, it now connotes any activity performed by armed force personnel.
== History ==
Military history is often considered to be the history of all conflicts, not just the history of the state militaries. It differs somewhat from the history of war, with military history focusing on the people and institutions of war-making, while the history of war focuses on the evolution of war itself in the face of changing technology, governments, and geography.
Military history has a number of facets. One main facet is to learn from past accomplishments and mistakes, so as to more effectively wage war in the future. Another is to create a sense of military tradition, which is used to create cohesive military forces. Still, another is to learn to prevent wars more effectively. Human knowledge about the military is largely based on both recorded and oral history of military conflicts (war), their participating armies and navies and, more recently, air forces.
== Organization ==
=== Personnel and units ===
Despite the growing importance of military technology, military activity depends above all on people. For example, in 2000 the British Army declared: "Man is still the first weapon of war."
==== Rank and role ====
The military organization is characterized by a command hierarchy divided by military rank, with ranks normally grouped (in descending order of authority) as officers (e.g. colonel), non-commissioned officers (e.g. sergeant), and personnel at the lowest rank (e.g. private). While senior officers make strategic decisions, subordinated military personnel (soldiers, sailors, marines, or airmen) fulfil them. Although rank titles vary by military branch and country, the rank hierarchy is common to all state armed forces worldwide.
In addition to their rank, personnel occupy one of many trade roles, which are often grouped according to the nature of the role's military tasks on combat operations: combat roles (e.g. infantry), combat support roles (e.g. combat engineers), and combat service support roles (e.g. logistical support).
==== Recruitment ====
Personnel may be recruited or conscripted, depending on the system chosen by the state. Most military personnel are males; the minority proportion of female personnel varies internationally (approximately 3% in India, 10% in the UK, 13% in Sweden, 16% in the US, and 27% in South Africa). While two-thirds of states now recruit or conscript only adults, as of 2017 50 states still relied partly on children under the age of 18 (usually aged 16 or 17) to staff their armed forces.
Whereas recruits who join as officers tend to be upwardly-mobile, most enlisted personnel have a childhood background of relative socio-economic deprivation. For example, after the US suspended conscription in 1973, "the military disproportionately attracted African American men, men from lower-status socioeconomic backgrounds, men who had been in nonacademic high school programs, and men whose high school grades tended to be low". However, a study released in 2020 on the socio-economic backgrounds of U.S. Armed Forces personnel suggests that they are at parity or slightly higher than the civilian population with respect to socio-economic indicators such as parental income, parental wealth and cognitive abilities. The study found that technological, tactical, operational and doctrinal changes have led to a change in the demand for personnel. Furthermore, the study suggests that the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups are less likely to meet the requirements of the modern U.S. military.
==== Obligations ====
The obligations of military employment are many. Full-time military employment normally requires a minimum period of service of several years; between two and six years is typical of armed forces in Australia, the UK and the US, for example, depending on role, branch, and rank. Some armed forces allow a short discharge window, normally during training, when recruits may leave the armed force as of right. Alternatively, part-time military employment, known as reserve service, allows a recruit to maintain a civilian job while training under military discipline at weekends; he or she may be called out to deploy on operations to supplement the full-time personnel complement. After leaving the armed forces, recruits may remain liable for compulsory return to full-time military employment in order to train or deploy on operations.
Military law introduces offences not recognized by civilian courts, such as absence without leave (AWOL), desertion, political acts, malingering, behaving disrespectfully, and disobedience (see, for example, offences against military law in the United Kingdom). Penalties range from a summary reprimand to imprisonment for several years following a court martial. Certain rights are also restricted or suspended, including the freedom of association (e.g. union organizing) and freedom of speech (speaking to the media). Military personnel in some countries have a right of conscientious objection if they believe an order is immoral or unlawful, or cannot in good conscience carry it out.
Personnel may be posted to bases in their home country or overseas, according to operational need, and may be deployed from those bases on exercises or operations. During peacetime, when military personnel are generally stationed in garrisons or other permanent military facilities, they conduct administrative tasks, training and education activities, technology maintenance, and recruitment.
==== Training ====
Initial training conditions recruits for the demands of military life, including preparedness to injure and kill other people, and to face mortal danger without fleeing. It is a physically and psychologically intensive process which resocializes recruits for the unique nature of military demands. For example:
Individuality is suppressed (e.g. by shaving the head of new recruits, issuing uniforms, denying privacy, and prohibiting the use of first names);
Daily routine is tightly controlled (e.g. recruits must make their beds, polish boots, and stack their clothes in a certain way, and mistakes are punished);
Continuous stressors deplete psychological resistance to the demands of their instructors (e.g. depriving recruits of sleep, food, or shelter, shouting insults and giving orders intended to humiliate)
Frequent punishments serve to condition group conformity and discourage poor performance;
The disciplined drill instructor is presented as a role model of the ideal soldier.
=== Intelligence ===
The next requirement comes as a fairly basic need for the military to identify possible threats it may be called upon to face. For this purpose, some of the commanding forces and other military, as well as often civilian personnel participate in identification of these threats. This is at once an organization, a system and a process collectively called military intelligence (MI). Areas of study in Military intelligence may include the operational environment, hostile, friendly and neutral forces, the civilian population in an area of combat operations, and other broader areas of interest.
The difficulty in using military intelligence concepts and military intelligence methods is in the nature of the secrecy of the information they seek, and the clandestine nature that intelligence operatives work in obtaining what may be plans for a conflict escalation, initiation of combat, or an invasion.
An important part of the military intelligence role is the military analysis performed to assess military capability of potential future aggressors, and provide combat modelling that helps to understand factors on which comparison of forces can be made. This helps to quantify and qualify such statements as: "China and India maintain the largest armed forces in the World" or that "the U.S. Military is considered to be the world's strongest".
Although some groups engaged in combat, such as militants or resistance movements, refer to themselves using military terminology, notably 'Army' or 'Front', none have had the structure of a national military to justify the reference, and usually have had to rely on support of outside national militaries. They also use these terms to conceal from the MI their true capabilities, and to impress potential ideological recruits.
Having military intelligence representatives participate in the execution of the national defence policy is important, because it becomes the first respondent and commentator on the policy expected strategic goal, compared to the realities of identified threats. When the intelligence reporting is compared to the policy, it becomes possible for the national leadership to consider allocating resources over and above the officers and their subordinates military pay, and the expense of maintaining military facilities and military support services for them.
=== Budget ===
Defense economics is the financial and monetary efforts made to resource and sustain militaries, and to finance military operations, including war.
The process of allocating resources is conducted by determining a military budget, which is administered by a military finance organization within the military. Military procurement is then authorized to purchase or contract provision of goods and services to the military, whether in peacetime at a permanent base, or in a combat zone from local population.
=== Capability development ===
Capability development, which is often referred to as the military 'strength', is arguably one of the most complex activities known to humanity; because it requires determining: strategic, operational, and tactical capability requirements to counter the identified threats; strategic, operational, and tactical doctrines by which the acquired capabilities will be used; identifying concepts, methods, and systems involved in executing the doctrines; creating design specifications for the manufacturers who would produce these in adequate quantity and quality for their use in combat; purchase the concepts, methods, and systems; create a forces structure that would use the concepts, methods, and systems most effectively and efficiently; integrate these concepts, methods, and systems into the force structure by providing military education, training, and practice that preferably resembles combat environment of intended use; create military logistics systems to allow continued and uninterrupted performance of military organizations under combat conditions, including provision of health services to the personnel, and maintenance for the equipment; the services to assist recovery of wounded personnel, and repair of damaged equipment; and finally, post-conflict demobilization, and disposal of war stocks surplus to peacetime requirements.
Development of military doctrine is perhaps the most important of all capability development activities, because it determines how military forces are used in conflicts, the concepts and methods used by the command to employ appropriately military skilled, armed and equipped personnel in achievement of the tangible goals and objectives of the war, campaign, battle, engagement, and action. The line between strategy and tactics is not easily blurred, although deciding which is being discussed had sometimes been a matter of personal judgement by some commentators, and military historians. The use of forces at the level of organization between strategic and tactical is called operational mobility.
=== Science ===
Because most of the concepts and methods used by the military, and many of its systems are not found in commercial branches, much of the material is researched, designed, developed, and offered for inclusion in arsenals by military science organizations within the overall structure of the military. Therefore, military scientists can be found interacting with all Arms and Services of the armed forces, and at all levels of the military hierarchy of command.
Although concerned with research into military psychology, particularly combat stress and how it affects troop morale, often the bulk of military science activities is directed at military intelligence technology, military communications, and improving military capability through research. The design, development, and prototyping of weapons, military support equipment, and military technology in general, is also an area in which much effort is invested – it includes everything from global communication networks and aircraft carriers to paint and food.
=== Logistics ===
Possessing military capability is not sufficient if this capability cannot be deployed for, and employed in combat operations. To achieve this, military logistics are used for the logistics management and logistics planning of the forces military supply chain management, the consumables, and capital equipment of the troops.
Although mostly concerned with the military transport, as a means of delivery using different modes of transport; from military trucks, to container ships operating from permanent military base, it also involves creating field supply dumps at the rear of the combat zone, and even forward supply points in a specific unit's tactical area of responsibility.
These supply points are also used to provide military engineering services, such as the recovery of defective and derelict vehicles and weapons, maintenance of weapons in the field, the repair and field modification of weapons and equipment; and in peacetime, the life-extension programmes undertaken to allow continued use of equipment. One of the most important role of logistics is the supply of munitions as a primary type of consumable, their storage, and disposal.
== In combat ==
The primary reason for the existence of the military is to engage in combat, should it be required to do so by the national defence policy, and to win. This represents an organisational goal of any military, and the primary focus for military thought through military history. How victory is achieved, and what shape it assumes, is studied by most, if not all, military groups on three levels.
=== Strategic victory ===
Military strategy is the management of forces in wars and military campaigns by a commander-in-chief, employing large military forces, either national and allied as a whole, or the component elements of armies, navies and air forces; such as army groups, naval fleets, and large numbers of aircraft. Military strategy is a long-term projection of belligerents' policy, with a broad view of outcome implications, including outside the concerns of military command. Military strategy is more concerned with the supply of war and planning, than management of field forces and combat between them. The scope of strategic military planning can span weeks, but is more often months or even years.
=== Operational victory ===
Operational mobility is, within warfare and military doctrine, the level of command which coordinates the minute details of tactics with the overarching goals of strategy. A common synonym is operational art.
The operational level is at a scale bigger than one where line of sight and the time of day are important, and smaller than the strategic level, where production and politics are considerations. Formations are of the operational level if they are able to conduct operations on their own, and are of sufficient size to be directly handled or have a significant impact at the strategic level. This concept was pioneered by the German army prior to and during the Second World War. At this level, planning and duration of activities takes from one week to a month, and are executed by Field Armies and Army Corps and their naval and air equivalents.
=== Tactical victory ===
Military tactics concerns itself with the methods for engaging and defeating the enemy in direct combat. Military tactics are usually used by units over hours or days, and are focused on the specific tasks and objectives of squadrons, companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, and divisions, and their naval and air force equivalents.
One of the oldest military publications is The Art of War, by the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu. Written in the 6th century BCE, the 13-chapter book is intended as military instruction, and not as military theory, but has had a huge influence on Asian military doctrine, and from the late 19th century, on European and United States military planning. It has even been used to formulate business tactics, and can even be applied in social and political areas.
The Classical Greeks and the Romans wrote prolifically on military campaigning. Among the best-known Roman works are Julius Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic Wars, and the Roman Civil war – written about 50 BC.
Two major works on tactics come from the late Roman period: Taktike Theoria by Aelianus Tacticus, and De Re Militari ('On military matters') by Vegetius. Taktike Theoria examined Greek military tactics, and was most influential in the Byzantine world and during the Golden Age of Islam.
De Re Militari formed the basis of European military tactics until the late 17th century. Perhaps its most enduring maxim is Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum (let he who desires peace prepare for war).
Due to the changing nature of combat with the introduction of artillery in the European Middle Ages, and infantry firearms in the Renaissance, attempts were made to define and identify those strategies, grand tactics, and tactics that would produce a victory more often than that achieved by the Romans in praying to the gods before the battle.
Later this became known as military science, and later still, would adopt the scientific method approach to the conduct of military operations under the influence of the Industrial Revolution thinking. In his seminal book On War, the Prussian Major-General and leading expert on modern military strategy, Carl von Clausewitz defined military strategy as 'the employment of battles to gain the end of war'. According to Clausewitz:
strategy forms the plan of the War, and to this end it links together the series of acts which are to lead to the final decision, that is to say, it makes the plans for the separate campaigns and regulates the combats to be fought in each.
Hence, Clausewitz placed political aims above military goals, ensuring civilian control of the military. Military strategy was one of a triumvirate of 'arts' or 'sciences' that governed the conduct of warfare, the others being: military tactics, the execution of plans and manoeuvring of forces in battle, and maintenance of an army.
The meaning of military tactics has changed over time; from the deployment and manoeuvring of entire land armies on the fields of ancient battles, and galley fleets; to modern use of small unit ambushes, encirclements, bombardment attacks, frontal assaults, air assaults, hit-and-run tactics used mainly by guerrilla forces, and, in some cases, suicide attacks on land and at sea. Evolution of aerial warfare introduced its own air combat tactics. Often, military deception, in the form of military camouflage or misdirection using decoys, is used to confuse the enemy as a tactic.
A major development in infantry tactics came with the increased use of trench warfare in the 19th and 20th centuries. This was mainly employed in World War I in the Gallipoli campaign, and the Western Front. Trench warfare often turned to a stalemate, only broken by a large loss of life, because, in order to attack an enemy entrenchment, soldiers had to run through an exposed 'no man's land' under heavy fire from their opposing entrenched enemy.
== Technology ==
As with any occupation, since ancient times, the military has been distinguished from other members of the society by their tools: the weapons and military equipment used in combat. When Stone Age humans first took flint to tip the spear, it was the first example of applying technology to improve the weapon. Since then, the advances made by human societies, and that of weapons, has been closely linked. Stone weapons gave way to Bronze Age and Iron Age weapons such as swords and shields. With each technological change was realized some tangible increase in military capability, such as through greater effectiveness of a sharper edge in defeating armour, or improved density of materials used in manufacture of weapons.
On land, the first significant technological advance in warfare was the development of ranged weapons, notably the sling and later the bow and arrow. The next significant advance came with the domestication of the horses and mastering of equestrianism, creating cavalry and allowing for faster military advances and better logistics. Possibly the most significant advancement was the wheel, a staple of transportation, starting with the chariot and eventually siege engines. The bow was manufactured in increasingly larger and more powerful versions to increase both the weapon range and armour penetration performance, developing into composite bows, recurve bows, longbows, and crossbows. These proved particularly useful during the rise of cavalry, as horsemen encased in ever-more sophisticated armour came to dominate the battlefield.
In medieval China, gunpowder had been invented, and was increasingly used by the military in combat. The use of gunpowder in the early vase-like mortars in Europe, and advanced versions of the longbow and crossbow with armour-piercing arrowheads, put an end to the dominance of the armoured knight. Gunpowder resulted in the development and fielding of the musket, which could be used effectively with little training. In time, the successors to muskets and cannons, in the form of rifles and artillery, would become core battlefield technology.As the speed of technological advances accelerated in civilian applications, so too did military and warfare become industrialized. The newly invented machine gun and repeating rifle redefined firepower on the battlefield, and, in part, explains the high casualty rates of the American Civil War and the decline of melee combat in warfare. The next breakthrough was the conversion of artillery parks from the muzzle-loading guns, to quicker breech-loading guns with recoiling barrels that allowed quicker aimed fire and use of a shield. The widespread introduction of low smoke (smokeless) propellant powders since the 1880s also allowed for a great improvement of artillery ranges. The development of breech loading had the greatest effect on naval warfare for the first time since the Middle Ages, altering the way weapons are mounted on warships. Naval tactics were divorced from the reliance on sails with the invention of the internal combustion. A further advance in military naval technology was the submarine and the torpedo.During World War I, the need to break the deadlock of trench warfare saw the rapid development of many new technologies, particularly tanks. Military aviation was extensively used, and bombers became decisive in many battles of World War II, which marked the most frantic period of weapons development in history. Many new designs, and concepts were used in combat, and all existing technologies of warfare were improved between 1939 and 1945.
During World War II, significant advances were made in military communications through increased use of radio, military intelligence through use of the radar, and in military medicine through use of penicillin, while in the air, the guided missile, jet aircraft, and helicopters were seen for the first time. Perhaps the most infamous of all military technologies was the creation of nuclear weapons, although the exact effects of its radiation were unknown until the early 1950s. Far greater use of military vehicles had finally eliminated the cavalry from the military force structure.
After World War II, with the onset of the Cold War, the constant technological development of new weapons was institutionalized, as participants engaged in a constant arms race in capability development. This constant state of weapons development continues into the present. Main battle tanks, and other heavy equipment such as armoured fighting vehicles, military aircraft, and ships, are characteristic to organized military forces.
The most significant technological developments that influenced combat have been guided missiles, which can be used by all branches of the armed services. More recently, information technology, and its use in surveillance, including space-based reconnaissance systems, have played an increasing role in military operations. The impact of information warfare, which focuses on attacking command communication systems, and military databases, has been coupled with the use of robotic systems in combat, such as unmanned combat aerial vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles.
Recently, there has also been a particular focus towards the use of renewable fuels for running military vehicles on. Unlike fossil fuels, renewable fuels can be produced in any country, creating a strategic advantage. The U.S. military has committed itself to have 50% of its energy consumption come from alternative sources.
== As part of society ==
For much of military history, the armed forces were considered to be for use by the heads of their societies, until recently, the crowned heads of states. In a democracy or other political system run in the public interest, it is a public force.
The relationship between the military and the society it serves is a complicated and ever-evolving one. Much depends on the nature of the society itself, and whether it sees the military as important, as for example in time of threat or war, or a burdensome expense typified by defence cuts in time of peace.
One difficult matter in the relation between military and society is control and transparency. In some countries, limited information on military operations and budgeting is accessible for the public. However, transparency in the military sector is crucial to fight corruption. This showed the Government Defence Anti-corruption Index Transparency International UK published in 2013.
Militaries often function as societies within societies, by having their own military communities, economies, education, medicine, and other aspects of a functioning civilian society. A military is not limited to nations in of itself, as many private military companies (or PMCs) can be used or hired by organizations and figures as security, escort, or other means of protection where police, agencies, or militaries are absent or not trusted.
=== Ideology and ethics ===
Militarist ideology is the society's social attitude of being best served, or being a beneficiary of a government, or guided by concepts embodied in the military culture, doctrine, system, or leaders.
Either because of the cultural memory, national history, or the potentiality of a military threat, the militarist argument asserts that a civilian population is dependent upon, and thereby subservient to the needs and goals of its military for continued independence. Militarism is sometimes contrasted with the concepts of comprehensive national power, soft power and hard power.
Most nations have separate military laws which regulate conduct in war and during peacetime. An early exponent was Hugo Grotius, whose On the Law of War and Peace (1625) had a major impact of the humanitarian approach to warfare development. His theme was echoed by Gustavus Adolphus.
Ethics of warfare have developed since 1945, to create constraints on the military treatment of prisoners and civilians, primarily by the Geneva Conventions; but rarely apply to use of the military forces as internal security troops during times of political conflict that results in popular protests and incitement to popular uprising.
International protocols restrict the use, or have even created international bans on some types of weapons, notably weapons of mass destruction (WMD). International conventions define what constitutes a war crime, and provides for war crimes prosecution. Individual countries also have elaborate codes of military justice, an example being the United States' Uniform Code of Military Justice that can lead to court martial for military personnel found guilty of war crimes.
Military actions are sometimes argued to be justified by furthering a humanitarian cause, such as disaster relief operations to defend refugees; such actions are called military humanism.
== See also ==
Armed forces of the world
List of countries by number of military and paramilitary personnel
List of countries by level of military equipment
List of countries by Global Militarization Index
List of countries without armed forces
List of militaries by country
List of air forces
Lists of armies
List of navies
== References ==
== Notes ==
== External links ==
Military Expenditure % of GDP hosted by Lebanese economy forum, extracted from the World Bank public data. | Wikipedia/Armed_forces |
A tripwire force (sometimes called a glass plate) is a strategic approach in deterrence theory whereby a small force is deployed abroad with the assumption that an attack on them will trigger a greater deployment of forces. The deployment of the small force is designed to signal the defending side's commitment to an armed response to future aggression without triggering a security spiral.
Scholars have debated whether tripwires are effective at deterring aggression, with some scholars arguing they are ineffective while others argue they are effective.
== Concept ==
A tripwire force is a military force significantly smaller than the forces of a potential adversary. The tripwire force helps deter aggression through the demonstration of the defending side's commitment to militarily counter an armed attack, even if the tripwire force cannot mount a sustained resistance itself. In the event an attack occurs, it helps defend against the aggressor by slowing the advance of the aggressor's forces to allow the defender time to marshal additional resources. The tripwire force can, in some instances, also be useful in deterring salami attacks.
Because the tripwire force is too small, by itself, to present an offensive threat, it can be deployed without triggering the security dilemma.
The term "glass plate" has been used as a synonym for tripwire force; an attack against the force metaphorically shatters the "glass" between peace and war.
The credibility of a tripwire force is tied to the "force having relevant combat capabilities and being of sufficient size that an adversary could neither sidestep nor capture the force" as well as to the potential of the defender to actually mobilize reserves robust enough to launch a counter-attack in a timely manner.
== Examples ==
=== Examples in practice ===
United States Army Berlin, a U.S. Army formation posted to West Berlin during the Cold War, has been referred to as a tripwire force. Because a limited Soviet incursion into West Berlin, which resulted in no American casualties, might cause the sitting United States President to hesitate in mounting a counter-offensive, the Soviet Union – it was felt by western military planners – would have a strategic incentive to take such an action. By stationing American forces in West Berlin, U.S. casualties would be guaranteed during any future Soviet attack. In this way the United States would deny itself the political ability to abandon the conflict which would, in turn, guarantee a U.S. response up to – and including – the battlefield deployment of nuclear weapons. Realizing this, the Soviet Union would not take offensive action against West Berlin even though it might be militarily capable of doing so.
NATOs stance in the larger European theatre were also seen largely as a tripwire, whose primary purpose was to trigger the release of nuclear attacks on the Warsaw Pact. The British 1957 Defence White Paper was based on a detailed look at the British Army of the Rhine's part as a tripwire and concluded it was larger than it needed to be to serve this function. If the force's primary purpose was to simply delay an advance until it became overwhelming and thus indicated a "real war", presumably being destroyed in the process, then a smaller force would work just as well. Accordingly, the BAOR was reduced from 77,000 to 64,000 over the next year.
The deployment, in the mid 1970s, of a Soviet brigade to Cuba was at the time perceived by some to represent the introduction of a tripwire force onto the island – a method of deterring aggression against Cuba from "potential attackers who would not want to engage" the full Soviet Army.
British military forces in the Falkland Islands (Isles Malvinas) prior to the Falklands War were intended to serve as a tripwire force, though were ultimately an ineffective one as they were so small and lightly armed that they didn't represent a credible signal to Argentina of UK military commitment to the islands. The Argentine invasion force had been given orders to overcome resistance without inflicting British casualties, and during the initial invasion successfully managed to bypass or capture all British units without resorting to deadly force.
United States Forces Korea have also been referred to as a tripwire force due to the perception that they are too diminutive to singularly repel an attack by the Korean People's Army. Rather, they serve to convey "the certainty of American involvement should the North Koreans be tempted to invade".
Since 2014, several members of NATO deployed forces to the Baltic states as a stated tripwire against possible Russian actions.
=== Examples in theory ===
Paul K. Davis and John Arquilla have argued that the United States should have placed a tripwire force in Kuwait prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as a method of signaling to Iraq the commitment of the U.S. to an armed response. In this way, they state, the Gulf War might have been avoided.
In 2014 Saudi Arabia reportedly requested the deployment of Pakistani military units to Yemen to act as a tripwire force in the event of an attack against the kingdom by Iran via Yemen.
In 2015 Michael E. O'Hanlon theorized that a United States tripwire force could continue to be deployed in a hypothetically reunified Korea to meet American security guarantees to the region while avoiding provocation of China. According to O'Hanlon, a small enough U.S. military deployment in Korea, posted at a sufficient distance from the Chinese border, would not present an offensive threat to the PRC but would ensure the likelihood of American casualties in the event of a land invasion of the Korean Peninsula, thereby guaranteeing future American military commitment to any realized conflict.
== See also ==
Dissuasion du faible au fort
== References == | Wikipedia/Tripwire_force |
The NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) was formed in 1996 by merging the SHAPE Technical Centre (STC) in The Hague, Netherlands; and the NATO Communications and Information Systems Agency (NACISA) in Brussels, Belgium. NC3A was part of the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Organization (NC3O) and reported to the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Board (NC3B). In July 2012, NC3A was merged into the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA).
The agency had around 800 staff, of which around 500 were located in The Hague and 300 in Brussels. Broadly speaking, the Netherlands staff were responsible for scientific research, development and experimentation, while the Belgian staff provided technical project management and acquisition support for NATO procurement programmes.
The Agency was organised using a balanced matrix model, with four main areas: the Production area, Sponsor Accounts, Core Segment and Resources Division. The Production area consisted of nine capability area teams (CATs) with various areas of expertise. The Sponsor Accounts area had Directors for each of the Agency's major sponsors, providing a single point of contact with the Agency. The Core Segment comprised a Chief Operating Officer, Chief Technology Officer and Director of Acquisition, who ensured coherency of the Agency's business, technical and acquisition processes respectively. The Resources Division handled Agency operations such as Human Resources, Finance, Graphics, Building Maintenance, etc. Since 2004, the Agency used the PRINCE2 and PMI project management methodologies.
General Manager Georges D'hollander and Deputy General Manager Kevin Scheid split their time between their offices in The Hague and Brussels. Staff were recruited directly from the 28 NATO nations, the majority holding degrees at the Masters level or above. The working language of the Agency was English.
NC3A's prime customers were Allied Command Transformation and Allied Command Operations, as well as the NATO Air Command and Control System (ACCS) Management Agency (NACMA), NATO Airborne Early Warning (NAEW) Force Command and individual NATO nations. Its annual budget was roughly 100 million euros. Major growth areas were the NATO Network Enabled Capability (NNEC), Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) and the Alliance Ground Surveillance and Reconnaissance (AGSR) projects. The Agency traditionally had a strong emphasis on prototyping and aimed to follow a spiral development model.
The agency focused on improving C4ISR interoperability between nations and supporting major acquisition programmes while complementing, not competing with, national research and development.
== References ==
== External links ==
NCIA official web site
NCI Agency Jobs
The Distributed Networked Battle Labs
NACMA official web site
"NATO Code of Best Practice for C2 Assessment" (PDF). (1.68 MiB) | Wikipedia/NATO_Consultation,_Command_and_Control_Agency |
Broken-backed war theory is a form of conflict that could happen after a massive nuclear exchange.
Assuming that all participants have not been annihilated, there may arise a scenario unique to military strategy and theory, one in which all or some of the parties involved strive to continue fighting until the other side is completely defeated.
== Origin of the phrase ==
Broken-backed war theory was first formally elaborated on in the 1952 British Defence White Paper, to describe what would presumably happen after a major nuclear exchange. The American "New Look Strategy of 1953/54" utterly rejected the notion of broken-backed war. They dropped the term from the 1955 white paper, and the phrase has since faded from common usage.
== Commentary ==
Klaus Knorr purported that in a broken-backed war scenario, only military weapons and vehicles on hand prior to the sustained hostilities would be of use, as the economic potential of both sides would be, at least in theory, utterly shattered:
Do current predictions on the nature of future warfare exhaust not only all possible, but all likely, contingencies? It can be granted that a long-drawn-out and massive war conducted with conventional, by which I mean modernized but nonatomic, weapons, is so unlikely to occur that it may be safely neglected as a contingency. There definitely
is no future for World War II. It can also be granted that, once unlimited thermonuclear war has broken out, there is no economic war potential to be mobilized for its conduct. Even a broken-backed war would have to be fought overwhelmingly, if not entirely, with munitions on hand at the start of the fighting.
Herman Kahn, in his tome On Thermonuclear War, posited that a broken-backed war is implausible, because one side would likely absorb vastly more damage than its opposition.
The "broken-back" war notion is obsolete not only because of the possibility of mutual devastation but even more because it is so very unlikely that the forces of both sides would become attrited in even roughly the same way. One side is likely to get a rather commanding advantage and exploit this lead to force the other side to choose between surrender and the physical destruction of its capability to continue.
The nuclear strategist Bernard Brodie argued that this form of conflict may be impractical simply because it is almost impossible to plan for. His writings on the subject came before the advent of counter-force doctrine, and during a time of nuclear plenty, when it was safe to assume that a nuclear exchange would render a nation's industry useless.
During the Cold War, Colonel Virgil Ney hypothesized that a nuclear exchange alone would not be enough to defeat the Soviet Union, and he argued for a modest construction of underground facilities and infrastructure.
== In popular culture ==
The table-top role-playing game Twilight: 2000 released by Game Designers' Workshop in 1984 entails a broken-backed war; in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange in 1997, by 2000, Warsaw Pact and NATO forces are still fighting for a decisive victory in Europe and elsewhere with dwindling conventional arms and munitions.
The plot of the 2005 video game Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath is about an alternate history where world powers scramble for resources after the Cuban Missile Crisis resulted in an initial nuclear exchange.
== References == | Wikipedia/Broken-backed_war_theory |
A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its connection. The owner can control the botnet using command and control (C&C) software. The word "botnet" is a portmanteau of the words "robot" and "network". The term is usually used with a negative or malicious connotation.
== Overview ==
A botnet is a logical collection of Internet-connected devices, such as computers, smartphones or Internet of things (IoT) devices whose security have been breached and control ceded to a third party. Each compromised device, known as a "bot," is created when a device is penetrated by software from a malware (malicious software) distribution. The controller of a botnet is able to direct the activities of these compromised computers through communication channels formed by standards-based network protocols, such as IRC and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
Botnets are increasingly rented out by cyber criminals as commodities for a variety of purposes, including as booter/stresser services.
== Architecture ==
Botnet architecture has evolved over time in an effort to evade detection and disruption. Traditionally, bot programs are constructed as clients which communicate via existing servers. This allows the bot herder (the controller of the botnet) to perform all control from a remote location, which obfuscates the traffic. Many recent botnets now rely on existing peer-to-peer networks to communicate. These P2P bot programs perform the same actions as the client–server model, but they do not require a central server to communicate.
=== Client–server model ===
The first botnets on the Internet used a client–server model to accomplish their tasks. Typically, these botnets operate through Internet Relay Chat networks, domains, or websites. Infected clients access a predetermined location and await incoming commands from the server. The bot herder sends commands to the server, which relays them to the clients. Clients execute the commands and report their results back to the bot herder.
In the case of IRC botnets, infected clients connect to an infected IRC server and join a channel pre-designated for C&C by the bot herder. The bot herder sends commands to the channel via the IRC server. Each client retrieves the commands and executes them. Clients send messages back to the IRC channel with the results of their actions.
=== Peer-to-peer ===
In response to efforts to detect and decapitate IRC botnets, bot herders have begun deploying malware on peer-to-peer networks. These bots may use digital signatures so that only someone with access to the private key can control the botnet, such as in Gameover ZeuS and the ZeroAccess botnet.
Newer botnets fully operate over P2P networks. Rather than communicate with a centralized server, P2P bots perform as both a command distribution server and a client which receives commands. This avoids having any single point of failure, which is an issue for centralized botnets.
In order to find other infected machines, P2P bots discreetly probe random IP addresses until they identify another infected machine. The contacted bot replies with information such as its software version and list of known bots. If one of the bots' version is lower than the other, they will initiate a file transfer to update. This way, each bot grows its list of infected machines and updates itself by periodically communicating to all known bots.
== Core components ==
A botnet's originator (known as a "bot herder" or "bot master") controls the botnet remotely. This is known as the command-and-control (C&C). The program for the operation must communicate via a covert channel to the client on the victim's machine (zombie computer).
=== Control protocols ===
IRC is a historically favored means of C&C because of its communication protocol. A bot herder creates an IRC channel for infected clients to join. Messages sent to the channel are broadcast to all channel members. The bot herder may set the channel's topic to command the botnet. For example, the message :herder!herder@example.com TOPIC #channel DDoS www.victim.com from the bot herder alerts all infected clients belonging to #channel to begin a DDoS attack on the website www.victim.com. An example response :bot1!bot1@compromised.net PRIVMSG #channel I am DDoSing www.victim.com by a bot client alerts the bot herder that it has begun the attack.
Some botnets implement custom versions of well-known protocols. The implementation differences can be used for detection of botnets. For example, Mega-D features a slightly modified Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) implementation for testing spam capability. Bringing down the Mega-D's SMTP server disables the entire pool of bots that rely upon the same SMTP server.
=== Zombie computer ===
In computer science, a zombie computer is a computer connected to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, computer virus or trojan horse and can be used to perform malicious tasks under remote direction. Botnets of zombie computers are often used to spread e-mail spam and launch denial-of-service attacks (DDoS). Most owners of zombie computers are unaware that their system is being used in this way. Because the owner tends to be unaware, these computers are metaphorically compared to zombies. A coordinated DDoS attack by multiple botnet machines also resembles a zombie horde attack.
The process of stealing computing resources as a result of a system being joined to a "botnet" is sometimes referred to as "scrumping".
== Command and control ==
Botnet command and control (C&C) protocols have been implemented in a number of ways, from traditional IRC approaches to more sophisticated versions.
=== Telnet ===
Telnet botnets use a simple C&C botnet protocol in which bots connect to the main command server to host the botnet. Bots are added to the botnet by using a scanning script, which runs on an external server and scans IP ranges for telnet and SSH server default logins. Once a login is found, the scanning server can infect it through SSH with malware, which pings the control server.
=== IRC ===
IRC networks use simple, low bandwidth communication methods, making them widely used to host botnets. They tend to be relatively simple in construction and have been used with moderate success for coordinating DDoS attacks and spam campaigns while being able to continually switch channels to avoid being taken down. However, in some cases, merely blocking of certain keywords has proven effective in stopping IRC-based botnets. The RFC 1459 (IRC) standard is popular with botnets. The first known popular botnet controller script, "MaXiTE Bot" was using IRC XDCC protocol for private control commands.
One problem with using IRC is that each bot client must know the IRC server, port, and channel to be of any use to the botnet. Anti-malware organizations can detect and shut down these servers and channels, effectively halting the botnet attack. If this happens, clients are still infected, but they typically lie dormant since they have no way of receiving instructions. To mitigate this problem, a botnet can consist of several servers or channels. If one of the servers or channels becomes disabled, the botnet simply switches to another. It is still possible to detect and disrupt additional botnet servers or channels by sniffing IRC traffic. A botnet adversary can even potentially gain knowledge of the control scheme and imitate the bot herder by issuing commands correctly.
=== P2P ===
Since most botnets using IRC networks and domains can be taken down with time, hackers have moved to P2P botnets with C&C to make the botnet more resilient and resistant to termination.
Some have also used encryption as a way to secure or lock down the botnet from others, most of the time when they use encryption it is public-key cryptography and has presented challenges in both implementing it and breaking it.
=== Domains ===
Many large botnets tend to use domains rather than IRC in their construction (see Rustock botnet and Srizbi botnet). They are usually hosted with bulletproof hosting services. This is one of the earliest types of C&C. A zombie computer accesses a specially-designed webpage or domain(s) which serves the list of controlling commands. The advantages of using web pages or domains as C&C is that a large botnet can be effectively controlled and maintained with very simple code that can be readily updated.
Disadvantages of using this method are that it uses a considerable amount of bandwidth at large scale, and domains can be quickly seized by government agencies with little effort. If the domains controlling the botnets are not seized, they are also easy targets to compromise with denial-of-service attacks.
Fast-flux DNS can be used to make it difficult to track down the control servers, which may change from day to day. Control servers may also hop from DNS domain to DNS domain, with domain generation algorithms being used to create new DNS names for controller servers.
Some botnets use free DNS hosting services such as DynDns.org, No-IP.com, and Afraid.org to point a subdomain towards an IRC server that harbors the bots. While these free DNS services do not themselves host attacks, they provide reference points (often hard-coded into the botnet executable). Removing such services can cripple an entire botnet.
=== Others ===
Calling back to popular sites such as GitHub, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, the XMPP open source instant message protocol and Tor hidden services are popular ways of avoiding egress filtering to communicate with a C&C server.
== Construction ==
=== Traditional ===
This example illustrates how a botnet is created and used for malicious gain.
A hacker purchases or builds a Trojan and/or exploit kit and uses it to start infecting users' computers, whose payload is a malicious application—the bot.
The bot instructs the infected PC to connect to a particular command-and-control (C&C) server. (This allows the botmaster to keep logs of how many bots are active and online.)
The botmaster may then use the bots to gather keystrokes or use form grabbing to steal online credentials and may rent out the botnet as DDoS and/or spam as a service or sell the credentials online for a profit.
Depending on the quality and capability of the bots, the value is increased or decreased.
Newer bots can automatically scan their environment and propagate themselves using vulnerabilities and weak passwords. Generally, the more vulnerabilities a bot can scan and propagate through, the more valuable it becomes to a botnet controller community.
Computers can be co-opted into a botnet when they execute malicious software. This can be accomplished by luring users into making a drive-by download, exploiting web browser vulnerabilities, or by tricking the user into running a Trojan horse program, which may come from an email attachment. This malware will typically install modules that allow the computer to be commanded and controlled by the botnet's operator. After the software is downloaded, it will call home (send a reconnection packet) to the host computer. When the re-connection is made, depending on how it is written, a Trojan may then delete itself or may remain present to update and maintain the modules.
=== Others ===
In some cases, a botnet may be temporarily created by volunteer hacktivists, such as with implementations of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon as used by 4chan members during Project Chanology in 2010.
China's Great Cannon of China allows the modification of legitimate web browsing traffic at internet backbones into China to create a large ephemeral botnet to attack large targets such as GitHub in 2015.
== Common uses ==
Distributed denial-of-service attacks are one of the most common uses for botnets, in which multiple systems submit as many requests as possible to a single Internet computer or service, overloading it and preventing it from servicing legitimate requests. An example is an attack on a victim's server. The victim's server is bombarded with requests by the bots, attempting to connect to the server, therefore, overloading it. Google fraud czar Shuman Ghosemajumder has said that these types of attacks causing outages on major websites will continue to occur regularly due the use of botnets as a service.
Spyware is software which sends information to its creators about a user's activities – typically passwords, credit card numbers and other information that can be sold on the black market. Compromised machines that are located within a corporate network can be worth more to the bot herder, as they can often gain access to confidential corporate information. Several targeted attacks on large corporations aimed to steal sensitive information, such as the Aurora botnet.
E-mail spam are e-mail messages disguised as messages from people, but are either advertising, annoying, or malicious.
Click fraud occurs when the user's computer visits websites without the user's awareness to create false web traffic for personal or commercial gain.
Ad fraud is often a consequence of malicious bot activity, according to CHEQ, Ad Fraud 2019, The Economic Cost of Bad Actors on the Internet. Commercial purposes of bots include influencers using them to boost their supposed popularity, and online publishers using bots to increase the number of clicks an ad receives, allowing sites to earn more commission from advertisers.
Credential stuffing attacks use botnets to log in to many user accounts with stolen passwords, such as in the attack against General Motors in 2022.
Bitcoin mining was used in some of the more recent botnets have which include bitcoin mining as a feature in order to generate profits for the operator of the botnet.
Self-spreading functionality, to seek for pre-configured command-and-control (CNC) pushed instruction contains targeted devices or network, to aim for more infection, is also spotted in several botnets. Some of the botnets are utilizing this function to automate their infections.
== Market ==
The botnet controller community constantly competes over who has the most bots, the highest overall bandwidth, and the most "high-quality" infected machines, like university, corporate, and even government machines.
While botnets are often named after the malware that created them, multiple botnets typically use the same malware but are operated by different entities.
== Phishing ==
Botnets can be used for many electronic scams. These botnets can be used to distribute malware such as viruses to take control of a regular users computer/software By taking control of someone's personal computer they have unlimited access to their personal information, including passwords and login information to accounts. This is called phishing. Phishing is the acquiring of login information to the "victim's" accounts with a link the "victim" clicks on that is sent through an email or text. A survey by Verizon found that around two-thirds of electronic "espionage" cases come from phishing.
== Countermeasures ==
The geographic dispersal of botnets means that each recruit must be individually identified/corralled/repaired and limits the benefits of filtering.
Computer security experts have succeeded in destroying or subverting malware command and control networks, by, among other means, seizing servers or getting them cut off from the Internet, denying access to domains that were due to be used by malware to contact its C&C infrastructure, and, in some cases, breaking into the C&C network itself. In response to this, C&C operators have resorted to using techniques such as overlaying their C&C networks on other existing benign infrastructure such as IRC or Tor, using peer-to-peer networking systems that are not dependent on any fixed servers, and using public key encryption to defeat attempts to break into or spoof the network.
Norton AntiBot was aimed at consumers, but most target enterprises and/or ISPs. Host-based techniques use heuristics to identify bot behavior that has bypassed conventional anti-virus software. Network-based approaches tend to use the techniques described above; shutting down C&C servers, null-routing DNS entries, or completely shutting down IRC servers. BotHunter is software, developed with support from the U.S. Army Research Office, that detects botnet activity within a network by analyzing network traffic and comparing it to patterns characteristic of malicious processes.
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are analyzing botnets' behavior by simultaneously running one million Linux kernels—a similar scale to a botnet—as virtual machines on a 4,480-node high-performance computer cluster to emulate a very large network, allowing them to watch how botnets work and experiment with ways to stop them.
Detecting automated bot becomes more difficult as newer and more sophisticated generations of bots get launched by attackers. For example, an automated attack can deploy a large bot army and apply brute-force methods with highly accurate username and password lists to hack into accounts. The idea is to overwhelm sites with tens of thousands of requests from different IPs all over the world, but with each bot only submitting a single request every 10 minutes or so, which can result in more than 5 million attempts per day. In these cases, many tools try to leverage volumetric detection, but automated bot attacks now have ways of circumventing triggers of volumetric detection.
One of the techniques for detecting these bot attacks is what's known as "signature-based systems" in which the software will attempt to detect patterns in the request packet. However, attacks are constantly evolving, so this may not be a viable option when patterns cannot be discerned from thousands of requests. There is also the behavioral approach to thwarting bots, which ultimately tries to distinguish bots from humans. By identifying non-human behavior and recognizing known bot behavior, this process can be applied at the user, browser, and network levels.
The most capable method of using software to combat against a virus has been to utilize honeypot software in order to convince the malware that a system is vulnerable. The malicious files are then analyzed using forensic software.
On 15 July 2014, the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, held a hearing on the threats posed by botnets and the public and private efforts to disrupt and dismantle them.
The rise in vulnerable IoT devices has led to an increase in IoT-based botnet attacks. To address this, a novel network-based anomaly detection method for IoT called N-BaIoT was introduced. It captures network behavior snapshots and employs deep autoencoders to identify abnormal traffic from compromised IoT devices. The method was tested by infecting nine IoT devices with Mirai and BASHLITE botnets, showing its ability to accurately and promptly detect attacks originating from compromised IoT devices within a botnet.
Additionally, comparing different ways of detecting botnets is really useful for researchers. It helps them see how well each method works compared to others. This kind of comparison is good because it lets researchers evaluate the methods fairly and find ways to make them better.
== Historical list of botnets ==
The first botnet was first acknowledged and exposed by EarthLink during a lawsuit with notorious spammer Khan C. Smith in 2001. The botnet was constructed for the purpose of bulk spam, and accounted for nearly 25% of all spam at the time.
Around 2006, to thwart detection, some botnets were scaling back in size.
The following is a non-exhaustive list of some historical botnets.
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara took control of a botnet that was six times smaller than expected. In some countries, it is common that users change their IP address a few times in one day. Estimating the size of the botnet by the number of IP addresses is often used by researchers, possibly leading to inaccurate assessments.
== See also ==
Computer security
Computer worm
Spambot
Timeline of computer viruses and worms
Advanced Persistent Threat
Volunteer computing
== References ==
== External links ==
The Honeynet Project & Research Alliance – "Know your Enemy: Tracking Botnets"
The Shadowserver Foundation – an all-volunteer security watchdog group that gathers, tracks, and reports on malware, botnet activity, and electronic fraud
EWeek.com – "Is the Botnet Battle Already Lost?"
Botnet Bust – "SpyEye Malware Mastermind Pleads Guilty", FBI | Wikipedia/Command_and_control_(malware) |
Military theory is the study of the theories which define, inform, guide and explain war and warfare. Military theory analyses both normative behavioral phenomena and explanatory causal aspects to better understand war and how it is fought. It examines war and trends in warfare beyond simply describing events in military history. While military theories may employ the scientific method, theory differs from military science. Theory aims to explain the causes for military victory and produce guidance on how war should be waged and won, rather than developing universal, immutable laws which can bound the physical act of warfare or codifying empirical data, such as weapon effects, platform operating ranges, consumption rates and target information, to aid military planning.
Military theory is multi-disciplinary drawing on social science and humanities academic fields through the disciplines of political science, strategic studies, military studies and history. It examines the nature of war, and the conclusions of wars.
Military philosophy likewise studies questions such as the reasons to go to war, jus ad bellum, and just ways to fight wars, jus in bello. Two of the earliest military philosophers date from antiquity; Thucydides and Sun Tzu. While military theory can inform military doctrine or help explain military history, it differs from them as it contemplates abstract concepts, themes, principles and ideas to formulate solutions to actual and potential problems concerning war and warfare.
== Use of military theory ==
Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote, 'The primary purpose of any theory is to clarify concepts and ideas that have become, as it were, confused and entangled. Not until terms and concepts have been defined can one hope to make any progress in examining the questions clearly and simply and expect the reader to share one's views.'
Military theory informs the political, strategic, operational and tactical levels of war. It does so by contributing to knowledge on the subjects of war and warfare. This aids in understanding why and when force is used and what forms the use of force may take. It also aids in identifying and explaining practical outcomes to help determine how force may be applied. Military theories can be divided into several categories, such as operational theory and tactical theory. They may also be categorised by environment or domain, such as space power or astronautics.
== See also ==
Military doctrine
Military science
List of military writers
== References ==
Notes
Bibliography
Angstrom, Jan and Widen, J.J. (2015) Contemporary Military Theory: The Dynamics of War. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-08072-6
Clausewitz, Carl von (1976). On War. Edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Revised 1984 ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-05657-9.
Evans, Michael, (2004), Land Warfare Studies Centre Study Paper No. 305, The Continental School of Strategy: The Past, Present and Future of Land Power, Canberra: Land Warfare Studies Centre. ISBN 0642296014.
Gray, Colin S. (2010). The Strategy Bridge-Theory for Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-957966-2
Lider, Julian (1980). 'Introduction to Military Theory', Cooperation and Conflict, XV, 151–168.
Lider, Julian (1983). Military Theory: Concept, Structure and Problems (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-53240-6
Oliviero, Charles. (2022) Strategia – A Primer on Theory and Strategy for Students of War. Toronto: Double Dagger. ISBN 978-1-990644-24-5
Sun Tzu (2003). The Art of War. New York City: Barnes & Noble Books. ISBN 978-1-59308-016-7.
Vego, Milan (2011). 'On Military Theory', Joint Force Quarterly, Vol. 3, Issue 62, pp. 59–67.
Yarger, Harry R. (2006). Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy. Leavenworth: US Army War College War College Press. ISBN 1-58487-233-0
== External links ==
Media related to Military theory at Wikimedia Commons | Wikipedia/Military_theory |
A space force is a military branch of a nation's armed forces that conducts military operations in outer space and space warfare. The world's first space force was the Russian Space Forces, established in 1992 as an independent military service. However, it lost its independence twice, first being absorbed into the Strategic Rocket Forces from 1997–2001 and 2001–2011, then it merged with the Russian Air Force to form the Russian Aerospace Forces in 2015, where it now exists as a sub-branch. As of 2025, there are two independent space forces: the United States Space Force and China's People's Liberation Army Aerospace Force.
Countries with smaller or developing space forces may combine their air and space forces under a single military branch, such as the Russian Aerospace Forces, Spanish Air and Space Force, French Air and Space Force, or Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force, or put them in an independent defense agency, such as the Indian Defence Space Agency. Countries with nascent military space capabilities usually organize them within their air forces.
== History ==
The first artificial object to cross the Kármán line, the boundary between air and space, was MW 18014, an A-4 rocket launched by the German Heer on 20 June 1944 from the Peenemünde Army Research Center. The A4, more commonly known as the V-2, was the world's first ballistic missile, used by the Wehrmacht to launch long-range attacks on the Allied Forces on the Western Front during the Second World War. The designer of the A4, Wernher von Braun, had aspirations to use them as space launch vehicles. In both the United States and the Soviet Union, military space development began immediately after the Second World War concluded, with Wernher von Braun defecting to the Allies and both superpowers gathering V-2 rockets, research materials, and German scientists to jumpstart their own ballistic missile and space programs.
In the United States, there was a fierce interservice rivalry between the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army over which service would gain responsibility for the military space program. The Air Force, which had started developing its space program while it was still the Army Air Forces in 1945, saw space operations as an extension of its strategic airpower mission, while the Army argued that ballistic missiles were an extension of artillery. In 1946, the Navy began developing rockets primarily for Naval Research Laboratory projects rather than seeking to actively develop an operational space capability. Ultimately, the Air Force's space rivals in the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, Naval Research Laboratory, and Advanced Research Projects Agency were absorbed by NASA when it was created in 1958, leaving it as the only major military space organization within the U.S. Department of Defense. In 1954, General Bernard Schriever established the Western Development Division within Air Research and Development Command, becoming the U.S. military's first space organization, which continues to exist in the U.S. Space Force as the Space Systems Command, its research and development center.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Air Force space forces were organized within Aerospace Defense Command for missile defense and space surveillance forces, Strategic Air Command for weather reconnaissance satellites, and Air Force Systems Command for satellite communications, space launch, and space development systems. In 1982, U.S. Air Force space forces were centralized in Air Force Space Command, the first direct predecessor to the U.S. Space Force. U.S. space forces were first employed in the Vietnam War, and continued to provide satellite communications, weather, and navigation support during the 1982 Falklands War, 1983 United States invasion of Grenada, 1986 United States bombing of Libya, and 1989 United States invasion of Panama. The first major employment of space forces culminated in the Gulf War, where they proved so critical to the U.S.-led coalition, that it is sometimes referred to as the first space war. The first discussions of creating a military space service in the United States occurred in 1958, with the idea being floated by President Reagan as well in 1982. The 2001 Space Commission argued for the creation of a Space Corps between 2007 and 2011 and a bipartisan proposal in the U.S. Congress would have created a Space Corps in 2017. Then on 20 December 2019, the United States Space Force Act, part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020, was signed, creating an independent space service by renaming and reorganizing Air Force Space Command into the United States Space Force.
In the Soviet Union, the early space program was led by the OKB-1 design bureau, led by Sergei Korolev. Unlike in the United States, where the U.S. Air Force held preeminence in missile and space development, the Soviet Ground Forces, and specifically the Artillery of the Reserve of the Supreme High Command (RVGK), was responsible for missile and military space programs, with the RVGK responsible for the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite on 4 October 1957. In 1960, Soviet military space forces were reorganized into the 3rd Department of the Main Missile Directorate of the Ministry of Defence, before in 1964 becoming a part of the new Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces Central Directorate of Space Assets. The Strategic Rocket Forces Central Directorate of Space Assets would be renamed the Main Directorate of Space Assets in 1970, being transferred to directly report to the Soviet Ministry of Defense in 1982, and in 1986 became the Chief Directorate of Space Assets. Established in 1967, the Anti-Ballistic Missile and Anti-Space Defense Forces of the Soviet Air Defense Forces were responsible for space surveillance and defense operations.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Russian Federation gained its space forces, with the Chief Directorate of Space Assets was reorganized into the Military Space Forces, an independent troops (vid) under the Russian Ministry of Defense, but not a military service (vid). The Soviet Air Defense Forces' Anti-Ballistic Missile and Anti-Space Defense Forces were reorganized into the Russian Air Defense Forces' Rocket and Space Defence Troops. In 1997, the Rocket and Space Defence Troops and Military Space Forces were merged into the Strategic Missile Forces; it subordinated the priorities of the space troops to the missile forces, resulting in the establishment of the Russian Space Forces as independent troops in 2001. In 2011, the Russian Space Forces became the Russian Space Command, part of the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces, which merged Russia's space and air defense forces into one service. In 2015, the Russian Air Force and Russian Aerospace Defense Forces were merged to form the Russian Aerospace Forces, which reestablished the Russian Space Forces as one of its three sub-branches, although it is no longer an independent entity.
In 1998, the Chinese People's Liberation Army began creating its space forces under the General Armaments Department, before being reorganized and renamed as the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force Space Systems Department in 2015. The PLASSF was eventually dissolved in April 2024, with the space force element of the SSF becoming the People's Liberation Army Aerospace Force.
In 2010, the French Armed Forces created the Joint Space Command, a joint organism under the authority of the Chief of the Defence Staff. In 2019, the French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the Joint Space Command would become the Space Command and the newest major command of the Air Force, which would be renamed to reflect an "evolution of its mission" into the area of outer space. The Space Command is effective since 2019 and the Air Force was renamed Air and Space Force on 24 July 2020, with its new logo unveiled on 11 September 2020.
In June 2022, the Spanish Government announced the Spanish Air Force would be renamed as the Spanish Air and Space Force.
== Space forces ==
The following list outlines the independent space forces that have been in operation:
United States Space Force (2019–present)
People's Liberation Army Aerospace Force (2024–present)
Russian Space Forces (2015–present; independent from 1992–1997 and 2001–2011)
Emblems of space forces
== See also ==
Ranks and insignia of space forces
Militarisation of space
Politics of outer space
Space Force Association
== References == | Wikipedia/Space_force |
The Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) is an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit, professional military association for the United States Air Force and United States Space Force. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, its declared mission is "to educate the public about air and space power, to advocate for the world's most capable, most lethal, and most effective Air and Space Forces, and to support Airmen, Guardians, and their families."
AFA publishes Air & Space Forces (retitled from Air Force Magazine in September 2022) and the Daily Report. It also runs the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and conducts social networking, public outreach, and national conferences and symposia. It sponsors professional development seminars and has an awards program. AFA has a scholarship program for Air Force active duty, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve members and their dependents. It also provides grants to promote science and math education at the elementary and secondary school level.
Founded in 1946 as the Air Force Association, the organization renamed itself in April 2022. It continued to use the abbreviation AFA.
== History ==
=== Advocating for air force independence ===
Even before the end of World War II, General of the Army Henry H. Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces, was beginning to consider establishing an organization for the three million airmen under his command who would become veterans after the war ended. This organization was not only intended to serve as a veterans' organization, but also be an advocacy group for airpower.
In August 1945, Arnold asked Edward Peck Curtis to build the Air Force Association. Then an executive at Eastman Kodak, Curtis retired from the Army Air Forces in 1944 as a major general and was a World War I flying ace. The first meeting occurred on 12 October 1945 in New York City. Aside from Curtis, the twelve founders were John S. Allard, Everett Richard Cook, who retired from the Army Air Forces in 1945 as a brigadier general and was a World War I flying ace, Jimmy Doolittle, who was an Army Air Forces lieutenant general and Medal of Honor recipient for flying the Doolittle Raid, W. Dearing Howe, Rufus Rand, Sol Rosenblatt, Julian Rosenthal, James Stewart, an actor and Army Air Forces colonel, Lowell P. Weicker, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, an Army Air Forces colonel, and John Hay Whitney, an Army Air Forces intelligence officer.
While the group decided on the Air Force Association as the name, which was shared with an earlier group founded by Billy Mitchell, rejected names included the:
Air Force Legion
Air Force League
Air Force Veterans Association
Air Force Council
Air Force Veterans Federation
Air Force Veterans Alliance
National Legion of Air Force Veterans
National League of Air Force Veterans
National Association of Air Force Veterans
National Federation of Air Force Veterans
National Fraternity of Air Force Veterans
National Council of Air Force Veterans
United League of Air Force Veterans
United Federation of Air Force Veterans
United Association of Air Force Veterans
United Council of Air Force Veterans
United Alliance of Air Force Veterans
American Air Force Veterans
American Veterans of the Air
American Veterans of the Air Force
Air Force Alumni Association
Consensus quickly formed that Jimmy Doolittle should be the first president, and in a January 1946 press conference, Doolittle announced the establishment of the Air Force Association. It was to be organized with a grass-roots structure composed of local, state, and regional affiliates. AFA also would publish a national magazine on airpower topics and sponsor educational programs to inform the public on airpower developments.
The Air Force Association was incorporated on 4 February 1946 in Washington D.C. Membership fees provided insufficient operating funds, and the association relied on additional donations from members. The association was a relatively prominent voice that was featured in The New York Times and other news media. In August 1946, the Air Force Association organized a coast-to-coast radio broadcast featuring Jimmy Stewart, who was made a vice president of the organization, and Ronald Reagan, who was a Hollywood actor and Army Air Force captain and AFA charter member.
The Air Force Association made good on its promise to publish an airpower magazine in July 1946, when it received ownership of Air Force Magazine, the official journal of the Army Air Forces. The publication had been founded by Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces from 1941 to 1946, who had ordered "a first-class, slick-paper magazine—highly readable—the best of its kind—with worldwide circulation" be produced for its airmen. In 1917, Arnold had edited the Army Air Services' monthly newsletter as Chief of Information.
Public outreach was also made a priority, with Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Carl Spaatz telling delegates at AFA's first national convention in 1947 that "public support is as essential to effective airpower as industries, airplanes, and airmen." By the end of the Air Force Association's first year, it had incorporated 152 local squadrons, or chapters, in forty-five states.
On 18 September 1947, the Department of the Air Force was established and the Army Air Forces became the U.S. Air Force. Air Force Magazine declared that it was "The Day Billy Mitchell Dreamed Of." At its first AFA National Convention in Columbus, Ohio, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower declared "the creation of the United States Air Force as an independent entity recognizes the special capabilities of airpower."
=== The Air Force's advocate ===
Despite independence, however, the Air Force's place was not assured. After the Allied victory, the United States began post-war demobilization. In their first statement of policy in 1948, the Air Force Association warned "while recognizing that peacetime airpower is expensive, we know that wartime airpower is far more costly" and began campaigning for a 70-group Air Force, which was also called for by a special presidential commission.
Dwindling budgets also increased interservice rivalry. In 1946, U.S. Navy leaders attempted to kill the Convair B-36 Peacemaker strategic bomber, instead advocating for carrier aviation. In part due to the advocacy of the Air Force Association, the Revolt of the Admirals was unsuccessful and the B-36 Peacemaker went into service.
The Air Force Association maintained a close relationship with Hollywood, which enabled it to directly communicate the need for airpower to the public. At AFA's second national convention, it held "Operation Wing Ding" at Madison Square Garden and featured its own vice president Jimmy Stewart along with Bob Hope, Marlene Dietrich, Lena Horne, Clark Gable, Dinah Shore, Jack Dempsey, Jerry Colonna, Jane Froman, Carmen Miranda, Margaret O'Brien, Walter Pidgeon, Herb Shriner, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joe E. Brown, Jinx Falkenburg, and The Rockettes. The performance was lauded as "the greatest show ever put on in Madison Square Garden" by the venue's president, John Kilpatrick.
In 1950, the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps' Arnold Air Society honored society affiliates with the Air Force Association.
In 1953, the Air Reserve Association merged into the AFA. In May 1959, right before the first graduation at the United States Air Force Academy, AFA sponsored its first outstanding-squadron dinner, which would later become a highlighted event for the association.
The Air Force Association embraced the arrival of the jet age, sponsoring four national Jet Age Conferences starting in 1956. The same year, Air Force Magazine published an article on Strategic Air Command which got national attention when Arthur Godfrey told his primetime audience on CBS to read it. On 1 May 1956, AFA created the Air Force Association Foundation, soon renamed the Aerospace Education Foundation, to manage its education programs.
At its 1956 National Convention, the Air Force Association, in partnership with the Air Force, inaugurated its Outstanding Airman of the Air Force program to recognize enlisted airmen. The 1957 "Golden Anniversary" issue of Air Force Magazine, produced with the Air Force Historical Research Division, marked fifty years since the establishment of the Army Signal Corps' Aeronautical Division.
The Air Force Association marked 1959 with the World Congress of Flight in Las Vegas. Featuring aircraft from 52 nations, the World Congress of Flight was the first international, and the largest, air and space show in the United States and was televised by NBC to over 40 million viewers and covered in Life magazine.
In 1963, the Air Force Association adopted a statement of policy opposing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, infuriating Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Under political pressure, Secretary of the Air Force Eugene M. Zuckert withdrew from his attendance at the AFA National Convention, but Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay still attended.
The following year, in 1964, the Air Force Association's Airmen's Council asked the Air Force to establish a "Sergeant Major of the Air Force", mirroring the position of the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps as the senior enlisted advisor. The service initially demurred, but in 1967 established the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force to serve in the same role. In 2020, the new U.S. Space Force created the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force to advocate for enlisted guardians.
In 1967, the Aerospace Education Foundation and the United States Office of Education tested Air Force technical training courses in Utah public schools. Project Utah's success paved the way to create the Community College of the Air Force. The two organizations also held the first National Laboratory for the Advancement of Education.
In October 1969, Air Force Magazine published "The Forgotten Americans of the Vietnam War" as its cover story, generating national awareness of prisoners of war. The article was republished as the lead in Reader's Digest, read on the floor of the United States Congress, and entered into the Congressional Record six times. AFA's national president was a special guest at the White House's tribute for returning prisoners of war in 1971.
In 1988 and 1990, the Air Force Association and Aerospace Education Foundation published two white papers, "Lifeline in Danger" and "Lifeline Adrift", warning of problems with the United States defense industry. In 1991, the Aerospace Education Foundation and USA Today jointly ran the "Visions of Exploration" program to educate public school students on 21st-century issues.
In 1992, the Air Force Association established the United States Air Force Memorial Foundation. Construction began on the memorial near the Pentagon in 2004; it was dedicated in 2006 in a ceremony attended by President George W. Bush, an Air National Guard veteran.
In 1994, Air Force Magazine published a special report on the National Air and Space Museum's plans to display the Enola Gay B-29 Superfortress bomber, which dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on Hiroshima. AFA called the museum's plans politically rigged and lacking balance and historical context. The outcry from Congress, the news media, and public forced the museum to modify its display plans.
=== The Air and Space Forces' advocate ===
While supporting the Air Force, the Air Force Association also advocated for its space and cyber programs.
In 2009, AFA established the CyberPatriot program to prepare high school students in careers in cybersecurity or other STEM fields. In 2013, CyberPatriot becomes an international program, expanding to the United Kingdom, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.
In 2014, the Secretary of the Air Force requested that the Air Force Association create a similar program to CyberPatriot that was space-focused, with AFA creating the StellarXplorers STEM education program built on orbit determination, spacecraft design, and launch vehicle operations.
In 2013, the Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies was renamed the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and in 2016, the Air Force Association's Air and Space Conference was renamed the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference.
Following the 2019 establishment of the U.S. Space Force, the Air Force Association positioned itself to continue supporting the new service, updating its mission statement to include the USSF and Guardians in April 2020. On April 7, 2022, the Air Force Association renamed itself the Air & Space Forces Association to better represent the United States Space Force. In September 2022, Air Force Magazine was renamed Air & Space Forces.
Following the Space Force's establishment, the Air Force Association called for the Department of the Air Force to rename itself the Department of the Air and Space Forces, integrate the National Reconnaissance Office into the U.S. Space Force, and develop crewed and uncrewed combat spaceplanes for the new service.
== Organization ==
AFA is divided into three geographic areas, comprising 14 regions, each led by a region president.
Predominantly a volunteer organization, the association has more than 200 chapters in 49 states (Maine is the only state without a chapter) and other countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Japan, Okinawa, and the Republic of Korea. As of 30 June 2010, AFA had a membership of 117,480 of whom 37% (43,954) are life members (permanent membership), organized into local chapters. There has been a 23-year trend of declining regular membership, but increasing life membership. AFA membership in 2010 included 15% on active duty military and 70% retired or former military.
== Programs ==
As part of its education mandate the association publishes Air Force Magazine and the online electronic news brief Daily Report. Air Force Magazine began in September 1918 as the D.M.A. Weekly News Letter, originally published by the Information Branch of the Division of Military Aeronautics, and changed names several times, becoming Air Force Magazine in January 1943 and Air & Space Forces in September 2022. The Air Force Association assumed responsibility for its publication and content beginning in October 1946.
AFA hosts professional development conferences which feature speakers, workshops, trade shows and presentations by Air Force and national defense leaders. The organization has a public policy and research arm, the Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies run by director Dr. Rebecca Grant. AFA runs CyberPatriot, a national youth cyber education program that promotes student interest in cyber security and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career fields. The "Visions of Exploration" program has its members distribute educational materials to schools and concerned citizens. This is done in part through a joint multi-disciplinary science, math and social studies program with USA Today.
The Arnold Air Society is a university level arm of the organization embedded in college and university Air Force ROTC units.
As part of its support programs AFA provides more than $1.5 million in scholarships, grants, and awards. AFA's educational programs and scholarships are intended to encourage Air Force members to continue their education, provide funds to Air Force spouses working towards a degree, and administer grants that develop programs promoting math and science skills among young people.
AFA was a key organization in building the United States Air Force Memorial and continues to be involved in its day-to-day operations.
== See also ==
Space Force Association
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website | Wikipedia/Air_&_Space_Forces_Association |
Global Command and Control System (GCCS) is the United States' armed forces DoD joint command and control (C2) system used to provide accurate, complete, and timely information for the operational chain of command for U.S. armed forces. "GCCS" is most often used to refer to the computer system, but actually consists of hardware, software, common procedures, appropriation, and numerous applications and interfaces that make up an "operational architecture" that provides worldwide connectivity with all levels of command. GCCS incorporates systems that provide situational awareness, support for intelligence, force planning, readiness assessment, and deployment applications that battlefield commanders require to effectively plan and execute joint military operations.
== History ==
GCCS evolved from earlier predecessors such as TBMCS (Theater Battle Management Core Systems), Joint Operations Tactical System (JOTS), and Joint Maritime Command Information System (JMCIS). It fulfilled requirements for technological, procedural and security improvements to the aging Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS) plus its TEMPEST requirement of Cold War defenses from wiretapping and electromagnetic signal interception that include physical (special wire and cabinet shielding, double locks) and operational (special access passes and passwords) measures. On August 30, 1996, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) officially decommissioned WWMCCS and the Joint Staff declared the Global Command and Control System (GCCS) as the joint command and control system of record.
== Applications, Functionality ==
GCCS systems comprise various data processing and web services which are used by many applications supporting combat operations, troop/force movements (JOPES), intelligence analysis and production, targeting, ground weapons and radar analysis, and terrain and weather analysis. Some next-generation applications designed for GCCS may support collaboration using chat systems, newsgroups, and email. (See JOPES, Mob/ODEE, etc.)
GCCS supports six mission areas (operations, mobilization, deployment, employment, sustainment, and intelligence) through eight functional areas: threat identification and assessment, strategy planning aids, course of action development, execution planning, implementation, monitoring, risk analysis, and a common tactical picture.
== Connectivity ==
GCCS may use NIPRNet, SIPRNet, JWICS, or other IP based networks for connectivity. In some installations, GCCS aggregates over 94 different sources of data.
== Components/Variants ==
GCCS-A Army
GCCS-AF Air Force
GCCS-I Intelligence
GCCS-J Marine Corps, Joint Forces
GCCS-M (Maritime) (Navy, Coast Guard)
The Navy's life cycle development of what is currently referred to as the Global Command and Control System, was and continues to be evolutionary in nature and will probably never result in a permanent system. From the early 1980s when SPAWARs PD-40 VADM Jerry O. Tuttle's Joint Operations Tactical System was the premier system, through the tenure of RADM John Gauss's Joint Maritime Command Information System (JMCIS), the final product would be realized as the Global Command and Control System (GCCS), introduced conceptually by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).
== See also ==
Keyhole Markup Language (Enables GCSS Fusion)
Worldwide Military Command and Control System
== References ==
== External links ==
DISA - JOPES Functional Training Archived 2023-06-03 at the Wayback Machine
GCSS - Army Training
Global Command and Control System - Joint (GCCS-J) Archived 2023-06-03 at the Wayback Machine
GCSS-JE DISA Fact Sheet Archived 2023-06-03 at the Wayback Machine | Wikipedia/Global_Command_and_Control_System |
The NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) was formed in 1996 by merging the SHAPE Technical Centre (STC) in The Hague, Netherlands; and the NATO Communications and Information Systems Agency (NACISA) in Brussels, Belgium. NC3A was part of the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Organization (NC3O) and reported to the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Board (NC3B). In July 2012, NC3A was merged into the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA).
The agency had around 800 staff, of which around 500 were located in The Hague and 300 in Brussels. Broadly speaking, the Netherlands staff were responsible for scientific research, development and experimentation, while the Belgian staff provided technical project management and acquisition support for NATO procurement programmes.
The Agency was organised using a balanced matrix model, with four main areas: the Production area, Sponsor Accounts, Core Segment and Resources Division. The Production area consisted of nine capability area teams (CATs) with various areas of expertise. The Sponsor Accounts area had Directors for each of the Agency's major sponsors, providing a single point of contact with the Agency. The Core Segment comprised a Chief Operating Officer, Chief Technology Officer and Director of Acquisition, who ensured coherency of the Agency's business, technical and acquisition processes respectively. The Resources Division handled Agency operations such as Human Resources, Finance, Graphics, Building Maintenance, etc. Since 2004, the Agency used the PRINCE2 and PMI project management methodologies.
General Manager Georges D'hollander and Deputy General Manager Kevin Scheid split their time between their offices in The Hague and Brussels. Staff were recruited directly from the 28 NATO nations, the majority holding degrees at the Masters level or above. The working language of the Agency was English.
NC3A's prime customers were Allied Command Transformation and Allied Command Operations, as well as the NATO Air Command and Control System (ACCS) Management Agency (NACMA), NATO Airborne Early Warning (NAEW) Force Command and individual NATO nations. Its annual budget was roughly 100 million euros. Major growth areas were the NATO Network Enabled Capability (NNEC), Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) and the Alliance Ground Surveillance and Reconnaissance (AGSR) projects. The Agency traditionally had a strong emphasis on prototyping and aimed to follow a spiral development model.
The agency focused on improving C4ISR interoperability between nations and supporting major acquisition programmes while complementing, not competing with, national research and development.
== References ==
== External links ==
NCIA official web site
NCI Agency Jobs
The Distributed Networked Battle Labs
NACMA official web site
"NATO Code of Best Practice for C2 Assessment" (PDF). (1.68 MiB) | Wikipedia/NATO_Communications_and_Information_Systems_Agency |
The Worldwide Military Command and Control System, or WWMCCS , was a military command and control system implemented for the United States Department of Defense. It was created in the days following the Cuban Missile Crisis. WWMCCS was a complex of systems that encompassed the elements of warning, communications, data collection and processing, executive decision-making tools and supporting facilities. It was decommissioned in 1996 and replaced by the Global Command and Control System.
== Background ==
The worldwide deployment of U.S. forces required extensive long-range communications systems that can maintain contact with all of those forces at all times. To enable national command authorities to exercise effective command and control of their widely dispersed forces, a communications system was established to enable those authorities to disseminate their decisions to all subordinate units, under any conditions, within minutes.
Such a command and control system, WWMCCS, was created by Department of Defense Directive S-5100.30, titled "Concept of Operations of the Worldwide Military Command and Control System," which set the overall policies for the integration of the various command and control elements that were rapidly coming into being in the early 1960s.
As initially established, WWMCCS was an arrangement of personnel, equipment (including Automated Data Processing equipment and hardware), communications, facilities, and procedures employed in planning, directing, coordinating, and controlling the operational activities of U.S. military forces.
This system was intended to provide the President and the Secretary of Defense with a means to receive warning and intelligence information, assign military missions, provide direction to the unified and specified commands, and support the Joint Chiefs of Staff in carrying out their responsibilities. The directive establishing the system stressed five essential system characteristics: survivability, flexibility, compatibility, standardization, and economy.
== Problems ==
Despite the original intent, WWMCCS never realized the full potential that had been envisioned for the system. The services' approach to WWMCCS depended upon the availability of both technology and funding to meet individual requirements, so no truly integrated system emerged. Indeed, during the 1960s, WWMCCS consisted of a loosely knit federation of nearly 160 different computer systems, using 30 different general purpose software systems at 81 locations. One study claimed that WWMCCS was "more a federation of self-contained subsystems than an integrated set of capabilities."
The problems created by these diverse subsystems were apparently responsible for several well-publicized failures of command and control during the latter part of the 1960s.
During hostilities between Israel and Egypt in June 1967, the USS Liberty, a naval reconnaissance ship, was ordered by the JCS to move further away from the coastlines of the belligerents. Five high-priority messages to that effect were sent to the Liberty, but none arrived for more than 13 hours. By that time the ship had become the victim of an attack by Israeli aircraft and patrol boats that killed 34 Americans.
A congressional committee investigating this incident concluded, "The circumstances surrounding the misrouting, loss and delays of those messages constitute one of the most incredible failures of communications in the history of the Department of Defense."
Furthermore, the demands for communications security (COMSEC) frustrated upgrades and remote site computer and wiring installation. TEMPEST requirements of the Cold War day required both defense from wire tapping and electromagnetic signal intercept, special wire and cabinet shielding, physical security, double locks, and special access passes and passwords.
== Growth and development ==
The result of these various failures was a growth in the centralized management of WWMCCS, occurring at about the same time that changing technology brought in computers and electronic displays.
For example, 27 command centers were equipped with standard Honeywell 6000 computers and common programs so there could be a rapid exchange of information among the command centers.
An Assistant Secretary of Defense for Telecommunications was established, and a 1971 DOD directive gave that person the primary staff responsibility for all WWMCCS-related systems. That directive also designated the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the official responsible for the operation of WWMCCS.
The Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS) Intercomputer Network (WIN) was a centrally managed information processing and exchange network consisting of large-scale computer systems at geographically separate locations, interconnected by a dedicated wide-band, packet-switched communications subsystem. The architecture of the WIN consists of WWMCCS-standard AN/FYQ-65(V) host computers and their WIN-dedicated Honeywell 6661 Datanets and Datanet 8's connected through Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) C/30 and C/30E packet switching computers called Packet Switching Nodes (PSNs) and wideband, encrypted, dedicated, data communications circuits.
== Modernization ==
By the early 1980s, it was time to modernize this system. The replacement, proposed by the Deputy Secretary of Defense, was an evolutionary upgrade program known as the WWMCCS Information System [WIS], which provided a range of capabilities appropriate for the diverse needs of the WWMCCS sites.
During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, WWMCCS performed flawlessly 24 hours a day, seven days a week, providing critical data to combat commanders worldwide in deploying, relocating and sustaining allied forces.
However, WWMCCS was dependent on a proprietary mainframe environment. Information cannot be easily entered or accessed by users, and the software cannot be quickly modified to accommodate changing mission requirements. Operational flexibility and adaptability are limited, since most of the information and software are stored on the mainframe. The system architecture is unresponsive, inflexible, and expensive to maintain.
This new WWMCCS Information System configuration continued to be refined until 1992 when the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence terminated this latest attempt to modernize the WWMCCS ADP equipment.
The continuing need to meet established requirements which couldn't be fulfilled, coupled with a growing dissatisfaction among users with the existing WWMCCS system, drove the conceptualizing of a new system, called GCCS.
On August 30, 1996, Lieutenant General Albert J. Edmonds, Director, Defense Information Systems Agency, officially deactivated the Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS) Intercomputer Network (WIN). Concurrently, the Joint Staff declared the Global Command and Control System (GCCS) as the joint command and control system of record.
== Computer hardware ==
=== Honeywell 6000 Series ===
The Air Force Systems Command’s Electronic Systems Division awarded a fixed-price, fixed-quantity contract to Honeywell Information Systems, Inc. for 46 million dollars on 15 October 1971. The contract included 35 Honeywell 6000 series systems, some having multiple processors. System models from the H-6060 through the H-6080 were acquired. They ran a specially secured variant of Honeywell’s General Comprehensive Operating Supervisor (GCOS), and for years the vendor maintained and enhanced both the commercial GCOS and the "WWMCCS" GCOS in parallel. Digital transmissions were secured (aka 'scrambled') using Secure Telephone Unit (STU) or Secure Telephone Element modems.
== Network ==
=== Prototype WWMCCS Network ===
The Joint Chiefs of Staff issued JCS Memorandum 593-71, "Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation Program in Support of the Worldwide Military Command and Control Standard System." in September 1971. The joint chief memorandum proposed what they called a Prototype WWMCCS Intercomputer Network (PWIN) pronounced as pee-win. The PWIN was created to test the operational benefits of networking WWMCCS. If the prototype proved successful, it would provide a baseline for an operational network. These experiments were conducted from 1971-1977.
PWIN included three sites at the Pentagon, Reston, Virginia and Norfolk, Virginia. The sites included Honeywell H6000 computers, Datanet 355 front end processors and local computer terminals for system users. Connections were provided for remote terminals using microwave, cable, satellite, or landline connections. The PWIN network was based on technology supplied by BBN Technologies, and experience gained from the ARPANET. Honeywell H716 computers, used as Interface Message Processors (IMPs) provided packet switching to network the PWIN sites together. The TELNET protocol was made available to the WWMCCS community for the first time to access remote sites.
The first comprehensive test plan for PWIN was approved on 29 October 1973. On 4 September 1974, the Joint Chiefs recommended that the prototype network be expanded from three sites to six. The recommendation was approved on 4 December 1974. The new sites included the Alternate National Military Command Center; the Military Airlift Command at Scott AFB; and the US Readiness Command headquarters at MacDill AFB.
Testing was conducted in 1976, called Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. Experiment 1, held in September took a crisis scenario borrowed from a previous exercise. Experiment 1 provided a controlled environment to test PWIN. Experiment 2 was held in October, during an exercise called Elegant Eagle 76. Experiment 2 was less controlled, so as to provide information about PWIN being able to handle user demands during a crisis. The results of the experiments were mixed.
Another test called Prime Target 77 was conducted during the spring of 1977. It added two new sites and had even more problems than Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. Ultimately, operational requirements trumped the problems and development of an operational network was recommended during 1977. The Joint Chiefs of Staff approved PWIN’s operational requirements on 18 July 1977. PWIN expanded to include a number of other WWMCCS sites and become an operational WWMCCS Intercomputer Network (WIN). Six initial WIN sites in 1977 increased to 20 sites by 1981.
== References ==
Pearson, David E., The World Wide Military Command and Control System, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press., 2000.
== External links ==
WWMCCS Worldwide Military Command and Control System (globalsecurity.org)
C2 Policy Evolution at the U.S. Department of Defense, David Dick and John D. Comerford
The Worldwide Military Command and Control System: Evolution and Effectiveness, David E. Pearson
Annotated bibliography on nuclear command and control from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues | Wikipedia/Worldwide_Military_Command_and_Control_System |
The Empty Fort Strategy involves using reverse psychology to deceive the enemy into thinking that an empty location is full of traps and ambushes, and therefore induce the enemy to retreat. It is listed as the 32nd of the Thirty-Six Stratagems. Some examples are listed in the following sections.
== Cao Cao ==
According to the Sanguozhi, in 195, the Empty Fort Strategy was used by the warlord Cao Cao against his rival Lü Bu in one incident at Chengshi County (乘氏縣; southwest of present-day Juye County, Shandong). In the summer of that year, Lü Bu went to Dongmin County (東緡縣; northeast of present-day Jinxiang County, Shandong) and gathered about 10,000 troops to attack Cao Cao. At the time, Cao Cao had very few soldiers with him, but he set up an ambush and managed to defeat Lü Bu.
The Wei Shu (魏書) gave a more detailed account of the ambush. Cao Cao had sent most of his troops out to collect grain so he had less than 1,000 men available in his base, which could not be well defended with so few men. When Lü Bu showed up, Cao Cao ordered all his available soldiers to defend the base and even ordered women to stand guard on the walls. To the west of Cao Cao's base was a dyke, and to its south was a deep forest. Lü Bu suspected that there was an ambush, so he told his men, "Cao Cao is very cunning. We must not fall into his ambush." He then led his troops to 10 li (Chinese miles) south of Cao Cao's base and set up his camp there. The next day, Lü Bu came to attack Cao Cao, and by then, Cao Cao had really set up an ambush near the dyke with the soldiers that had returned from gathering the grain. Lü Bu's forces fell into the ambush and were defeated.
The "ambush" mentioned in the Sanguozhi refers to the ambush that Lü Bu's forces fell into a trap on the second day, as described in the Wei Shu. The incident is also mentioned in Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian. However, the Zizhi Tongjian account, which combined the Sanguozhi and Wei Shu accounts, did not mention the events on the first day – which were about Cao Cao sending all his available soldiers to defend the base and ordering women to stand guard on the walls.
=== Debate ===
Yi Zhongtian, a history professor from Xiamen University, commented on this incident in his book Pin San Guo (品三国) in response to criticism from Fudan University historian Zhou Zhenhe and an online commentator known as "Hongchayangweili" (红茶杨威利). Earlier on, Yi referred to this incident when he said in a lecture on the television programme Lecture Room that "Cao Cao's rights to the invention of the Empty Fort Strategy had been stolen from him". Zhou claimed that the Empty Fort Strategy had never been used in history before so there were no "rights" to its invention; the online commentator argued that the incident does not count as a use of the Empty Fort Strategy.
Yi defended his claim and said that the incident in 195 is valid because of the circumstances under which it was used, which were very similar to the incidents involving Zhao Yun and Wen Ping (see the sections below). Cao Cao was trying to confuse Lü Bu by making use of the geographical features (the "deep forest") and by ordering women to stand guard on the walls, so as to make Lü Bu suspect that he had set up an ambush in the "deep forest" and lure Lü Bu to attack his "weakly defended" base by deploying women as soldiers to show how "desperate" he was to set up a defence. The ploy worked because it made Lü Bu hesitate when he wanted to attack. Cao Cao had bought sufficient time to set up a real ambush, and he defeated Lü Bu when he came to attack again on the following day.
== Zhao Yun ==
The Zhao Yun Biezhuan (趙雲別傳; Unofficial Biography of Zhao Yun) mentioned an incident about Zhao Yun, a general under the warlord Liu Bei, using the Empty Fort Strategy during the Battle of Han River in 219, fought between Liu Bei and his rival Cao Cao as part of the Hanzhong Campaign.
This incident took place after Cao Cao's general Xiahou Yuan was defeated and killed in action at the earlier Battle of Mount Dingjun. Cao Cao's forces were transporting food supplies to the north hill when Liu Bei's general Huang Zhong, heard about it and led a group of soldiers, including some of Zhao Yun's men, to seize the supplies. When Huang Zhong did not return after a long time, Zhao Yun led tens of horsemen in search of Huang. Zhao Yun's search party encountered Cao Cao's forces and engaged them in battle but were outnumbered and was forced to retreat back to camp with Cao Cao's men in pursuit. Zhao Yun's subordinate Zhang Yi wanted to close the gates of the camp to prevent the enemy from entering. However, Zhao Yun gave orders for the gates to be opened, all flags and banners to be hidden, and the war drums silenced. Cao Cao's forces thought that there was an ambush inside Zhao Yun's camp so they withdrew. Just then, Zhao Yun launched a counterattack and his men beat the war drums loudly and fired arrows at the enemy. Cao Cao's soldiers were shocked and thrown into disarray. Some of them trampled on each other while fleeing in panic, and many of them fell into the Han River in their haste to get away and drowned. When Liu Bei came to inspect the camp later, he praised Zhao Yun and held a banquet to celebrate his victory.
== Wen Ping ==
The Weilüe mentioned an incident about the Empty Fort Strategy being used by a general Wen Ping during a battle between the forces of the states of Cao Wei and Eastern Wu in the Three Kingdoms period. It is not clear which battle this was, but it could have been the Battle of Jiangling of 223.
The Wu leader Sun Quan led thousands of troops to attack a fortress defended by the Wei general Wen Ping. At the time, there were heavy rains and many fortifications were damaged. The civilians in the fortress had retreated to the fields further back so they could not help with repairs to the fortifications, and some repairs were still uncompleted when Sun Quan arrived with his men. When Wen Ping heard that Sun Quan had arrived, he was unsure of what to do, but eventually formulated a plan to deceive him. He ordered everyone in the fortress to stay under cover while he hid behind the walls, creating an illusion of an empty fortress. As Wen Ping expected, Sun Quan became suspicious and he said to his subordinates, "The northerners regard this man (Wen Ping) as a loyal subject, which is why they entrusted him with defending this commandery. Now, as I approach, he does not make any move. It must be either that he has something up his sleeve or that his reinforcements have arrived." Sun Quan then withdrew his forces.
The historian Pei Songzhi commented that the Weilüe account did not match the original account in the Sanguozhi. The Sanguozhi mentioned: "Sun Quan led 50,000 troops to besiege Wen Ping at Shiyang (石陽). The situation was very critical but Wen Ping put up a firm defence. Sun Quan withdrew his forces after more than 20 days, and Wen Ping led his men to attack them as they were retreating and defeated them."
== Zhuge Liang ==
One of the best known examples of the use of the Empty Fort Strategy is a fictional incident in the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which romanticises historical events in the late Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period. This event took place during the first of a series of campaigns – known as Zhuge Liang's Northern Expeditions – led by Shu Han's chancellor Zhuge Liang to attack Shu's rival state, Cao Wei.
In the first Northern Expedition, Zhuge Liang's efforts to conquer the Wei city Chang'an were undermined by the Shu defeat at the Battle of Jieting. With the loss of Jieting (present-day Qin'an County, Gansu), Zhuge Liang's current location, Xicheng (西城; believed to be located 120 li southwest of present-day Tianshui, Gansu), became exposed and was in danger of being attacked by the Wei army. In the face of imminent danger, with the main Shu army deployed elsewhere and only a small group of soldiers in Xicheng with him, Zhuge Liang came up with a ploy to hold off the approaching enemy.
Zhuge Liang ordered all the gates to be opened and instructed soldiers disguised as civilians to sweep the roads while he sat on the viewing platform above the gates with two page boys by his side. He put on a calm and composed image by playing his guqin. When the Wei army led by Sima Yi arrived, Sima was surprised by the sight before him and he ordered a retreat after suspecting that there was an ambush inside the city. Zhuge Liang later explained that his strategy was a risky one. It worked because Zhuge Liang had a reputation for being a careful military tactician who hardly took risks, so Sima Yi came to the conclusion that there was certainly an ambush upon seeing Zhuge's relaxed composure.
=== As a topic of academic study ===
Christopher Cotton, an economist from the Queen's University, and Chang Liu, a graduate student, used game theory to model the bluffing strategies used in the Chinese military legends of Li Guang and his 100 horsemen (144 BC), and Zhuge Liang and the Empty City (228 AD). In the case of these military legends, the researchers found that bluffing arose naturally as the optimal strategy in each situation. The findings were published under the title 100 Horsemen and the empty city: A game theoretic examination of deception in Chinese military legend in the Journal of Peace Research in 2011.
=== Historicity ===
The basis for this story in Romance of the Three Kingdoms is an anecdote shared by one Guo Chong (郭沖) in the early Jin dynasty (266–420). In the fifth century, Pei Songzhi added the anecdote as an annotation to Zhuge Liang's biography in the third-century historical text Sanguozhi. The anecdote is as follows: Zhuge Liang garrisoned at Yangping (陽平; around present-day Hanzhong, Shaanxi) and ordered Wei Yan to lead the troops east. He left behind only 10,000 men to defend Yangping. Sima Yi led 200,000 troops to attack Zhuge Liang and he took a shortcut, bypassing Wei Yan's army and arriving at a place 60 li away from Zhuge Liang's location. Upon inspection, Sima Yi realised that Zhuge Liang's city was weakly defended. Zhuge Liang knew that Sima Yi was near, so he thought of recalling Wei Yan's army back to counter Sima Yi, but it was too late already and his men were worried and terrified. Zhuge Liang remained calm and instructed his men to hide all flags and banners and silence the war drums. He then ordered all the gates to be opened and told his men to sweep and dust the ground. Sima Yi knew that impression that Zhuge Liang was a cautious and prudent man, and he was baffled by the sight before him and suspected that there was an ambush. He then withdrew his troops. The following day, Zhuge Liang clapped his hands, laughed, and told an aide that Sima Yi thought that there was an ambush and had withdrawn. Later, his scouts returned and reported that Sima Yi had indeed retreated. Sima Yi was very upset when he later found out about the ruse.
After adding the anecdote to Zhuge Liang's biography, Pei Songzhi wrote a short commentary as follows: When Zhuge Liang garrisoned at Yangping, Sima Yi was serving as the Area Commander of Jing Province and he was stationed at Wancheng (宛城; present-day Wancheng District, Nanyang, Henan). He only came into confrontation with Zhuge Liang in Guanzhong after Cao Zhen's death (in 231). It was unlikely that the Wei government ordered Sima Yi to lead an army from Wancheng to attack Shu via Xicheng (西城; present-day Ankang, Shaanxi) because there were heavy rains at the time (which obstructed passage). There were no battles fought at Yangping before and after that period of time. Going by Guo Chong's anecdote, if Sima Yi did lead 200,000 troops to attack Zhuge Liang, knew that Zhuge Liang's position was weakly defended, and suspected that there was an ambush, he could have ordered his troops to surround Zhuge Liang's position instead of retreating. Wei Yan's biography mentioned: "Each time Wei Yan followed Zhuge Liang to battle, he would request to command a separate detachment of about 10,000 men and take a different route and rendezvous with Zhuge Liang's main force at Tong Pass. Zhuge Liang rejected the plan, and Wei Yan felt that Zhuge Liang was a coward and complained that his talent was not put to good use." As mentioned in Wei Yan's biography, Zhuge Liang never agreed to allow Wei Yan to command a separate detachment of thousands of troops. If Guo Chong's anecdote was true, how was it possible that Zhuge Liang would allow Wei Yan to lead a larger army ahead while he followed behind with a smaller army? Guo Chong's anecdote was endorsed by the Prince of Fufeng (Sima Jun, a son of Sima Yi). However, the story puts Sima Yi in a negative light, and it does not make sense for a son to approve a story which demeans his father. We can tell that this anecdote is fake after reading the sentence "the Prince of Fufeng endorsed Guo Chong's anecdote".
Evidence from historical sources indicate that Sima Yi was indeed not in Jieting at the time. The Battle of Jieting took place in 228 but Sima Yi's biography in the Book of Jin claimed that in 227, Sima Yi was stationed at Wancheng in the north of Jing Province. He led an army to suppress a rebellion by Meng Da at Xincheng (新城; in present-day northwestern Hubei), and returned to Wancheng after his victory. Later, he went to the imperial capital Luoyang to meet the Wei emperor Cao Rui, who consulted him on some affairs before ordering him to return to Wancheng. Sima Yi only engaged Zhuge Liang in battle after 230.
Yi Zhongtian, a professor from Xiamen University, commented on this incident in his book Pin San Guo (品三国). He pointed out three problems in the story:
Sima Yi did not dare to attack because he feared that there was an ambush inside the fortress. If so, he could have sent recces to scout ahead and check if there was really an ambush.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms provided this description: "(Sima Yi) saw Zhuge Liang sitting at the top of the gates, smiling and playing his guqin and being oblivious to his surroundings." Based on this description, the distance between Sima Yi and Zhuge Liang must have been very short, or else Sima would not have been able to observe Zhuge's actions so clearly. If so, Sima Yi could have ordered an archer to kill Zhuge Liang.
Both Guo Chong's anecdote and Romance of the Three Kingdoms said that Sima Yi's army was superior to Zhuge Liang's in terms of size: Guo Chong's anecdote stated that Sima Yi had 200,000 men while Zhuge Liang had 10,000 men; Romance of the Three Kingdoms mentioned that Sima Yi had 150,000 men while Zhuge Liang had only 2,500 men. If so, Sima Yi could have ordered his troops to surround Zhuge Liang's fortress first, and then wait for an opportunity to attack.
== Li Yuan ==
According to historical sources such as the Old Book of Tang, New Book of Tang and Zizhi Tongjian, Li Yuan, the founding emperor of the Tang dynasty, used a similar strategy in 618 CE in a battle against the Göktürks before he started his rebellion against the Sui dynasty. In early 618, Li Yuan was still a general in the Sui army and was based in Jinyang (晉陽; present-day Taiyuan, Shanxi). When he heard rumours that Emperor Yang of Sui wanted to execute him, he started making preparations for a rebellion against the Sui dynasty to save himself. In May 618, the Göktürks allied with the warlord Liu Wuzhuo to attack the Sui dynasty in order to gain territory. Jinyang became one of their targets.
Around the time, Li Yuan had just arrested Wang Wei (王威) and Gao Junya (高君雅), two officials sent by Emperor Yang to spy on him. He was also still busy plotting his rebellion. Moreover, he was also not prepared for a battle against the Göktürks because of two reasons. Firstly, Göktürk cavalrymen were so powerful that Li Yuan was not confident that his troops could defeat them. Secondly, even if Li Yuan defeated them in battle, he would nonetheless suffer significant losses that would undermine his rebellion against the Sui dynasty.
Li Yuan thus ordered his soldiers to hide in Jinyang and leave the city gates wide open. Shibi Khan, leading a force of Göktürk cavalrymen, saw that the city appeared to be deserted and feared that there might be an ambush, so he did not enter. Li Yuan then ordered his son Li Shimin and subordinate Pei Ji to make their troops beat war drums loudly in the empty camps they had set up earlier, so as to create an illusion that reinforcements had arrived in Jinyang. Shibi Khan was so frightened that he retreated after two days.
== Battle of Mikatagahara ==
Many traditions say that in 1572, during the Sengoku Period in Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu used the tactic during his retreat in the Battle of Mikatagahara. He commanded that the fortress gates remain open, and that braziers be lit to guide his retreating army back to safety. One officer beat a large war drum, seeking to add encouragement to the returning men of a noble, courageous retreat. When Takeda forces led by Baba Nobuharu and Yamagata Masakage heard the drums, and saw the braziers and open gates, they assumed that Tokugawa was planning a trap, and so they stopped and made camp for the night. The authenticity of this story has been disputed by some, however, as it appears to be copied straight from Zhuge Liang's story, perhaps in an attempt to embellish Tokugawa's career.
== References ==
Chen, Shou. Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi).
Fang, Xuanling. Book of Jin (Jin Shu).
Liu, Xu. Old Book of Tang (Jiu Tang Shu).
Luo, Guanzhong. Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi).
Ouyang, Xiu and Song Qi. New Book of Tang (Xin Tang Shu).
Pei, Songzhi. Annotations to Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi zhu).
Sima, Guang. Zizhi Tongjian. | Wikipedia/Empty_Fort_Strategy |
An airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) system is an airborne radar early warning system designed to detect aircraft, ships, vehicles, missiles and other incoming projectiles at long ranges, as well as performing command and control of the battlespace in aerial engagements by informing and directing friendly fighter and attack aircraft. AEW&C units are also used to carry out aerial surveillance over ground and maritime targets, and frequently perform battle management command and control (BMC2). When used at altitude, the radar system on AEW&C aircraft allows the operators to detect, track and prioritize targets and identify friendly aircraft from hostile ones in real-time and from much farther away than ground-based radars. Like ground-based radars, AEW&C systems can be detected and targeted by opposing forces, but due to aircraft mobility and extended sensor range, they are much less vulnerable to counter-attacks than ground systems.
AEW&C aircraft are used for both defensive and offensive air operations, and serve air forces in the same role as what the combat information center is to naval warships, in addition to being a highly mobile and powerful radar platform. So useful and advantageous is it to have such aircraft operating at a high altitude, that some navies also operate AEW&C aircraft for their warships at sea, either coastal- or carrier-based and on both fixed-wing and rotary-wing platforms. In the case of the United States Navy, the Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye AEW&C aircraft is assigned to its supercarriers to protect them and augment their onboard command information centers (CICs). The designation "airborne early warning" (AEW) was used for earlier similar aircraft used in the less-demanding radar picket role, such as the Fairey Gannet AEW.3 and Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star, and continues to be used by the RAF for its Sentry AEW1, while AEW&C (airborne early warning and control) emphasizes the command and control capabilities that may not be present on smaller or simpler radar picket aircraft. AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) is the name of the specific system installed in the American Boeing E-3 Sentry and Japanese Boeing E-767 AEW&C airframes, but is often used as a general synonym for AEW&C.
== General characteristics ==
Modern AEW&C systems can detect aircraft from up to 400 km (220 nmi) away, well out of range of most surface-to-air missiles. One AEW&C aircraft flying at 9,000 m (30,000 ft) can cover an area of 312,000 km2 (120,000 sq mi). Three such aircraft in overlapping orbits can cover the whole of Central Europe. AEW&C system indicates close and far proximity range on threats and targets, help extend the range of their sensors, and make offensive aircraft harder to track by avoiding the need for them to keep their own radar active, which the enemy can detect. Systems also communicate with friendly aircraft, vectoring fighters towards hostile aircraft or any unidentified flying object.
== History of development ==
After having developed Chain Home—the first ground-based early-warning radar detection system—in the 1930s, the British developed a radar set that could be carried on an aircraft for what they termed "Air Controlled Interception". The intention was to cover the North West approaches where German long range Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor aircraft were threatening shipping. A Vickers Wellington bomber (serial R1629) was fitted with a rotating antenna array. It was tested for use against aerial targets and then for possible use against German E boats. Another radar equipped Wellington with a different installation was used to direct Bristol Beaufighters toward Heinkel He 111s, which were air-launching V-1 flying bombs.
In February 1944, the US Navy ordered the development of a radar system that could be carried aloft in an aircraft under Project Cadillac. A prototype system was built and flown in August on a modified TBM Avenger torpedo bomber. Tests were successful, with the system being able to detect low flying formations at a range greater than 100 miles (160 km). US Navy then ordered production of the TBM-3W, the first production AEW aircraft to enter service. TBM-3Ws fitted with the AN/APS-20 radar entered service in March 1945, with 27 eventually constructed. It was also recognised that a larger land-based aircraft would be attractive, thus, under the Cadillac II program, multiple Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress bombers were also outfitted with the same radar.
The Lockheed WV and EC-121 Warning Star, which first flew in 1949, served widely with US Air Force and US Navy. It provided the main AEW coverage for US forces during the Vietnam war. It remained operational until replaced with the E-3 AWACS. Developed roughly in parallel, N-class blimps were also used as AEW aircraft, filling gaps in radar coverage for the continental US, their tremendous endurance of over 200 hours being a major asset in an AEW aircraft. Following a crash, the US Navy opted to discontinue lighter than air operations in 1962.
In 1958, the Soviet Tupolev Design Bureau was ordered to design an AEW aircraft. After determining that the projected radar instrumentation would not fit in a Tupolev Tu-95 or a Tupolev Tu-116, the decision was made to use the more capacious Tupolev Tu-114 instead. This solved the problems with cooling and operator space that existed with the narrower Tu-95 and Tu-116 fuselage. To meet range requirements, production examples were fitted with an air-to-air refueling probe. The resulting system, the Tupolev Tu-126, entered service in 1965 with the Soviet Air Forces and remained in service until replaced by the Beriev A-50 in 1984.
During the Cold war, United Kingdom deployed a substantial AEW capability, initially with American Douglas AD-4W Skyraiders, designated Skyraider AEW.1, which in turn were replaced by the Fairey Gannet AEW.3, using the same AN/APS-20 radar. With the retirement of conventional aircraft carriers, the Gannet was withdrawn and the Royal Air Force (RAF) installed the radars from the Gannets on Avro Shackleton MR.2 airframes, redesignated Shackleton AEW.2. To replace the Shackleton AEW.2, an AEW variant of the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod, known as the Nimrod AEW3, was ordered in 1974. After a protracted and problematic development, this was cancelled in 1986, and seven E-3Ds, designated Sentry AEW.1 in RAF service, were purchased instead.
The US Defense Department is considering options to move the air moving target indicator (AMTI) mission component from AWACS aircraft to space-based platforms. The space-based sensor is already in orbit and in testing phase.
== Current systems ==
Many countries have developed their own AEW&C systems, although the Boeing E-3 Sentry, E-7A and Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye and Gulfstream/IAI EL/W-2085 are the most common systems worldwide.
=== Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) ===
Boeing produces a specific system with a "rotodome" rotating radome that incorporates Westinghouse (now Northrop Grumman) radar. It is mounted on either the E-3 Sentry aircraft (Boeing 707) or more recently the Boeing E-767 (Boeing 767), the latter only being used by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force.
When AWACS first entered service it represented a major advance in capability, being the first AEW to use a pulse-Doppler radar, which allowed it to track targets normally lost in ground clutter. Previously, low-flying aircraft could only be readily tracked over water. The AWACS features a three-dimensional radar that measures azimuth, range, and elevation simultaneously; the AN/APY-2 unit installed upon the E-767 and later E-3 models has superior surveillance capability over water compared to the AN/APY-1 system on the earlier E-3 models.
=== E-2 Hawkeye ===
The E-2 Hawkeye was a specially designed AEW aircraft. Upon its entry to service in 1965, it was initially plagued by technical issues, causing a (later reversed) cancellation. Procurement resumed after efforts to improve reliability, such as replacement of the original rotary drum computer used for processing radar information by a Litton L-304 digital computer. In addition to purchases by the US Navy, the E-2 Hawkeye has been sold to the armed forces of Egypt, France, Israel, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.
The latest E-2 version is the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, which features the new AN/APY-9 radar. The APY-9 radar has been speculated to be capable of detecting fighter-sized stealth aircraft, which are typically optimized against high frequencies like Ka, Ku, X, C and parts of the S-bands. Historically, UHF radars had resolution and detection issues that made them ineffective for accurate targeting and fire control; Northrop Grumman and Lockheed claim that the APY-9 has solved these shortcomings in the APY-9 using advanced electronic scanning and high digital computing power via space/time adaptive processing.
=== Beriev A-50 ===
The Russian Aerospace Forces are currently using approximately 3-5 Beriev A-50 and A-50U "Shmel" in the AEW role. The "Mainstay" is based on the Ilyushin Il-76 airframe, with a large non-rotating disk radome on the rear fuselage. These replaced the 12 Tupolev Tu-126 that filled the role previously. The A-50 and A-50U will eventually be replaced by the Beriev A-100, which features an AESA array in the radome and is based on the updated Il-476.
=== KJ-2000 ===
In May 1997, Russia and Israel agreed to jointly fulfill an order from China to develop and deliver an early warning system. China reportedly ordered one Phalcon for $250 million, which entailed retrofitting a Russian-made Ilyushin-76 cargo plane [also incorrectly reported as a Beriev A-50 Mainstay] with advanced Elta electronic, computer, radar and communications systems. Beijing was expected to acquire several Phalcon AEW systems, and reportedly could buy at least three more [and possibly up to eight] of these systems, the prototype of which was planned for testing beginning in 2000. In July 2000, the US pressured Israel to back out of the $1 billion agreement to sell China four Phalcon phased-array radar systems. Following the cancelled A-50I/Phalcon deal, China turned to indigenous solutions. The Phalcon radar and other electronic systems were taken off from the unfinished Il-76, and the airframe was handed to China via Russia in 2002. The Chinese AWACS has a unique phased array radar (PAR) carried in a round radome. Unlike the US AWACS aircraft, which rotate their rotodomes to give a 360 degree coverage, the radar antenna of the Chinese AWACS does not rotate. Instead, three PAR antenna modules are placed in a triangular configuration inside the round radome to provide a 360 degree coverage. The installation of equipment at the Il-76 began in late 2002 aircraft by Xian aircraft industries (Xian Aircraft Industry Co.). The first flight of an airplane KJ-2000 made in November 2003. All four machines will be equipped with this type. The last to be introduced into service the Chinese Air Force until the end of 2007. China is also developing a carrier-based AEW&C, Xian KJ-600 via Y-7 derived Xian JZY-01 testbed.
=== EL/W-2085 AEW&C ===
The EL/W-2085 is an airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) multi-band radar system developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and its subsidiary Elta Systems of Israel. Its primary objective is to provide intelligence to maintain air superiority and conduct surveillance. The system is currently in service with Israel, Italy, and Singapore.
Instead of using a rotodome, a moving radar was found on some AEW&C aircraft, and the EL/W-2085 used an active electronically scanned array (AESA) – an active phased array radar. This radar consists of an array of transmit/receive (T/R) modules that allow a beam to be electronically steered, making a physically rotating rotodome unnecessary.
AESA radars operate on a pseudorandom set of frequencies and also have very short scanning rates, which makes them difficult to detect and jam. Up to 1000 targets can be tracked simultaneously to a range of 243 mi (450 km), while at the same time, multitudes of air-to-air interceptions or air-to-surface (including maritime) attacks can be guided simultaneously. The radar equipment of the Israeli AEW&C consists of each L-band radar on the left and right sides of the fuselage and each S-band antenna in the nose and tail. The phased array allows aircraft positions on operator screens to be updated every 2–4 seconds rather than every 10 seconds, as is the case on the rotodome AWACS.
ELTA was the first company to introduce an Active Electronically Scanned Array Airborne (AESA) Early Warning Aircraft and implement advanced mission aircraft using efficient, high-performance business jet platforms.
=== Netra AEW&CS ===
In 2003, the Indian Air Force (IAF) and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) began a study of requirements for developing an Airborne Early Warning and Control (AWAC) system. In 2015, DRDO delivered 3 AWACs, called Netra, to the IAF with an advanced Indian AESA radar system fitted on the Brazilian Embraer EMB-145 air frame. Netra gives a 240-degree coverage of airspace. The Emb-145 also has air-to-air refuelling capability for longer surveillance time. The IAF also operates three Israeli EL/W-2090 systems, mounted on Ilyushin Il-76 airframes, the first of which first arrived on 25 May 2009. The DRDO proposed a more advanced AWACS with a longer range and with a 360-degree coverage akin to the Phalcon system, based on the Airbus A330 airframe, but given the costs involved there is also the possibility of converting used A320 airliners as well.
IAF has plans to develop 6 more Netra AEW&CS based on Embraer EMB-145 platform and another 6 based on Airbus A321 platform. These systems are expected to have an enhanced performance including range and azimuth
=== Boeing 737 AEW&C ===
The Royal Australian Air Force, Republic of Korea Air Force and the Turkish Air Force are deploying Boeing 737 AEW&C aircraft. The Boeing 737 AEW&C has a fixed, active electronically scanned array radar antenna instead of a mechanically-rotating one, and is capable of simultaneous air and sea search, fighter control and area search, with a maximum range of over 600 km (look-up mode). In addition, the radar antenna array is also doubled as an ELINT array, with a maximum range of over 850 km at 9,000 metres (30,000 ft) altitude.
=== Erieye/GlobalEye ===
The Swedish Air Force uses the S 100D Argus ASC890 as its AEW platform. The S 100D Argus is based on the Saab 340 with an Ericsson Erieye PS-890 radar. Saab also offers the Bombardier Global 6000-based GlobalEye. In early 2006, the Pakistan Air Force ordered six Erieye AEW equipped Saab 2000s from Sweden. In December 2006, the Pakistan Navy requested three excess P-3 Orion aircraft to be equipped with Hawkeye 2000 AEW systems. China and Pakistan also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the joint development of AEW&C systems.
The Hellenic Air Force, Brazilian Air Force and Mexican Air Force use the Embraer R-99 with an Ericsson Erieye PS-890 radar, as on the S 100D.
=== Others ===
Israel has developed the IAI/Elta EL/M-2075 Phalcon system, which uses an AESA (active electronically scanned array) in lieu of a rotodome antenna. The system was the first such system to enter service. The original Phalcon was mounted on a Boeing 707 and developed for the Israeli Defense Force and for export. Israel uses IAI EL/W-2085 airborne early warning and control multi-band radar system on Gulfstream G550; this platform is considered to be both more capable and less expensive to operate than the older Boeing 707-based Phalcon fleet. North Korea appears to operate an AEW&C plane based on the Il-76. North korean designation and design details are unclear.
== Helicopter AEW systems ==
On 3 June 1957, the first of 2 HR2S-1W, a derivative of the Sikorsky CH-37 Mojave, was delivered to the US Navy, it used the AN/APS-32 but proved unreliable due to vibration.
The British Sea King ASaC7 naval helicopter was operated from both the Invincible-class aircraft carriers and later the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean. The creation of Sea King ASaC7, and earlier AEW.2 and AEW.5 models, came as the consequence of lessons learnt by the Royal Navy during the 1982 Falklands War when the lack of AEW coverage for the task force was a major tactical handicap, and rendered them vulnerable to low-level attack. The Sea King was determined to be both more practical and responsive than the proposed alternative of relying on the RAF's land-based Shackleton AEW.2 fleet. The first examples were a pair of Sea King HAS2s that had the Thorn-EMI ARI 5980/3 Searchwater LAST radar attached to the fuselage on a swivel arm and protected by an inflatable dome. The improved Sea King ASaC7 featured the Searchwater 2000AEW radar, which was capable of simultaneously tracking up to 400 targets, instead of an earlier limit of 250 targets. The Spanish Navy fields the SH-3 Sea King in the same role, operated from the LPH Juan Carlos I.
The AgustaWestland EH-101A AEW of the Italian Navy is operated from the aircraft carriers Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi. During the 2010s, the Royal Navy opted to replace its Sea Kings with a modular "Crowsnest" system that can be fitted to any of their Merlin HM2 fleet. The Crowsnest system was partially based upon the Sea King ASaC7's equipment; an unsuccessful bid by Lockheed Martin had proposed using a new multi-functional sensor for either the AW101 or another aircraft.
The Russian-built Kamov Ka-31 is deployed by the Indian Navy on the aircraft carriers INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant and also on Talwar-class frigates. The Russian Navy has two Ka-31R variants, at least one of which was deployed on their aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in 2016. It is fitted with E-801M Oko (Eye) airborne electronic warfare radar that can track 20 targets simultaneously, detecting aircraft up to 150 km (90 mi) away, and surface warships up to 200 km (120 mi) distant.
== See also ==
List of airborne early warning aircraft
List of AEW&C aircraft operators
Airborne ground surveillance (e.g. JSTARS)
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Bibliography ===
Armistead, Leigh and Edwin Armistead. Awacs and Hawkeyes: The Complete History of Airborne Early Warning Aircraft. St Paul, Minnesota: Zenith Imprint, 2002. ISBN 0-7603-1140-4.
Davies, Ed. "AWACS Origins: Brassboard – Quest for the E-3 Radar". Air Enthusiast. No. 119, September/October 2005. Stamford, Lincs, UK: Key Publishing. pp. 2–6. ISSN 0143-5450.
Gibson, Chris (2011). The Admiralty and AEW: Royal Navy Airborne Early Warning Projects. Blue Envoy Press. ISBN 978-0956195128.
Gordon, Yefim; Komissarov, Dmitriy (2010). Soviet/Russian AWACS Aircraft: Tu-126, A-50, An-71, Ka-31. Red Star Vol. 23. Hinckley, England: Midland Publishing. ISBN 978-1857802153.
Gordon, Yefim; Davison, Peter (2006). Tupolev Tu-95 Bear. Warbird Tech. Vol. 43. North Branch, Minnesota: Specialty Press. ISBN 978-1-58007-102-4.
Hazell, Steve (2000). Fairey Gannet. Warpaint Series No.23. Buckinghamshire, England: Hall Park Books. ISSN 1363-0369.
Hirst, Mike (1983). Airborne Early Warning: Design, Development, and Operations. London: Osprey. ISBN 978-0-85045-532-8.
Hurturk, Kivanc N. (1998). History of the Boeing 707. New Hills: Buchair. ISBN 0-9666368-0-5.
Lake, Jon (February 2009). "Aircraft of the RAF – Part 10 Sentry AEW.1". Air International. Vol. 76, no. 2. Stamford, UK: Key Publishing. pp. 44–47.
Lloyd, Alwyn T. (1987). Boeing 707 & AWACS. in Detail and Scale. Falbrook, CA: Aero Publishers. ISBN 0-8306-8533-2.
Neufeld, Jacob; Watson, George M. Jr.; Chenoweth, David (1997). Technology and the Air Force. A Retrospective Assessment. Washington, D.C.: United States Air Force. pp. 267–287. http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA440094&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdfArchived 7 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine
Pither, Tony (1998). The Boeing 707 720 and C-135. Air-Britain (Historians). ISBN 0-85130-236-X.
Tyack, Bill "Maritime Patrol in the Piston Engine Era" Royal Air Force Historical Society Journal 33, 2005 ISSN 1361-4231.
Wilson, Stewart (1998). Boeing 707, Douglas DC-8, and Vickers VC-10. Fyshwick, Australia: Aerospace Publications. ISBN 1-875671-36-6.
== External links ==
AWACS and JSTARS
NATO AWACS-Spotter Geilenkirchen website
FAS.org E-3 Sentry information
Boeing AWACS website
Airborne Early Warning Association website
TU-126 MOSS AWACS – history of development- in Russian
Airborne radar "Gneis-2" – in Russian
"Electronic Weapons: AWACS Then And Forever". strategypage.com. | Wikipedia/Airborne_early_warning_and_control |
Military science is the study of military processes, institutions, and behavior, along with the study of warfare, and the theory and application of organized coercive force. It is mainly focused on theory, method, and practice of producing military capability in a manner consistent with national defense policy. Military science serves to identify the strategic, political, economic, psychological, social, operational, technological, and tactical elements necessary to sustain relative advantage of military force; and to increase the likelihood and favorable outcomes of victory in peace or during a war. Military scientists include theorists, researchers, experimental scientists, applied scientists, designers, engineers, test technicians, and other military personnel.
Military personnel obtain weapons, equipment, and training to achieve specific strategic goals. Military science is also used to establish enemy capability as part of technical intelligence.
In military history, military science had been used during the period of Industrial Revolution as a general term to refer to all matters of military theory and technology application as a single academic discipline, including that of the deployment and employment of troops in peacetime or in battle.
In military education, military science is often the name of the department in the education institution that administers officer candidate education. However, this education usually focuses on the officer leadership training and basic information about employment of military theories, concepts, methods and systems, and graduates are not military scientists on completion of studies, but rather junior military officers.
== History ==
Even until the Second World War, military science was written in English starting with capital letters, and was thought of as an academic discipline alongside physics, philosophy and the medical sciences. In part this was due to the general mystique that accompanied education in a world where, as late as the 1880s, 75% of the European population was illiterate. The ability by the officers to make complex calculations required for the equally complex "evolutions" of the troop movements in linear warfare that increasingly dominated the Renaissance and later history, and the introduction of the gunpowder weapons into the equation of warfare only added to the veritable arcana of building fortifications as it seemed to the average individual.
Until the early 19th century, one observer, a British veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, Major John Mitchell, thought that it seemed nothing much had changed from the application of force on a battlefield since the days of the Greeks. He suggested that this was primarily so because as Clausewitz suggested, "unlike in any other science or art, in war the object reacts".
Until this time, and even after the Franco-Prussian War, military science continued to be divided between the formal thinking of officers brought up in the "shadow" of the Napoleonic Wars and younger officers like Ardant du Picq who tended to view fighting performance as rooted in the individual's and group psychology and suggested detailed analysis of this. This set in motion the eventual fascination of the military organisations with application of quantitative and qualitative research to their theories of combat; the attempt to translate military thinking as philosophic concepts into concrete methods of combat.
Military implements, the supply of an army, its organization, tactics, and discipline, have constituted the elements of military science in all ages; but improvement in weapons and accoutrements appears to lead and control all the rest.
The breakthrough of sorts made by Clausewitz in suggesting eight principles on which such methods can be based, in Europe, for the first time presented an opportunity to largely remove the element of chance and error from command decision making process. At this time emphasis was made on the topography (including trigonometry), military art (military science), military history, organisation of the army in the field, artillery and the science of projectiles, field fortifications and permanent fortifications, military legislation, military administration and manoeuvres.
The military science on which the model of German combat operations was built for the First World War remained largely unaltered from the Napoleonic model, but took into the consideration the vast improvements in the firepower and the ability to conduct "great battles of annihilation" through rapid concentration of force, strategic mobility, and the maintenance of the strategic offensive better known as the Cult of the offensive. The key to this, and other modes of thinking about war, remained analysis of military history and attempts to derive tangible lessons that could be replicated again with equal success on another battlefield as a sort of bloody laboratory of military science. Few were bloodier than the fields of the Western Front between 1914 and 1918. The person who probably understood Clausewitz better than most, Marshal Foch, initially participated in events that nearly destroyed the French Army.
It is not, however, true to say that military theorists and commanders were suffering from some collective case of stupidity. Their analysis of military history convinced them that decisive and aggressive strategic offensive was the only doctrine of victory, and feared that overemphasis of firepower, and the resultant dependence on entrenchment would make this all but impossible, and leading to the battlefield stagnant in advantages of the defensive position, destroying troop morale and willingness to fight. Because only the offensive could bring victory, lack of it, and not the firepower, was blamed for the defeat of the Imperial Russian Army in the Russo-Japanese War. Foch thought that "In strategy as well as in tactics one attacks".
In many ways military science was born as a result of the experiences of the Great War. "Military implements" had changed armies beyond recognition with cavalry to virtually disappear in the next 20 years. The "supply of an army" would become a science of logistics in the wake of massive armies, operations and troops that could fire ammunition faster than it could be produced, for the first time using vehicles that used the combustion engine, a watershed of change. Military "organisation" would no longer be that of the linear warfare, but assault teams, and battalions that were becoming multi-skilled with the introduction of machine guns and mortars and, for the first time, forcing military commanders to think not only in terms of rank and file, but force structure.
Tactics changed, too, with infantry for the first time segregated from the horse-mounted troops, and required to cooperate with tanks, aircraft and new artillery tactics. Perception of military discipline, too, had changed. Morale, despite strict disciplinarian attitudes, had cracked in all armies during the war, but the best-performing troops were found to be those where emphasis on discipline had been replaced with display of personal initiative and group cohesiveness such as that found in the Australian Corps during the Hundred Days Offensive. The military sciences' analysis of military history that had failed European commanders was about to give way to a new military science, less conspicuous in appearance, but more aligned to the processes of science of testing and experimentation, the scientific method, and forever "wed" to the idea of the superiority of technology on the battlefield.
Currently military science still means many things to different organisations. In the United Kingdom and much of the European Union the approach is to relate it closely to the civilian application and understanding. For example, in Belgium's Royal Military Academy, military science remains an academic discipline, and is studied alongside social sciences, including such subjects as humanitarian law. The United States Department of Defense defines military science in terms of specific systems and operational requirements, and include among other areas civil defense and force structure.
== Employment of military skills ==
In the first instance military science is concerned with who will participate in military operations, and what sets of skills and knowledge they will require to do so effectively and somewhat ingeniously.
=== Military organization ===
Develops optimal methods for the administration and organization of military units, as well as the military as a whole. In addition, this area studies other associated aspects as mobilization/demobilization, and military government for areas recently conquered (or liberated) from enemy control.
=== Force structuring ===
Force structuring is the method by which personnel and the weapons and equipment they use are organized and trained for military operations, including combat. Development of force structure in any country is based on strategic, operational, and tactical needs of the national defense policy, the identified threats to the country, and the technological capabilities of the threats and the armed forces.
Force structure development is guided by doctrinal considerations of strategic, operational and tactical deployment and employment of formations and units to territories, areas and zones where they are expected to perform their missions and tasks. Force structuring applies to all armed services, but not to their supporting organisations such as those used for defense science research activities.
In the United States force structure is guided by the table of organization and equipment (TOE or TO&E). The TOE is a document published by the U.S. Department of Defense which prescribes the organization, manning, and equipage of units from divisional size and down, but also including the headquarters of corps and armies.
Force structuring also provides information on the mission and capabilities of specific units, as well as the unit's current status in terms of posture and readiness. A general TOE is applicable to a type of unit (for instance, infantry) rather than a specific unit (the 3rd Infantry Division). In this way, all units of the same branch (such as infantry) follow the same structural guidelines which allows for more efficient financing, training, and employment of like units operationally.
=== Military education and training ===
Studies the methodology and practices involved in training soldiers, NCOs (non-commissioned officers, i.e. sergeants and corporals), and officers. It also extends this to training small and large units, both individually and in concert with one another for both the regular and reserve organizations. Military training, especially for officers, also concerns itself with general education and political indoctrination of the armed forces.
== Military concepts and methods ==
Much of capability development depends on the concepts which guide use of the armed forces and their weapons and equipment, and the methods employed in any given theatre of war or combat environment.
According to Dr. Kajal Nayan: Artificial Intelligence Cyber War Era
Currently, along with the cyber war era, with the help of new technology in the field of military science, the infancy of the "Artificial Intelligence Military Science era" cyber war experiments have started in which with the help of AI, this era can be made even more effective.
Military activity has been a constant process over thousands of years, and the essential tactics, strategy, and goals of military operations have been unchanging throughout history. As an example, one notable maneuver is the double envelopment, considered to be the consummate military maneuver, notably executed by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BCE, and later by Khalid ibn al-Walid at the Battle of Walaja in 633 CE.
Via the study of history, the military seeks to avoid past mistakes, and improve upon its current performance by instilling an ability in commanders to perceive historical parallels during battle, so as to capitalize on the lessons learned. The main areas military history includes are the history of wars, battles, and combats, history of the military art, and history of each specific military service.
=== Military strategy and doctrines ===
Military strategy is in many ways the centerpiece of military science. It studies the specifics of planning for, and engaging in combat, and attempts to reduce the many factors to a set of principles that govern all interactions of the field of battle. In Europe these principles were first defined by Clausewitz in his Principles of War. As such, it directs the planning and execution of battles, operations, and wars as a whole. Two major systems prevail on the planet today. Broadly speaking, these may be described as the "Western" system, and the "Russian" system. Each system reflects and supports strengths and weakness in the underlying society.
Modern Western military art is composed primarily of an amalgam of French, German, British, and American systems. The Russian system borrows from these systems as well, either through study, or personal observation in the form of invasion (Napoleon's War of 1812, and The Great Patriotic War), and form a unique product suited for the conditions practitioners of this system will encounter. The system that is produced by the analysis provided by military art is known as doctrine.
Western military doctrine relies heavily on technology, the use of a well-trained and empowered NCO cadre, and superior information processing and dissemination to provide a level of battlefield awareness that opponents cannot match. Its advantages are extreme flexibility, extreme lethality, and a focus on removing an opponent's C3I (command, communications, control, and intelligence) to paralyze and incapacitate rather than destroying their combat power directly (hopefully saving lives in the process). Its drawbacks are high expense, a reliance on difficult-to-replace personnel, an enormous logistic train, and a difficulty in operating without high technology assets if depleted or destroyed.
Soviet military doctrine (and its descendants, in CIS countries) relies heavily on masses of machinery and troops, a highly educated (albeit very small) officer corps, and pre-planned missions. Its advantages are that it does not require well educated troops, does not require a large logistic train, is under tight central control, and does not rely on a sophisticated C3I system after the initiation of a course of action. Its disadvantages are inflexibility, a reliance on the shock effect of mass (with a resulting high cost in lives and material), and overall inability to exploit unexpected success or respond to unexpected loss.
Chinese military doctrine is currently in a state of flux as the People's Liberation Army is evaluating military trends of relevance to China. Chinese military doctrine is influenced by a number of sources including an indigenous classical military tradition characterized by strategists such as Sun Tzu, Western and Soviet influences, as well as indigenous modern strategists such as Mao Zedong. One distinctive characteristic of Chinese military science is that it places emphasis on the relationship between the military and society as well as viewing military force as merely one part of an overarching grand strategy.
Each system trains its officer corps in its philosophy regarding military art. The differences in content and emphasis are illustrative. The United States Army principles of war are defined in the U.S. Army Field Manual FM 100–5. The Canadian Forces principles of war/military science are defined by Land Forces Doctrine and Training System (LFDTS) to focus on principles of command, principles of war, operational art and campaign planning, and scientific principles.
Russian Federation armed forces derive their principles of war predominantly from those developed during the existence of the Soviet Union. These, although based significantly on the Second World War experience in conventional war fighting, have been substantially modified since the introduction of the nuclear arms into strategic considerations. The Soviet–Afghan War and the First and Second Chechen Wars further modified the principles that Soviet theorists had divided into the operational art and tactics. The very scientific approach to military science thinking in the Soviet union had been perceived as overly rigid at the tactical level, and had affected the training in the Russian Federation's much reduced forces to instil greater professionalism and initiative in the forces.
The military principles of war of the People's Liberation Army were loosely based on those of the Soviet Union until the 1980s when a significant shift begun to be seen in a more regionally-aware, and geographically-specific strategic, operational and tactical thinking in all services. The PLA is currently influenced by three doctrinal schools which both conflict and complement each other: the People's war, the Regional war, and the Revolution in military affairs that led to substantial increase in the defense spending and rate of technological modernisation of the forces.
The differences in the specifics of military art notwithstanding, military science strives to provide an integrated picture of the chaos of battle, and illuminate basic insights that apply to all combatants, not just those who agree with your formulation of the principles.
=== Military geography ===
Military geography encompasses much more than simple protestations to take the high ground. Military geography studies the obvious, the geography of theatres of war, but also the additional characteristics of politics, economics, and other natural features of locations of likely conflict (the political "landscape", for example). As an example, the Soviet–Afghan War was predicated on the ability of the Soviet Union to not only successfully invade Afghanistan, but also to militarily and politically flank the Islamic Republic of Iran simultaneously.
== Military systems ==
How effectively and efficiently militaries accomplish their operations, missions and tasks is closely related not only to the methods they use, but the equipment and weapons they use.
=== Military intelligence ===
Military intelligence supports the combat commanders' decision making process by providing intelligence analysis of available data from a wide range of sources. To provide that informed analysis the commanders information requirements are identified and input to a process of gathering, analysis, protection, and dissemination of information about the operational environment, hostile, friendly and neutral forces and the civilian population in an area of combat operations, and broader area of interest. Intelligence activities are conducted at all levels from tactical to strategic, in peacetime, the period of transition to war, and during the war.
Most militaries maintain a military intelligence capability to provide analytical and information collection personnel in both specialist units and from other arms and services. Personnel selected for intelligence duties, whether specialist intelligence officers and enlisted soldiers or non-specialist assigned to intelligence may be selected for their analytical abilities and intelligence before receiving formal training.
Military intelligence serves to identify the threat, and provide information on understanding best methods and weapons to use in deterring or defeating it.
=== Military logistics ===
The art and science of planning and carrying out the movement and maintenance of military forces. In its most comprehensive sense, it is those aspects or military operations that deal with the design, development, acquisition, storage, distribution, maintenance, evacuation, and disposition of material; the movement, evacuation, and hospitalization of personnel; the acquisition or construction, maintenance, operation, and disposition of facilities; and the acquisition or furnishing of services.
=== Military technology and equipment ===
Military technology is not just the study of various technologies and applicable physical sciences used to increase military power. It may also extend to the study of production methods of military equipment, and ways to improve performance and reduce material and/or technological requirements for its production. An example is the effort expended by Nazi Germany to produce artificial rubbers and fuels to reduce or eliminate their dependence on imported POL (petroleum, oil, and lubricants) and rubber supplies.
Military technology is unique only in its application, not in its use of basic scientific and technological achievements. Because of the uniqueness of use, military technological studies strive to incorporate evolutionary, as well as the rare revolutionary technologies, into their proper place of military application.
== Military and society ==
This speciality examines the ways that military and society interact and shape each other. The dynamic intersection where military and society meet is influenced by trends in society and the security environment. This field of study can be linked to works by Clausewitz ("War is the continuation of politics by other means") and Sun Tzu ("If not in the interest of the state, do not act" ). The contemporary multi and interdisciplinary field traces its origin to World War II and works by sociologists and political scientists. This field of study includes "all aspects of relations between armed forces, as a political, social and economic institution, and the society, state or political ethnic movement of which they are a part". Topics often included within the purview of military and society include: veterans, women in the military, military families, enlistment and retention, reserve forces, military and religion, military privatization, civil-military relations, civil-military cooperation, military and popular culture, military and the media, military and disaster assistance, military and the environment and the blurring of military and police functions.
=== Recruitment and retention ===
In an all-volunteer military, the armed forces relies on market forces and careful recruiting to fill its ranks. It is thus, very important to understand factors that motivate enlistment and reenlistment. Service members must have the mental and physical ability to meet the challenges of military service and adapt to the military's values and culture. Studies show that enlistment motivation generally incorporates both self-interest (pay) and non-market values like adventure, patriotism, and comradeship.
=== Veterans ===
The study of veterans or members of the military who leave and return to the society is one of the most important subfields of the military and society field of study. Veterans and their issues represent a microcosm of the field. Military recruits represent inputs that flow from the community into the armed forces, veterans are outputs that leave the military and reenter society changed by their time as soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. Both society and veteran face multiple layers of adaptation and adjustment upon their reentry.
The definition of veteran is surprisingly fluid across countries. In the US, veteran's status is established after a service member has completed a minimum period of service. Australia requires deployment to a combat zone. In the UK "Everyone who has performed military service for at least one day and drawn a day's pay is termed a veteran." The study of veterans focuses much attention on their, sometimes, uneasy transition back to civilian society. "Veterans must navigate a complex cultural transition when moving between environments," and they can expect positive and negative transition outcomes. Finding a good job and reestablishing a fulfilling family life is high on their resettlement agenda.
Military life is often violent and dangerous. The trauma of combat often results in post-traumatic stress disorder as well as painful physical health challenges which often lead to homelessness, suicide, substance, and excessive alcohol use, and family dysfunction. Society recognizes its responsibilities to veterans by offering programs and policies designed to redress these problems. Veterans also exert an influence on society often through the political process. For example, how do veterans vote and establish party affiliation? During the 2004 presidential election veterans were basically bipartisan. Veterans who fought in Croatia's war of independence voted for the nationalist parties in greater numbers.
=== Reserve forces ===
Reserve forces are service members who serve the armed forces on a part-time basis. These men and women constitute a "reserve" force that countries rely on for their defense, disaster support, and some day-to-day operations etc. In the United States an active reservist spends a weekend a month and two weeks a year in training. The size of a county's reserve force often depends on the type of recruitment method. Nations with a volunteer force tend to have a lower reserve percentage.
Recently the role of the reserves has changed. In many countries it has gone from a strategic force, largely static, to an operational force, largely dynamic. After WWII, relatively large standing forces took care of most operational needs. Reserves were held back strategically and deployed in times of emergency for example during the Cuban missile crisis. Subsequently, the strategic and budget situation changed and as a result the active duty military began to rely on reserve force, particularly for combat support and combat service support. Further large-scale military operation, routinely mobilize and deploy reservists
Lomsky-Feder et al (2008p. 594) introduced the metaphor of reserve forces as transmigrants who live "betwixt and between the civilian and military worlds". This metaphor captures "their structural duality" and suggests dynamic nature of reservist experience as they navigate commitments to their often conflicting civilian and military worlds. Given their greater likelihood of lengthy deployment, reservists face many of the same stresses as active duty but often with fewer support services.
== University studies ==
Universities (or colleges) around the world also offer a degree(s) in military science:
Belgium: Royal Military Academy (Belgium)- BA Social and Military Science; MA Social and Military Science
Israel:
Tel Aviv University – MA in Security.
Bar-Ilan University – MA in Military, Security and Intelligence.
Finland:
National Defence University – Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Military science
France:
Sciences Po, Paris School of International Affairs - Master in International Security.
New Zealand:
Massey University, Centre for Defence and Security Studies – BA in Defence Studies.
Victoria University of Wellington – Centre for Strategic Studies – Master of Strategic Studies (MSS).
Slovenia:
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Studies – BA, MA and PhD in Defence studies; PhD in Military-Social Sciences
United Kingdom:
King's College London – MA in International Security and Strategy; MA, MPhil/PhD in Defence Studies
University of Hull – MA in Strategy and International Security
University of St Andrews - MLitt in Strategic Studies
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka Military Academy - (Bachelor and Master's degree in Military Studies) Military training school Diyatalawa, Sri Lanka
South Africa
South African Military Academy / University of Stellenbosch - Bachelor of Military Science (BMil), Master of Military Science (MMil), MPhil in Security Management
United States:
United States Air Force Academy – Major in Military and Strategic Studies; Minor in Nuclear Weapons and Strategy
United States Military Academy – Major in Defense and Strategic Studies
Hawaii Pacific University – Major in Diplomacy and Military Studies
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Minors in Military Science and Military Studies
Missouri State University – Minor in Military Studies
== International military sciences or studies associations ==
There are many international associations with the core purpose of bringing scholars in the field of Military Science together. Some are inter-disciplinary and have a broad scope, whilst others are confined and specialized focusing on more specific disciplines or subjects. Some are integrated in larger scientific communities like the International Sociological Association (ISA) and the American Psychological Association (APA) where others have grown out of military institutions or individuals who have had a particular interest in areas of military science and are military, defense or armed forces oriented. Some of these associations are:
American Psychological Association; Division 19: Society for Military Psychology (APA-Div19)
European Research Group on Military and Society (ERGOMAS)
Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (IUS)
International Congress on Soldiers Physical Performance (ICSPP)
International Military Testing Association (IMTA)
International Society of Military Sciences (ISMS)
International Sociological Association; RC01 Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution
International Association for Military Pedagogy
== Military studies journals ==
The following are notable journals in the field:
== See also ==
Military doctrine – Codified expression of how fighters conduct campaigns, operations, battles and engagements
Military theory – Study of the theories of war and warfare
War – Intense armed conflict
List of basic military science and technology topics – Overview of and topical guide to military science and technologyPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
List of military inventions
List of military writers
Philosophy of war – Theory of causes and ethics of armed conflict
== References ==
Notes
Bibliography
== External links ==
Military Technology
US Military/Government Texts
The Logic of Warfighting Experiments by Kass (CCRP, 2006)
Complexity, Networking, and Effects Based Approaches to Operations by Smith (CCRP, 2006)
Understanding Command and Control by Alberts and Hayes (CCRP, 2006)
The Agile Organization by Atkinson and Moffat (CCRP, 2005)
Power to the Edge by Alberts and Hayes (CCRP, 2003)
Network Centric Warfare by Alberts et al. (CCRP, 1999) | Wikipedia/Military_science |
In military science, force multiplication or a force multiplier is a factor or a combination of factors that gives personnel or weapons (or other hardware) the ability to accomplish greater feats than without it. The expected size increase required to have the same effectiveness without that advantage is the multiplication factor. For example, if a technology like GPS enables a force to accomplish the same results as a force five times as large without GPS, then the multiplier is five. Such estimates are used to justify the investment for force multipliers.
== History ==
Notable historical examples of force multiplication include:
Fortifications: e.g. the Theodosian Wall of Constantinople
Reliance on air force by the Coalition in the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq
== Doctrinal changes ==
During the First World War, the Germans experimented with what were called "storm tactics" in which a small group of highly trained soldiers (stormtroopers) would open a salient through which much larger forces could penetrate. That met with only limited success by breaking through the first lines of defence but lacking the staying power to break the opposing forces entirely. The 1939 blitzkrieg, which broke through with coordinated mechanized ground forces with aircraft in close support, was vastly more effective.
Towards the end of the Second World War, the German Army introduced Kampfgruppe combat formations, which were composed of whatever units happened to be available. Though poor quality ones generally constituted the major part of them, they often performed successfully because of their high degree of flexibility and adaptability. Mission-type tactics, as opposed to extremely specific directives, which give no discretion to the junior commander, are now widely used by modern militaries because of their force multiplication. Originating from German concepts of Auftragstaktik, those tactics may be developing even more rapidly in the concept of network-centric warfare (NCW) in which subordinate commanders receive information not only from their own commanders but also from adjacent units.
A different paradigm was one of the results of the theories of John Boyd, the "high-low mix" in which a large number of less expensive aircraft, coupled with a small number of extremely capable "silver bullet" aircraft, had the effect of a much larger force. Boyd's concept of quick action is based on the repeated application of the "Boyd loop", consisting of the steps
Observe: make use of the best sensors and other intelligence available
Orient: put the new observations into a context with the old
Decide: select the next action based on the combined observation and local knowledge
Act: carry out the selected action, ideally while the opponent is still observing your last action.
Boyd's concept is also known as the OODA Loop and is a description of the decision-making process that Boyd contended applies to business, sports, law enforcement and military operations. Boyd's doctrine is widely taught in the American military, and one of the aims of network centric warfare is to "get inside his OODA loop." In other words, one should go from observation to action before the enemy can get past orientation, preventing him from ever being able to make an effective decision or put it into action. Small unit leadership is critical to this, and NCW's ability to disseminate information to small unit leaders enables such tactics.
Network-centric warfare can provide additional information and can help prevent friendly fire but also allows "swarm tactics"
and the seizing of opportunities by subordinate forces. (Edwards 2000, p. 2) defines "a swarming case is any historical example in which the scheme of maneuver involves the convergent attack of five (or more) semiautonomous (or autonomous) units on a targeted force in some particular place. "Convergent" implies an attack from most of the points on the compass."
Another version of "swarming" is evident in air-to-ground attack formations in which the attack aircraft do not approach from one direction, at one time, or at the same altitude, but schedule the attacks so each one requires a Boyd-style OODA iteration to deal with a new threat. Replacement training units (RTU) were "finishing schools" for pilots that needed to know not just the school solution, but the actual tactics being used in Vietnam. Referring to close air support, "In the RTU, new pilots learned the rules of the road for working with a forward air controller (FAC). The hardest part was finding the small aircraft as it circled over the target area. The fast-moving fighters used directional finding/steering equipment to get close enough to the slow, low FAC until someone in the flight could get an eyeball on him—a tally-ho. Once the FAC was in sight, he would give the fighters a target briefing—type of target, elevation, attack heading, location of friendlies, enemy defensive fire, best egress heading if hit by enemy fire, and other pertinent data. Usually the fighters would set up a circle, called a wheel or "wagon wheel", over the FAC, and wait for him to mark the target. Once the target was marked, the flight leader would attack first.
== Psychology ==
Napoleon is well known for his comment "The moral is to the physical as three to one." Former United States Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell has said: "Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." Morale, training, and ethos have long been known to result in disproportionate effects on the battlefield.
Psychological warfare can target the morale, politics, and values of enemy soldiers and their supporters to effectively neutralize them in a conflict.
Protecting local cultural heritage sites and investing in the relationships between local civilians and military forces can be seen as force multipliers leading to benefits in meeting or sustaining military objectives.
== Technology ==
Ranged weapons that hit their target are more effective than those that miss. That is why rifled muskets for infantry and rangefinders for artillery became commonplace in the 19th century.
Two new weapons of World War I, barbed wire and the machine gun, multiplied defensive forces, leading to the stalemate of trench warfare.
=== Aircraft carriers ===
Aircraft carriers, such as the USS Gerald R. Ford, can carry more than 75 aircraft with fuel and ammunition for all tasks that an aircraft carrier should need like air to air, air to naval and air to ground missions. When deployed, aircraft carriers are a massive force multiplier that can turn any engagement in favour of those that have the aircraft carrier. Carriers can hold different type of aircraft to different usage meaning the force multiplier can vary depending on the specific task at hand.
=== Tankers ===
Airborne tanker aircraft, such as the Boeing KC-135 are a very significant force multiplier. They can carry fuel so bomber and fighter aircraft can take off loaded with extra weapons instead of full fuel tanks. The tankers also increase the range and time loitering within or near the target areas by off-loading fuel when it is needed. Tankers can also be used to rapidly deploy fighters, bombers, SIGNET, Airborne Command Post, and cargo aircraft from the United States to the areas where they are needed. The force multiplier of a KC-135R can be anywhere from 1.5 to as much as 6 when used near the target area.
=== Bombers ===
At one extreme, a stealth aircraft like the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit strategic bomber can attack a target without needing the large numbers of escort fighter aircraft, electronic-warfare aircraft, Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, and other supporting aircraft that would be needed were conventional bombers used against the same target.
Precision-guided munitions (PGM) give an immense multiplication. The Thanh Hoa Bridge in North Vietnam had been only mildly damaged by approximately 800 sorties by aircraft armed with conventional unguided bombs, but had one of its spans destroyed by a 12-plane mission, of which 8 carried laser-guided bombs. Two small subsequent missions, again with laser-guided bombs, completed the destruction of this target. Precision-guided munitions are one example of what has been called the Revolution in Military Affairs. In World War II, British night bombers could hit, at best, an area of a city.
Modern PGMs commonly put a bomb within 3–10 meters of its target (see circular error probable), and most carry an explosive charge significant enough that this uncertainty is effectively voided. See the use of heavy bombers in direct support of friendly troops in Afghanistan, using the technique of Ground-Aided Precision Strike.
=== Fighter combat ===
Fighter aircraft coordinated by an AWACS control aircraft, so that they can approach targets without being revealed by their own radar, and who are assigned to take specific targets so that duplication is avoided, are far more effective than an equivalent number of fighters dependent on their own resources for target acquisition.
In exercises between the Indian and US air forces, the Indian pilots had an opportunity to operate with AWACS control, and found it extremely effective. India has ordered AWACS aircraft, using Israeli Phalcon electronics on a Russian airframe, and this exercise is part of their preparation. Officer and pilot comments included "definitely was a force multiplier. Giving you an eye deep beyond you". "We could pick up incoming targets whether aircraft or missiles almost 400 kilometers away. It gives a grand battle coordination in the air".
== Creating local forces ==
The use of small numbers of specialists to create larger effective forces is another form of multiplication. The basic A Team of US Army Special Forces is a 12-man unit that can train and lead a company-sized unit (100–200 men) of local guerrillas.
== Deception ==
Deception can produce the potential effect of a much larger force. The fictitious First United States Army Group (FUSAG) was portrayed to the World War II Germans as the main force for the invasion of Europe. Operation Bodyguard
successfully gave the impression that FUSAG was to land at the Pas de Calais, convincing the Germans that the real attack at Normandy was a feint. As a result of the successful deception, the Normandy force penetrated deeply, in part, because the Germans held back strategic reserves that they thought would be needed at the Pas de Calais, against what was a nonexistent force. FUSAG's existence was suggested by the use of decoy vehicles that the Allies allowed to be photographed, fictitious radio traffic generated by a small number of specialists, and the Double Cross System. Double Cross referred to turning all surviving German spies in the UK into double agents, who sent back convincing reports that were consistent with the deception programs being conducted by the London Controlling Section.
== See also ==
Asymmetric warfare
C4ISTAR
Lanchester's laws
List of established military terms
Network-centric warfare
== References == | Wikipedia/Force_multiplication |
A cyber force is a military branch of a nation's armed forces that conducts military operations in cyberspace and cyberwarfare. The world's first independent cyber force was the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force, which was established in 2015 and also serves as China's space force. As of 2022, the world's only independent cyber forces are the PLA Strategic Support Force, the German Cyber and Information Domain Service, Norwegian Cyber Defence Force, and the Singapore Digital and Intelligence Service.
Most other countries organize their cyber forces into other military services or joint commands. Examples of joint cyber commands includes the United States Cyber Command
== History ==
In 2015, China created the world's first independent cyber force, establishing the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force. This was followed by Germany's establishment of the Cyber and Information Domain Service as the world's second cyber force in 2017 and Singapore's creation of the Digital and Intelligence Service as the world's third cyber force in 2022.
Within the United States, the United States Air Force was the early leader in military cyber operations. In 1995, it established the 609th Information Warfare Squadron, which was the first organization in the world to combine offensive and defensive cyber operation in support of military forces. Initially viewing cyber as a subdivision of information warfare, the Air Intelligence Agency controlled many of the early cyber missions. The United States Army and United States Navy believed that the Air Force was attempting to seize the cyber mission for itself, pressuring the Air Force to stop the activation of Air Force Cyber Command.
Instead, United States Cyber Command was created as a subunified command under United States Strategic Command in 2009 and Army Cyber Command, Fleet Cyber Command, Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command, and Twenty-Fourth Air Force were created as service components. U.S. Cyber Command traces its history back to the 1998 establishment of Joint Task Force – Computer Network Defense, and its 2000 redesignation as Joint Task Force – Computer Network Operations under United States Space Command. Following the inactivation of Space Command and its merger into United States Strategic Command in 2002, Joint Task Force – Computer Network Operations was split into Joint Task Force – Global Network Operations and Joint Functional Component Command – Network Warfare in 2004 before being reunified under U.S. Cyber Command. In 2014, the U.S. Army established the Cyber Corps, merging the offensive cyber role of the Military Intelligence Corps and defensive cyber role of the Signal Corps.
In 2018, Cyber Command was elevated to a full unified combatant command. Periodic calls for the creation of a U.S. Cyber Force have occurred, with the most notable being by retired United States Navy Admiral and Supreme Allied Commander Europe James G. Stavridis and retired intelligence officer and cyber security businessman David Venable.
== Cyber forces ==
The following list outlines the independent cyber forces currently in operation around the world:
People's Liberation Army Cyberspace Force
Cyber and Information Domain Service
Norwegian Cyber Defence Force
Digital and Intelligence Service
== See also ==
National Cyber Security Centre (disambiguation)
Cyber-power literacy
== References == | Wikipedia/Cyber_force |
Command and control (abbr. C2) is a "set of organizational and technical attributes and processes ... [that] employs human, physical, and information resources to solve problems and accomplish missions" to achieve the goals of an organization or enterprise, according to a 2015 definition by military scientists Marius Vassiliou, David S. Alberts, and Jonathan R. Agre. The term often refers to a military system.
Versions of the United States Army Field Manual 3-0 circulated circa 1999 define C2 in a military organization as the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commanding officer over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of a mission.
A 1988 NATO definition is that command and control is the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated individual over assigned resources in the accomplishment of a common goal. An Australian Defence Force definition, similar to that of NATO, emphasises that C2 is the system empowering designated personnel to exercise lawful authority and direction over assigned forces for the accomplishment of missions and tasks. The Australian doctrine goes on to state: "The use of agreed terminology and definitions is fundamental to any C2 system and the development of joint doctrine and procedures. The definitions in the following paragraphs have some agreement internationally, although not every potential ally will use the terms with exactly the same meaning."
== Overview ==
=== US perspective ===
The US Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms defines command and control as: "The exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission. Also called C2. Source: JP 1".
The edition of the Dictionary "As Amended Through April 2010" elaborates, "Command and control functions are performed through an arrangement of personnel, equipment, communications, facilities, and procedures employed by a commander in planning, directing, coordinating, and controlling forces and operations in the accomplishment of the mission." However, this sentence is missing from the "command and control" entry for the edition "As Amended Through 15 August 2014."
Commanding officers are assisted in executing these tasks by specialized staff officers and enlisted personnel. These military staff are a group of officers and enlisted personnel that provides a bi-directional flow of information between a commanding officer and subordinate military units.
The purpose of a military staff is mainly that of providing accurate, timely information which by category represents information on which command decisions are based. The key application is that of decisions that effectively manage unit resources. While information flow toward the commander is a priority, information that is useful or contingent in nature is communicated to lower staffs and units.
=== Computer security industry ===
This term is also in common use within the computer security industry and in the context of cyberwarfare. Here the term refers to the influence an attacker has over a compromised computer system that they control. For example, a valid usage of the term is to say that attackers use "command and control infrastructure" to issue "command and control instructions" to their victims. Advanced analysis of command and control methodologies can be used to identify attackers, associate attacks, and disrupt ongoing malicious activity.
== Derivative terms ==
There is a plethora of derivative terms that emphasize various aspects, uses, and sub-domains of C2. These terms are accompanied by numerous associated abbreviations. For example, in addition to C2, command and control is often abbreviated as C2 and sometimes as C&C
"Command and control" have been coupled with:
Collaboration
Communication / communications
Computers / computing
Electronic warfare
Interoperability
Reconnaissance
Surveillance
Target acquisition
and others.
Some of the more common variations include:
AC2 - Aviation command & control
C2I – Command, control & intelligence
C2I – command, control & information (a less common usage)
R2C2I - rapid advanced manufacturing, command, control & intelligence [developed by SICDRONE]
C2IS – command and control information systems
C2ISR – C2I plus surveillance and reconnaissance
C2ISTAR – C2 plus ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance)
C3 – command, control & communication (human activity focus)
C3 – command, control & communications (technology focus)
C3 – consultation, command, and control [NATO]
C3I – 4 possibilities; the most common is command, control, communications and intelligence
C3ISTAR – C3 plus ISTAR
C3ISREW – C2ISR plus communications plus electronic warfare (technology focus)
C3MS - cyber command and control mission system
C3/SA - C3 plus situational awareness
C4, C4I, C4ISR, C4ISTAR, C4ISREW, C4ISTAREW – plus computers (technology focus) or computing (human activity focus)
C4I2 – command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, and interoperability
C5I – command, control, communications, computers, collaboration and intelligence
C5I – command, control, communications, computers, cyber and intelligence (US Army)
C6ISR – command, control, communications, computers, cyber-defense and combat systems and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
MDC2 - multi-domain command and control
NC2 − nuclear command and control
NC3 − nuclear command and control and communications
and others.
Command: The exercise of authority based upon certain knowledge to attain an objective.
Control: The process of verifying and correcting activity such that the objective or goal of command is accomplished.
Communication: Ability to exercise the necessary liaison to exercise effective command between tactical or strategic units to command.
Computers: The computer systems and compatibility of computer systems. Also includes data processing.
Intelligence: Includes collection as well as analysis and distribution of information.
== Command and control centers ==
A command and control center is typically a secure room or building in a government, military or prison facility that operates as the agency's dispatch center, surveillance monitoring center, coordination office and alarm monitoring center all in one. Command and control centers are operated by a government or municipal agency.
Various branches of the US military such as the US Coast Guard and Navy have command and control centers. They are also common in many large correctional facilities.
A command and control center that is used by a military unit in a deployed location is usually called a "command post". A warship has a combat information center for tactical control of the ship's resources, but commanding a fleet or joint operation requires additional space for commanders and staff plus C4I facilities provided on a flagship (e.g., aircraft carriers), sometimes a command ship or upgraded logistics ship such as USS Coronado.
== Command and control warfare ==
Command and control warfare encompasses all the military tactics that use communications technology. It can be abbreviated as C2W. An older name for these tactics is "signals warfare", derived from the name given to communications by the military. Newer names include information operations and information warfare.
The following techniques are combined:
Cyber operations
with the physical destruction of enemy communications facilities. The objective is to deny information to the enemy and so disrupt its command and control capabilities. At the same time precautions are taken to protect friendly command and control capabilities against retaliation.
In addition to targeting the enemy's command and control, information warfare can be directed to the enemy's politicians and other civilian communications.
Electronic warfare (EW)
Military deception
Operations security (OPSEC)
Psychological operations (PSYOP)
Psychological warfare
== See also ==
US and other NATO specific:
Other
Military Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technologies
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Sources ===
== External links ==
Command and control definitions and procedures, UK College of Policing
International Command and Control Institute
Understanding Command and Control by D. S. Alberts and R. E. Hayes (2006) | Wikipedia/Command_and_control_warfare |
Ship gun fire-control systems (GFCS) are analogue fire-control systems that were used aboard naval warships prior to modern electronic computerized systems, to control targeting of guns against surface ships, aircraft, and shore targets, with either optical or radar sighting. Most US ships that are destroyers or larger (but not destroyer escorts except Brooke class DEG's later designated FFG's or escort carriers) employed gun fire-control systems for 5-inch (127 mm) and larger guns, up to battleships, such as Iowa class.
Beginning with ships built in the 1960s, warship guns were largely operated by computerized systems, i.e. systems that were controlled by electronic computers, which were integrated with the ship's missile fire-control systems and other ship sensors. As technology advanced, many of these functions were eventually handled fully by central electronic computers.
The major components of a gun fire-control system are a human-controlled director, along with or later replaced by radar or television camera, a computer, stabilizing device or gyro, and equipment in a plotting room.
For the US Navy, the most prevalent gunnery computer was the Ford Mark 1, later the Mark 1A Fire Control Computer, which was an electro-mechanical analog ballistic computer that provided accurate firing solutions and could automatically control one or more gun mounts against stationary or moving targets on the surface or in the air. This gave American forces a technological advantage in World War II against the Japanese, who did not develop remote power control for their guns; both the US Navy and Japanese Navy used visual correction of shots using shell splashes or air bursts, while the US Navy augmented visual spotting with radar. Digital computers would not be adopted for this purpose by the US until the mid-1970s; however, it must be emphasized that all analog anti-aircraft fire control systems had severe limitations, and even the US Navy's Mark 37 system required nearly 1000 rounds of 5 in (127 mm) mechanical fuze ammunition per kill, even in late 1944.
The Mark 37 Gun Fire Control System incorporated the Mark 1 computer, the Mark 37 director, a gyroscopic stable element along with automatic gun control, and was the first US Navy dual-purpose GFCS to separate the computer from the director.
== History of analogue fire control systems ==
Naval fire control resembles that of ground-based guns, but with no sharp distinction between direct and indirect fire. It is possible to control several same-type guns on a single platform simultaneously, while both the firing guns and the target are moving.
Though a ship rolls and pitches at a slower rate than a tank does, gyroscopic stabilization is extremely desirable. Naval gun fire control potentially involves three levels of complexity:
Local control originated with primitive gun installations aimed by the individual gun crews.
The director system of fire control was incorporated first into battleship designs by the Royal Navy in 1912. All guns on a single ship were laid from a central position placed as high as possible above the bridge. The director became a design feature of battleships, with Japanese "Pagoda-style" masts designed to maximize the view of the director over long ranges. A fire control officer who ranged the salvos transmitted elevations and angles to individual guns.
Coordinated gunfire from a formation of ships at a single target was a focus of battleship fleet operations. An officer on the flagship would signal target information to other ships in the formation. This was necessary to exploit the tactical advantage when one fleet succeeded in crossing the T of the enemy fleet, but the difficulty of distinguishing the splashes made walking the rounds in on the target more difficult.
Corrections can be made for surface wind velocity, roll and pitch of the firing ship, powder magazine temperature, drift of rifled projectiles, individual gun bore diameter adjusted for shot-to-shot enlargement, and rate-of-change of range with additional modifications to the firing solution based upon the observation of preceding shots. More sophisticated fire control systems consider more of these factors rather than relying on simple correction of observed fall of shot. Differently colored dye markers were sometimes included with large shells so individual guns, or individual ships in formation, could distinguish their shell splashes during daylight. Early "computers" were people using numerical tables.
=== Pre-dreadnought control system ===
The Royal Navy was aware of the fall of shot observation advantage of salvo firing through several experiments as early as 1870 when Commander John A. Fisher installed an electric system enabling a simultaneous firing of all the guns to HMS Ocean, the flagship of the China Station as the second in command. However, the Station or Royal Navy had not yet implemented the system fleet-wide in 1904. The Royal Navy considered Russia a potential adversary through The Great Game, and sent Lieutenant Walter Lake of the Navy Gunnery Division and Commander Walter Hugh Thring of the Coastguard and Reserves, the latter with an early example of Dumaresq, to Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. Their mission was to guide and train the Japanese naval gunnery personnel in the latest technological developments, but more importantly for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), they were well aware of the experiments.
During the 10 August 1904 Battle of the Yellow Sea against the Russian Pacific Fleet, the British-built IJN battleship Asahi and her sister ship, the fleet flagship Mikasa, were equipped with the latest Barr and Stroud range finders on the bridge, but the ships were not designed for coordinated aiming and firing. Asahi's chief gunnery officer, Hiroharu Kato (later Commander of Combined Fleet), experimented with the first director system of fire control, using speaking tube (voicepipe) and telephone communication from the spotters high on the mast to his position on the bridge where he performed the range and deflection calculations, and from his position to the 12-inch (305 mm) gun turrets forward and astern.
With the semi-synchronized salvo firing upon his voice command from the bridge, the spotters using stopwatches on the mast could identify the distant salvo of splashes created by the shells from their own ship more effectively than trying to identify a single splash among the many. Kato gave the firing order consistently at a particular moment in the rolling and pitching cycles of the ship, simplifying firing and correction duties formerly performed independently with varying accuracy using artificial horizon gauges in each turret. Moreover, unlike in the gun turrets, he was steps away from the ship commander giving orders to change the course and the speed in response to the incoming reports on target movements.
Kato was transferred to the fleet flagship Mikasa as the Chief Gunnery Officer, and his primitive control system was in fleet-wide operation by the time the Combined Fleet destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet (renamed the 2nd and 3rd Pacific Fleet) in the Battle of Tsushima during 27–28 May 1905.
=== Central fire control and World War I ===
Centralized naval fire control systems were first developed around the time of World War I. Local control had been used up until that time, and remained in use on smaller warships and auxiliaries through World War II. Specifications of HMS Dreadnought were finalized after the report on the Battle of Tsushima was submitted by the official observer to IJN onboard Asahi, Captain Pakenham (later Admiral), who observed how Kato's system worked first hand. From this design on, large warships had a main armament of one size of gun across a number of turrets (which made corrections simpler still), facilitating central fire control via electric triggering.
The UK built their first central system before the Great War. At the heart was an analogue computer designed by Commander (later Admiral Sir) Frederic Charles Dreyer that calculated range rate, the rate of change of range due to the relative motion between the firing and target ships. The Dreyer Table was to be improved and served into the interwar period at which point it was superseded in new and reconstructed ships by the Admiralty Fire Control Table.
The use of Director-controlled firing together with the fire control computer moved the control of the gun laying from the individual turrets to a central position (usually in a plotting room protected below armor), although individual gun mounts and multi-gun turrets could retain a local control option for use when battle damage prevented the director setting the guns. Guns could then be fired in planned salvos, with each gun giving a slightly different trajectory. Dispersion of shot caused by differences in individual guns, individual projectiles, powder ignition sequences, and transient distortion of ship structure was undesirably large at typical naval engagement ranges. Directors high on the superstructure had a better view of the enemy than a turret mounted sight, and the crew operating it were distant from the sound and shock of the guns.
=== Analogue computed fire control ===
Unmeasured and uncontrollable ballistic factors like high altitude temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, wind direction and velocity required final adjustment through observation of fall of shot. Visual range measurement (of both target and shell splashes) was difficult prior to availability of radar. The British favoured coincidence rangefinders while the Germans and the US Navy, stereoscopic type. The former were less able to range on an indistinct target but easier on the operator over a long period of use, the latter the reverse.
During the Battle of Jutland, while the British were thought by some to have the finest fire control system in the world at that time, only three percent of their shots actually struck their targets. At that time, the British primarily used a manual fire control system. This experience contributed to computing rangekeepers becoming standard issue.
The US Navy's first deployment of a rangekeeper was on USS Texas in 1916. Because of the limitations of the technology at that time, the initial rangekeepers were crude. For example, during World War I the rangekeepers would generate the necessary angles automatically but sailors had to manually follow the directions of the rangekeepers. This task was called "pointer following" but the crews tended to make inadvertent errors when they became fatigued during extended battles. During World War II, servomechanisms (called "power drives" in the US Navy) were developed that allowed the guns to automatically steer to the rangekeeper's commands with no manual intervention, though pointers still worked even if automatic control was lost. The Mark 1 and Mark 1A computers contained approximately 20 servomechanisms, mostly position servos, to minimize torque load on the computing mechanisms.
=== Radar and World War II ===
During their long service life, rangekeepers were updated often as technology advanced and by World War II they were a critical part of an integrated fire control system. The incorporation of radar into the fire control system early in World War II provided ships with the ability to conduct effective gunfire operations at long range in poor weather and at night.
In a typical World War II British ship the fire control system connected the individual gun turrets to the director tower (where the sighting instruments were) and the analogue computer in the heart of the ship. In the director tower, operators trained their telescopes on the target; one telescope measured elevation and the other bearing. Rangefinder telescopes on a separate mounting measured the distance to the target. These measurements were converted by the Fire Control Table into bearings and elevations for the guns to fire on. In the turrets, the gunlayers adjusted the elevation of their guns to match an indicator which was the elevation transmitted from the Fire Control Table—a turret layer did the same for bearing. When the guns were on target they were centrally fired.
The Aichi Clock Company first produced the Type 92 Shagekiban low angle analog computer in 1932. The US Navy Rangekeeper and the Mark 38 GFCS had an edge over Imperial Japanese Navy systems in operability and flexibility. The US system allowing the plotting room team to quickly identify target motion changes and apply appropriate corrections. The newer Japanese systems such as the Type 98 Hoiban and Shagekiban on the Yamato class were more up to date, which eliminated the Sokutekiban, but it still relied on seven operators.
In contrast to US radar aided system, the Japanese relied on averaging optical rangefinders, lacked gyros to sense the horizon, and required manual handling of follow-ups on the Sokutekiban, Shagekiban, Hoiban as well as guns themselves. This could have played a role in Center Force's battleships' dismal performance in the Battle off Samar in October 1944.
In that action, American destroyers pitted against the world's largest armored battleships and cruisers dodged shells for long enough to close to within torpedo firing range, while lobbing hundreds of accurate automatically aimed 5-inch (127 mm) rounds on target. Cruisers did not land hits on splash-chasing escort carriers until after an hour of pursuit had reduced the range to 5 miles (8.0 km). Although the Japanese pursued a doctrine of achieving superiority at long gun ranges, one cruiser fell victim to secondary explosions caused by hits from the carriers' single 5-inch guns. Eventually with the aid of hundreds of carrier based aircraft, a battered Center Force was turned back just before it could have finished off survivors of the lightly armed task force of screening escorts and escort carriers of Taffy 3. The earlier Battle of Surigao Strait had established the clear superiority of US radar-assisted systems at night.
The rangekeeper's target position prediction characteristics could be used to defeat the rangekeeper. For example, many captains under long range gun attack would make violent maneuvers to "chase salvos." A ship that is chasing salvos is maneuvering to the position of the last salvo splashes. Because the rangekeepers are constantly predicting new positions for the target, it is unlikely that subsequent salvos will strike the position of the previous salvo. The direction of the turn is unimportant, as long as it is not predicted by the enemy system. Since the aim of the next salvo depends on observation of the position and speed at the time the previous salvo hits, that is the optimal time to change direction. Practical rangekeepers had to assume that targets were moving in a straight-line path at a constant speed, to keep complexity to acceptable limits. A sonar rangekeeper was built to include a target circling at a constant radius of turn, but that function had been disabled.
Only the RN and USN achieved 'blindfire' radar fire-control, with no need to visually acquire the opposing vessel. The Axis powers all lacked this capability. Classes such as Iowa and South Dakota battleships could lob shells over visual horizon, in darkness, through smoke or weather. American systems, in common with many contemporary major navies, had gyroscopic stable vertical elements, so they could keep a solution on a target even during maneuvers. By the start of World War II British, German and American warships could both shoot and maneuver using sophisticated analog fire-control computers that incorporated gyro compass and gyro Level inputs. In the Battle of Cape Matapan the British Mediterranean Fleet using radar ambushed and mauled an Italian fleet, although actual fire was under optical control using starshell illumination. At the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal USS Washington, in complete darkness, inflicted fatal damage at close range on the battleship Kirishima using a combination of optical and radar fire-control; comparisons between optical and radar tracking, during the battle, showed that radar tracking matched optical tracking in accuracy, while radar ranges were used throughout the battle.
The last combat action for the analog rangekeepers, at least for the US Navy, was in the 1991 Persian Gulf War when the rangekeepers on the Iowa-class battleships directed their last rounds in combat.
== British Royal Navy systems ==
Dreyer Table
Arthur Pollen's Argo Clock
Admiralty Fire Control Table – from 1920s
HACS – A/A system from 1931
Fuze Keeping Clock – simplified HACS A/A system for destroyers from 1938
Pom-Pom Director – pioneered use of gyroscopic tachymetric fire-control for short range weapons – From 1940
Gyro Rate Unit – pioneered use of gyroscopic Tachymetric fire-control for medium calibre weapons – From 1940
Royal Navy radar – pioneered the use of radar for A/A fire-control and centimetric radar for surface fire-control – from 1939
Ferranti Computer Systems developed the GSA4 digital computerised gunnery fire control system that was deployed on HMS Amazon (Type 21 frigate commissioned in 1974) as part of the WAS4 (Weapon Systems Automation - 4) system.
BAE Systems' Sea Archer – computerised gunnery system. Royal Navy designation GSA.7 from 1980 and GSA.8 from 1985. Production was completed for Royal Navy Type 23 frigates in 1999. Remains in active service as of 2022 on Type 23 (Duke class). Replaced in 2012 on Type 45 destroyers by Ultra Electronics Series 2500 Electro-Optical Gun Control System.
== US Navy analogue Gun Fire Control Systems (GFCS) ==
=== Mark 33 GFCS ===
The Mark 33 GFCS was a power-driven fire control director, less advanced than the Mark 37. The Mark 33 GFCS used a Mark 10 Rangekeeper, analog fire-control computer. The entire rangekeeper was mounted in an open director rather than in a separate plotting room as in the RN HACS, or the later Mark 37 GFCS, and this made it difficult to upgrade the Mark 33 GFCS. It could compute firing solutions for targets moving at up to 320 knots, or 400 knots in a dive. Its installations started in the late 1930s on destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers with two Mark 33 directors mounted fore and aft of the island. They had no fire-control radar initially, and were aimed only by sight. After 1942, some of these directors were enclosed and had a Mark 4 fire-control radar added to the roof of the director, while others had a Mark 4 radar added over the open director. With the Mark 4 large aircraft at up to 40,000 yards could be targeted. It had less range against low-flying aircraft, and large surface ships had to be within 30,000 yards. With radar, targets could be seen and hit accurately at night, and through weather. The Mark 33 and 37 systems used tachymetric target motion prediction. The USN never considered the Mark 33 to be a satisfactory system, but wartime production problems, and the added weight and space requirements of the Mark 37 precluded phasing out the Mark 33:
Although superior to older equipment, the computing mechanisms within the range keeper ([Mark 10]) were too slow, both in reaching initial solutions on first picking up a target and in accommodating frequent changes in solution caused by target maneuvers. The [Mark 33] was thus distinctly inadequate, as indicated to some observers in simulated air attack exercises prior to hostilities. However, final recognition of the seriousness of the deficiency and initiation of replacement plans were delayed by the below decks space difficulty, mentioned in connection with the [Mark 28] replacement. Furthermore, priorities of replacements of older and less effective director systems in the crowded wartime production program were responsible for the fact the [Mark 33's] service was lengthened to the cessation of hostilities.
The Mark 33 was used as the main director on some destroyers and as secondary battery / anti-aircraft director on larger ships (i.e. in the same role as the later Mark 37). The guns controlled by it were typically 5 inch weapons: the 5-inch/25 or 5-inch/38.
==== Deployment ====
destroyers (1 per vessel, total 48)
8 Farragut-class(launched ca. 1934)
18 Mahan-class(ca. 1935) (Cassin, Downes later rebuilt with Mk37)
4 Gridley-class(ca. 1937)
8 Bagley-class(ca. 1937)
10 Benham-class(ca. 1938)
heavy cruisers
7 New Orleans-class(launched ca. 1933): for the 5"/25 secondary battery
Wichita(1937): for the 5"/38 secondary battery
light cruisers
9 Brooklyn-class(launched ca. 1937): for the 5"/25 and 5"/38 secondary batteries
=== Mark 34 GFCS ===
The Mark 34 was used to control the main batteries of large gun ships. Its predecessors include Mk18 (Pensacola class), Mk24 (Northampton class), Mk27 (Portland class) and Mk31 (New Orleans class)
==== Deployment ====
2 Alaska-class large cruisers (2 per vessel)
heavy cruisers
Wichita (2x)
14 Baltimore-class (2 per vessel, 28 total)
several Northampton-class (as upgrade)
Portland-class (as upgrade)
light cruisers
9 Brooklyn-class
27 Cleveland-class
=== Mark 37 GFCS ===
According to the US Navy Bureau of Ordnance,
While the defects were not prohibitive and the Mark 33 remained in production until fairly late in World War II, the Bureau started the development of an improved director in 1936, only 2 years after the first installation of a Mark 33. The objective of weight reduction was not met, since the resulting director system actually weighed about 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg) more than the equipment it was slated to replace, but the Gun Director Mark 37 that emerged from the program possessed virtues that more than compensated for its extra weight. Though the gun orders it provided were the same as those of the Mark 33, it supplied them with greater reliability and gave generally improved performance with 5-inch (13 cm) gun batteries, whether they were used for surface or antiaircraft use. Moreover, the stable element and computer, instead of being contained in the director housing were installed below deck where they were less vulnerable to attack and less of a jeopardy to a ship's stability. The design provided for the ultimate addition of radar, which later permitted blind firing with the director. In fact, the Mark 37 system was almost continually improved. By the end of 1945 the equipment had run through 92 modifications—almost twice the total number of directors of that type which were in the fleet on December 7, 1941. Procurement ultimately totalled 841 units, representing an investment of well over $148,000,000. Destroyers, cruisers, battleships, carriers, and many auxiliaries used the directors, with individual installations varying from one aboard destroyers to four on each battleship. The development of the Gun Directors Mark 33 and 37 provided the United States Fleet with good long range fire control against attacking planes. But while that had seemed the most pressing problem at the time the equipments were placed under development, it was but one part of the total problem of air defense. At close-in ranges the accuracy of the directors fell off sharply; even at intermediate ranges they left much to be desired. The weight and size of the equipments militated against rapid movement, making them difficult to shift from one target to another. Their efficiency was thus in inverse proportion to the proximity of danger.
The computer was completed as the Ford Mark 1 computer by 1935. Rate information for height changes enabled complete solution for aircraft targets moving over 400 miles per hour (640 km/h). Destroyers starting with the Sims class employed one of these computers, battleships up to four. The system's effectiveness against aircraft diminished as planes became faster, but toward the end of World War II upgrades were made to the Mark 37 System, and it was made compatible with the development of the VT (Variable Time) proximity fuze which exploded when it was near a target, rather than by timer or altitude, greatly increasing the probability that any one shell would destroy a target.
==== Mark 37 Director ====
The function of the Mark 37 Director, which resembles a gun mount with "ears" rather than guns, was to track the present position of the target in bearing, elevation, and range. To do this, it had optical sights (the rectangular windows or hatches on the front), an optical rangefinder (the tubes or ears sticking out each side), and later models, fire control radar antennas. The rectangular antenna is for the Mark 12 FC radar, and the parabolic antenna on the left ("orange peel") is for the Mark 22 FC radar. They were part of an upgrade to improve tracking of aircraft.
The director was manned by a crew of 6: Director Officer, Assistant Control Officer, Pointer, Trainer, Range Finder Operator and Radar Operator.
The Director Officer also had a slew sight used to quickly point the director towards a new target. Up to four Mark 37 Gun Fire Control Systems were installed on battleships. On a battleship, the director was protected by 1+1⁄2 inches (38 mm) of armor, and weighs 21 tons. The Mark 37 director aboard USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. is protected with one-half inch (13 mm) of armor plate and weighs 16 tons.
Stabilizing signals from the Stable Element kept the optical sight telescopes, rangefinder, and radar antenna free from the effects of deck tilt. The signal that kept the rangefinder's axis horizontal was called "crosslevel"; elevation stabilization was called simply "level". Although the stable element was below decks in Plot, next to the Mark 1/1A computer, its internal gimbals followed director motion in bearing and elevation so that it provided level and crosslevel data directly. To do so, accurately, when the fire control system was initially installed, a surveyor, working in several stages, transferred the position of the gun director into Plot so the stable element's own internal mechanism was properly aligned to the director.
Although the rangefinder had significant mass and inertia, the crosslevel servo normally was only lightly loaded, because the rangefinder's own inertia kept it essentially horizontal; the servo's task was usually simply to ensure that the rangefinder and sight telescopes remained horizontal.
Mark 37 director train (bearing) and elevation drives were by D.C. motors fed from Amplidyne rotary power-amplifying generators. Although the train Amplidyne was rated at several kilowatts maximum output, its input signal came from a pair of 6L6 audio beam tetrode vacuum tubes (valves, in the U.K.).
==== Plotting room ====
In battleships, the Secondary Battery Plotting Rooms were down below the waterline and inside the armor belt. They contained four complete sets of the fire control equipment needed to aim and shoot at four targets. Each set included a Mark 1A computer, a Mark 6 Stable Element, FC radar controls and displays, parallax correctors, a switchboard, and people to operate it all.
(In the early 20th century, successive range and/or bearing readings were probably plotted either by hand or by the fire control devices (or both). Humans were very good data filters, able to plot a useful trend line given somewhat-inconsistent readings. As well, the Mark 8 Rangekeeper included a plotter. The distinctive name for the fire-control equipment room took root, and persisted even when there were no plotters.)
==== Ford Mark 1A Fire Control Computer ====
The Mark 1A Fire Control Computer was an electro-mechanical analog ballistic computer. Originally designated the Mark 1, design modifications were extensive enough to change it to "Mark 1A". The Mark 1A appeared post World War II and may have incorporated technology developed for the Bell Labs Mark 8, Fire Control Computer. Sailors would stand around a box measuring 62 by 38 by 45 inches (1.57 by 0.97 by 1.14 m). Even though built with extensive use of an aluminum alloy framework (including thick internal mechanism support plates) and computing mechanisms mostly made of aluminum alloy, it weighed as much as a car, about 3,125 pounds (1,417 kg), with the Star Shell Computer Mark 1 adding another 215 pounds (98 kg). It used 115 volts AC, 60 Hz, single phase, and typically a few amperes or even less. Under worst-case fault conditions, its synchros apparently could draw as much as 140 amperes, or 15,000 watts (about the same as 3 houses while using ovens). Almost all of the computer's inputs and outputs were by synchro torque transmitters and receivers.
Its function was to automatically aim the guns so that a fired projectile would collide with the target. This is the same function as the main battery's Mark 8 Rangekeeper used in the Mark 38 GFCS except that some of the targets the Mark 1A had to deal with also moved in elevation—and much faster. For a surface target, the Secondary Battery's Fire Control problem is the same as the Main Battery's with the same type inputs and outputs. The major difference between the two computers is their ballistics calculations. The amount of gun elevation needed to project a 5-inch (130 mm) shell 9 nautical miles (17 km) is very different from the elevation needed to project a 16-inch (41 cm) shell the same distance.
In operation, this computer received target range, bearing, and elevation from the gun director. As long as the director was on target, clutches in the computer were closed, and movement of the gun director (along with changes in range) made the computer converge its internal values of target motion to values matching those of the target. While converging, the computer fed aided-tracking ("generated") range, bearing, and elevation to the gun director. If the target remained on a straight-line course at a constant speed (and in the case of aircraft, constant rate of change of altitude ("rate of climb"), the predictions became accurate and, with further computation, gave correct values for the gun lead angles and fuze setting.
The target's movement was a vector, and if that didn't change, the generated range, bearing, and elevation were accurate for up to 30 seconds. Once the target's motion vector became stable, the computer operators told the gun director officer ("Solution Plot!"), who usually gave the command to commence firing. Unfortunately, this process of inferring the target motion vector required a few seconds, typically, which might take too long.
The process of determining the target's motion vector was done primarily with an accurate constant-speed motor, disk-ball-roller integrators, nonlinear cams, mechanical resolvers, and differentials. Four special coordinate converters, each with a mechanism in part like that of a traditional computer mouse, converted the received corrections into target motion vector values. The Mark 1 computer attempted to do the coordinate conversion (in part) with a rectangular-to polar converter, but that didn't work as well as desired (sometimes trying to make target speed negative!). Part of the design changes that defined the Mark 1A were a re-thinking of how to best use these special coordinate converters; the coordinate converter ("vector solver") was eliminated.
The Stable Element, which in contemporary terminology would be called a vertical gyro, stabilized the sights in the director, and provided data to compute stabilizing corrections to the gun orders. Gun lead angles meant that gun-stabilizing commands differed from those needed to keep the director's sights stable. Ideal computation of gun stabilizing angles required an impractical number of terms in the mathematical expression, so the computation was approximate.
To compute lead angles and time fuze setting, the target motion vector's components as well as its range and altitude, wind direction and speed, and own ship's motion combined to predict the target's location when the shell reached it. This computation was done primarily with mechanical resolvers ("component solvers"), multipliers, and differentials, but also with one of four three-dimensional cams.
Based on the predictions, the other three of the three-dimensional cams provided data on ballistics of the gun and ammunition that the computer was designed for; it could not be used for a different size or type of gun except by rebuilding that could take weeks.
Servos in the computer boosted torque accurately to minimize loading on the outputs of computing mechanisms, thereby reducing errors, and also positioned the large synchros that transmitted gun orders (bearing and elevation, sight lead angles, and time fuze setting). These were electromechanical "bang-bang", yet had excellent performance.
The anti-aircraft fire control problem was more complicated because it had the additional requirement of tracking the target in elevation and making target predictions in three dimensions. The outputs of the Mark 1A were the same (gun bearing and elevation), except fuze time was added. The fuze time was needed because the ideal of directly hitting the fast moving aircraft with the projectile was impractical. With fuze time set into the shell, it was hoped that it would explode near enough to the target to destroy it with the shock wave and shrapnel. Towards the end of World War II, the invention of the VT proximity fuze eliminated the need to use the fuze time calculation and its possible error. This greatly increased the odds of destroying an air target. Digital fire control computers were not introduced into service until the mid-1970s.
Central aiming from a gun director has a minor complication in that the guns are often far enough away from the director to require parallax correction so they aim correctly. In the Mark 37 GFCS, the Mark 1/1A sent parallax data to all gun mounts; each mount had its own scale factor (and "polarity") set inside the train (bearing) power drive (servo) receiver-regulator (controller).
Twice in its history, internal scale factors were changed, presumably by changing gear ratios. Target speed had a hard upper limit, set by a mechanical stop. It was originally 300 knots (350 mph; 560 km/h), and subsequently doubled in each rebuild.
These computers were built by Ford Instrument Company, Long Island City, Queens, New York. The company was named after Hannibal C. Ford, a genius designer, and principal in the company. Special machine tools machined face cam grooves and accurately duplicated 3-D ballistic cams.
Generally speaking, these computers were very well designed and built, very rugged, and almost trouble-free, frequent tests included entering values via the handcranks and reading results on the dials, with the time motor stopped. These were static tests. Dynamic tests were done similarly, but used gentle manual acceleration of the "time line" (integrators) to prevent possible slippage errors when the time motor was switched on; the time motor was switched off before the run was complete, and the computer was allowed to coast down. Easy manual cranking of the time line brought the dynamic test to its desired end point, when dials were read.
As was typical of such computers, flipping a lever on the handcrank's support casting enabled automatic reception of data and disengaged the handcrank gear. Flipped the other way, the gear engaged, and power was cut to the receiver's servo motor.
The mechanisms (including servos) in this computer are described superbly, with many excellent illustrations, in the Navy publication OP 1140.
There are photographs of the computer's interior in the National Archives; some are on Web pages, and some of those have been rotated a quarter turn.
==== Stable Element ====
The function of the Mark 6 Stable Element (pictured) in this fire control system is the same as the function of the Mark 41 Stable Vertical in the main battery system. It is a vertical seeking gyroscope ("vertical gyro", in today's terms) that supplies the system with a stable up direction on a rolling and pitching ship. In surface mode, it replaces the director's elevation signal. It also has the surface mode firing keys.
It is based on a gyroscope that erects so its spin axis is vertical. The housing for the gyro rotor rotates at a low speed, on the order of 18 rpm. On opposite sides of the housing are two small tanks, partially filled with mercury, and connected by a capillary tube. Mercury flows to the lower tank, but slowly (several seconds) because of the tube's restriction. If the gyro's spin axis is not vertical, the added weight in the lower tank would pull the housing over if it were not for the gyro and the housing's rotation. That rotational speed and rate of mercury flow combine to put the heavier tank in the best position to make the gyro precess toward the vertical.
When the ship changes course rapidly at speed, the acceleration due to the turn can be enough to confuse the gyro and make it deviate from true vertical. In such cases, the ship's gyrocompass sends a disabling signal that closes a solenoid valve to block mercury flow between the tanks. The gyro's drift is low enough not to matter for short periods of time; when the ship resumes more typical cruising, the erecting system corrects for any error.
The Earth's rotation is fast enough to need correcting. A small adjustable weight on a threaded rod, and a latitude scale makes the gyro precess at the Earth's equivalent angular rate at the given latitude. The weight, its scale, and frame are mounted on the shaft of a synchro torque receiver fed with ship's course data from the gyro compass, and compensated by a differential synchro driven by the housing-rotator motor. The little compensator in operation is geographically oriented, so the support rod for the weight points east and west.
At the top of the gyro assembly, above the compensator, right on center, is an exciter coil fed with low-voltage AC. Above that is a shallow black-painted wooden bowl, inverted. Inlaid in its surface, in grooves, are two coils essentially like two figure 8s, but shaped more like a letter D and its mirror image, forming a circle with a diametral crossover. One coil is displaced by 90 degrees. If the bowl (called an "umbrella") is not centered above the exciter coil, either or both coils have an output that represents the offset. This voltage is phase-detected and amplified to drive two DC servo motors to position the umbrella in line with the coil.
The umbrella support gimbals rotate in bearing with the gun director, and the servo motors generate level and crosslevel stabilizing signals.
The Mark 1A's director bearing receiver servo drives the pickoff gimbal frame in the stable element through a shaft between the two devices, and the Stable Element's level and crosslevel servos feed those signals back to the computer via two more shafts.
(The sonar fire-control computer aboard some destroyers of the late 1950s required roll and pitch signals for stabilizing, so a coordinate converter containing synchros, resolvers, and servos calculated the latter from gun director bearing, level, and crosslevel.)
==== Fire Control Radar ====
The fire-control radar used on the Mark 37 GFCS has evolved. In the 1930s, the Mark 33 Director did not have a radar antenna. The Tizard Mission to the United States provided the USN with crucial data on UK and Royal Navy radar technology and fire-control radar systems. In September 1941, the first rectangular Mark 4 Fire-control radar antenna was mounted on a Mark 37 Director, and became a common feature on USN Directors by mid 1942. Soon aircraft flew faster, and in c1944 to increase speed and accuracy the Mark 4 was replaced by a combination of the Mark 12 (rectangular antenna) and Mark 22 (parabolic antenna) "orange peel" radars. (pictured) in the late 1950s, Mark 37 directors had Western Electric Mark 25 X-band conical-scan radars with round, perforated dishes. Finally, the circular SPG 25 antenna was mounted on top.
==== Deployment ====
destroyers (1 per vessel, 456 total)
2 rebuilt Mahan-class: Downes, Cassin
several modernized Porter-class: Phelps, Selfridge, Winslow
12 Sims-class (launched ca. 1939)
30 Benson-class (1939 - 1942)
66 Gleaves-class (1940 - 1942)
175 Fletcher-class (1942 - 1944)
58 Allen M. Sumner-class (ca. 1944)
12 Robert H. Smith-class (ca. 1944)
98 Gearing-class (ca. 1945)
possibly on USS Castle (DD-720) and USS Seaman (DD-791) which were launched incomplete and never commissioned
light cruisers (63 total)
TBD: Atlanta, Fargo classes
3 Juneau-class(ca. 1945) (2 per vessel, 6 total)
27 Cleveland-class(launched ca. 1942 - 1945) (2 per vessel, 54 total)
one Mk37 removed on Oklahoma City during CLG conversion
2 Worcester-class(ca. 1947) (4 per vessel, 8 total)
1 Brooklyn-class ( Savannah, refitted as upgrade in 1944)
heavy cruisers (46 total)
14 Baltimore-class(ca. 1942 - 1945) (2 per vessel, 28 total)
3 Oregon City-class(ca. 1945) (2 per vessel, 6 total)
3 Des Moines-class(ca. 1947) (4 per vessel, 12 total)
2 Alaska-class large cruisers (ca. 1943) (2 per vessel, 4 total)
aircraft carriers (2 total)
TBD: Yorktown, Essex classes, Midway(?)
Saratoga: 2xMk37 refitted by May 1942
battleships (16 total)
TBD: North Carolina, South Dakota classes, all the old ones that were upgraded with 5in/38(?)
4 Iowa-class(launched ca. 1942 - 1943) (4 per vessel)
=== Mark 38 GFCS ===
The Mark 38 Gun Fire Control System (GFCS) controlled the large main battery guns of Iowa-class battleships. The radar systems used by the Mark 38 GFCS were far more advanced than the primitive radar sets used by the Japanese in World War II. The major components were the director, plotting room, and interconnecting data transmission equipment. The two systems, forward and aft, were complete and independent. Their plotting rooms were isolated to protect against battle damage propagating from one to the other.
==== Director ====
The forward Mark 38 Director (pictured) was situated on top of the fire control tower. The director was equipped with optical sights, optical Mark 48 Rangefinder (the long thin boxes sticking out each side), and a Mark 13 Fire Control Radar antenna (the rectangular shape sitting on top). The purpose of the director was to track the target's present bearing and range. This could be done optically with the men inside using the sights and Rangefinder, or electronically with the radar. (The fire control radar was the preferred method.) The present position of the target was called the Line-Of-Sight (LOS), and it was continuously sent down to the plotting room by synchro motors. When not using the radar's display to determine Spots, the director was the optical spotting station.
==== Plotting room ====
The Forward Main Battery Plotting Room was located below the waterline and inside the armored belt. It housed the forward system's Mark 8 Rangekeeper, Mark 41 Stable Vertical, Mark 13 FC Radar controls and displays, Parallax Correctors, Fire Control Switchboard, battle telephone switchboard, battery status indicators, assistant Gunnery Officers, and Fire Controlmen (FC's)(between 1954 and 1982, FC's were designated as Fire Control Technicians (FT's)).
The Mark 8 Rangekeeper was an electromechanical analog computer whose function was to continuously calculate the gun's bearing and elevation, Line-Of-Fire (LOF), to hit a future position of the target. It did this by automatically receiving information from the director (LOS), the FC Radar (range), the ship's gyrocompass (true ship's course), the ships Pitometer log (ship's speed), the Stable Vertical (ship's deck tilt, sensed as level and crosslevel), and the ship's anemometer (relative wind speed and direction). Also, before the surface action started, the FT's made manual inputs for the average initial velocity of the projectiles fired out of the battery's gun barrels, and air density. With all this information, the rangekeeper calculated the relative motion between its ship and the target. It then could calculate an offset angle and change of range between the target's present position (LOS) and future position at the end of the projectile's time of flight. To this bearing and range offset, it added corrections for gravity, wind, Magnus Effect of the spinning projectile, stabilizing signals originating in the Stable Vertical, Earth's curvature, and Coriolis effect. The result was the turret's bearing and elevation orders (LOF). During the surface action, range and deflection Spots and target altitude (not zero during Gun Fire Support) were manually entered.
The Mark 41 Stable Vertical was a vertical seeking gyroscope, and its function was to tell the rest of the system which-way-is-up on a rolling and pitching ship. It also held the battery's firing keys.
The Mark 13 FC Radar supplied present target range, and it showed the fall of shot around the target so the Gunnery Officer could correct the system's aim with range and deflection spots put into the rangekeeper. It could also automatically track the target by controlling the director's bearing power drive. Because of radar, Fire Control systems are able to track and fire at targets at a greater range and with increased accuracy during the day, night, or inclement weather. This was demonstrated in November 1942 when the battleship USS Washington engaged the Imperial Japanese Navy battlecruiser Kirishima at a range of 18,500 yards (16,900 m) at night. The engagement left Kirishima in flames, and she was ultimately scuttled by her crew. This gave the United States Navy a major advantage in World War II, as the Japanese did not develop radar or automated fire control to the level of the US Navy and were at a significant disadvantage.
The parallax correctors are needed because the turrets are located hundreds of feet from the director. There is one for each turret, and each has the turret and director distance manually set in. They automatically received relative target bearing (bearing from own ship's bow), and target range. They corrected the bearing order for each turret so that all rounds fired in a salvo converged on the same point.
The fire control switchboard configured the battery. With it, the Gunnery Officer could mix and match the three turrets to the two GFCSs. He could have the turrets all controlled by the forward system, all controlled by the aft system, or split the battery to shoot at two targets.
The assistant Gunnery Officers and Fire Control Technicians operated the equipment, talked to the turrets and ship's command by sound-powered telephone, and watched the Rangekeeper's dials and system status indicators for problems. If a problem arose, they could correct the problem, or reconfigure the system to mitigate its effect.
=== Mark 51 Fire Control System ===
The Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft guns were arguably the best light anti-aircraft weapon of World War II., employed on almost every major warship in the U.S. and UK fleet during World War II from about 1943 to 1945. They were most effective on ships as large as destroyer escorts or larger when coupled with electric-hydraulic drives for greater speed and the Mark 51 Director (pictured) for improved accuracy, the Bofors 40 mm gun became a fearsome adversary, accounting for roughly half of all Japanese aircraft shot down between 1 October 1944 and 1 February 1945.
=== Mark 56 GFCS ===
This GFCS was an intermediate-range, anti-aircraft gun fire-control system. It was designed for use against high-speed subsonic aircraft. It could also be used against surface targets. It was a dual ballistic system. This means that it was capable of simultaneously producing gun orders for two different gun types (e.g.: 5"/38cal and 3"/50cal) against the same target. Its Mark 35 Radar was capable of automatic tracking in bearing, elevation, and range that was as accurate as any optical tracking. The whole system could be controlled from the below decks Plotting Room with or without the director being manned. This allowed for rapid target acquisition when a target was first detected and designated by the ship's air-search radar, and not yet visible from on deck. Its target solution time was less than 2 seconds after Mark 35 radar "Lock on". It was designed toward the end of World War II, apparently in response to Japanese kamikaze aircraft attacks. It was conceived by Ivan Getting, mentioned near the end of his Oral history, and its linkage computer was designed by Antonín Svoboda. Its gun director was not shaped like a box, and it had no optical rangefinder. The system was manned by crew of four. On the left side of the director, was the Cockpit where the Control Officer stood behind the sitting Director Operator (Also called Director Pointer). Below decks in Plot, was the Mark 4 Radar Console where the Radar Operator and Radar Tracker sat. The director's movement in bearing was unlimited because it had slip-rings in its pedestal. (The Mark 37 gun director had a cable connection to the hull, and occasionally had to be "unwound".) Fig. 26E8 on this Web page shows the director in considerable detail.
The explanatory drawings of the system show how it works, but are wildly different in physical appearance from the actual internal mechanisms, perhaps intentionally so. However, it omits any significant description of the mechanism of the linkage computer. That chapter is an excellent detailed reference that explains much of the system's design, which is quite ingenious and forward-thinking in several respects.
In the 1968 upgrade to USS New Jersey for service off Vietnam, three Mark 56 Gun Fire Control Systems were installed. Two on either side just forward of the aft stack, and one between the aft mast and the aft Mark 38 Director tower. This increased New Jersey's anti-aircraft capability, because the Mark 56 system could track and shoot at faster planes.
=== Mark 63 GFCS ===
The Mark 63 was introduced in 1953 for the twin QF 4-inch naval gun Mk XVI and Mk.33 twin 3"/50 cal guns. The GFCS consists of an AN/SPG-34 radar tracker and a Mark 29 gun sight.
=== Mark 68 GFCS ===
Introduced in the early 1950s, the Mark 68 was an upgrade from the Mark 37 effective against air and surface targets. It combined a manned topside director, a conical scan acquisition and tracking radar, an analog computer to compute ballistics solutions, and a gyro stabilization unit.
The gun director was mounted in a large yoke, and the whole director was stabilized in crosslevel (the yoke's pivot axis). That axis was in a vertical plane that included the line of sight.
At least in 1958, the computer was the Mark 47, an hybrid electronic/electromechanical system. Somewhat akin to the Mark 1A, it had electrical high-precision resolvers instead of the mechanical one of earlier machines, and multiplied with precision linear potentiometers. However, it still had disc/roller integrators as well as shafting to interconnect the mechanical elements. Whereas access to much of the Mark 1A required time-consuming and careful disassembly (think days in some instances, and possibly a week to gain access to deeply buried mechanisms), the Mark 47 was built on thick support plates mounted behind the front panels on slides that permitted its six major sections to be pulled out of its housing for easy access to any of its parts. (The sections, when pulled out, moved fore and aft; they were heavy, not counterbalanced. Typically, a ship rolls through a much larger angle than it pitches.) The Mark 47 probably had 3-D cams for ballistics, but information on it appears very difficult to obtain.
Mechanical connections between major sections were via shafts in the extreme rear, with couplings permitting disconnection without any attention, and probably relief springs to aid re-engagement. One might think that rotating an output shaft by hand in a pulled-out section would misalign the computer, but the type of data transmission of all such shafts did not represent magnitude; only the incremental rotation of such shafts conveyed data, and it was summed by differentials at the receiving end. One such kind of quantity is the output from the roller of a mechanical integrator; the position of the roller at any given time is immaterial; it is only the incrementing and decrementing that counts.
Whereas the Mark 1/1A computations for the stabilizing component of gun orders had to be approximations, they were theoretically exact in the Mark 47 computer, computed by an electrical resolver chain.
The design of the computer was based on a re-thinking of the fire control problem; it was regarded quite differently.
Production of this system lasted for over 25 years. A digital upgrade was available from 1975 to 1985, and it was in service into the 2000s. The digital upgrade was evolved for use in the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.
The AN/SPG-53 was a United States Navy gun fire-control radar used in conjunction with the Mark 68 gun fire-control system. It was used with the 5"/54 caliber Mark 42 gun system aboard Belknap-class cruisers, Mitscher-class destroyers, Forrest Sherman-class destroyers, Farragut-class destroyers, Charles F. Adams-class destroyers, Knox-class frigates as well as others.
== US Navy computerized fire control systems ==
=== Mark 86 GFCS ===
The US Navy desired a digital computerized gun fire-control system in 1961 for more accurate shore bombardment. Lockheed Electronics produced a prototype with AN/SPQ-9 radar fire control in 1965. An air defense requirement delayed production with the AN/SPG-60 until 1971. The Mark 86 did not enter service until when the nuclear-powered missile cruiser was commissioned in February 1974, and subsequently installed on US cruisers and amphibious assault ships. The last US ship to receive the system, USS Port Royal was commissioned in July 1994.
The Mark 86 on Aegis-class ships controls the ship's 5"/54 caliber Mark 45 gun mounts, and can engage up to two targets at a time. It also uses a Remote Optical Sighting system which uses a TV camera with a telephoto zoom lens mounted on the mast and each of the illuminating radars.
=== Mark 34 Gun Weapon System (GWS) ===
The Mark 34 Gun Weapon System comes in various versions. It is an integral part of the Aegis combat weapon system on Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers and modified Ticonderoga-class cruisers. It combines the Mark 45 5"/54 or 5"/62 Caliber Gun Mount, Mark 46 Optical Sight System or Mark 20 Electro-Optical Sight System and the Mark 160 Mod 4–11 Gunfire Control System / Gun Computer System. Other versions of the Mark 34 GWS are used by foreign navies as well as the US Coast Guard, with each configuration having its own unique camera and/or gun system. It can be used against surface ship and close hostile aircraft, and as in Naval Gunfire Support (NGFS) against shore targets.
=== Mark 92 Fire Control System (FCS) ===
The Mark 92 fire control system, an Americanized version of the WM-25 system designed in The Netherlands, was approved for service use in 1975. It is deployed on board the relatively small and austere Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate to control the Mark 75 Naval Gun and the Mark 13 Guided Missile Launching System (missiles have since been removed since retirement of its version of the Standard missile). The Mod 1 system used in PHMs (retired) and the US Coast Guard's WMEC and WHEC ships can track one air or surface target using the monopulse tracker and two surface or shore targets. Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates with the Mod 2 system can track an additional air or surface target using the Separate Track Illuminating Radar (STIR).
=== Mark 160 Gun Computing System ===
Used in the Mark 34 Gun Weapon System, the Mark 160 Gun Computing System (GCS) contains a gun console computer (GCC), a computer display console (CDC), a magnetic tape recorder-reproducer, a watertight cabinet housing the signal data converter and gun mount microprocessor, a gun mount control panel (GMCP), and a velocimeter.
== See also ==
Close-in weapon system
Director (military)
Fire-control system Ground, sea and air based systems
Mathematical discussion of rangekeeping
Rangekeeper shipboard analog fire-control computer
== Notes ==
== Citations ==
== Bibliography ==
Campbell, John (1985). Naval Weapons of World War Two. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-459-4.
Fairfield, A.P. (1921). Naval Ordnance. The Lord Baltimore Press.
Fischer, Brad D. & Jurens, W. J. (2006). "Fast Battleship Gunnery During World War II: A Gunnery Revolution, Part II". Warship International. XLIII (1): 55–97. ISSN 0043-0374.
Frieden, David R. (1985). Principles of Naval Weapons Systems. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-537-X.
Friedman, Norman (2008). Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era. Seaforth. ISBN 978-1-84415-701-3.
Jurens, W. J. (1991). "The Evolution of Battleship Gunnery in the U. S. Navy, 1920–1945". Warship International. XXVIII (3): 240–271. ISSN 0043-0374.
Pollen, Antony (1980). The Great Gunnery Scandal – The Mystery of Jutland. Collins. ISBN 0-00-216298-9.
Schleihauf, William (2001). "The Dumaresq and the Dreyer". Warship International. XXXVIII (1). International Naval Research Organization: 6–29. ISSN 0043-0374.
Schleihauf, William (2001). "The Dumaresq and the Dreyer, Part II". Warship International. XXXVIII (2). International Naval Research Organization: 164–201. ISSN 0043-0374.
Schleihauf, William (2001). "The Dumaresq and the Dreyer, Part III". Warship International. XXXVIII (3). International Naval Research Organization: 221–233. ISSN 0043-0374.
Friedman, Norman (2004). US Destroyers: An Illustrated Design History (Revised ed.). Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-442-3.
Friedman, Norman (1986). U.S. Battleships: An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0870217151. OCLC 12214729.
Friedman, Norman (1984). U.S. Cruisers: An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis, Maryland: U.S. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 9780870217180.
Stille, Mark (2014). Us Heavy Cruisers 1941-45: Pre-War Classes. OSPREY PUB INC. ISBN 9781782006299.
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Navy.
== External links ==
The British High Angle Control System (HACS)
Best Battleship Fire control – Comparison of World War II battleship systems
Appendix one, Classification of Director Instruments
HACS III Operating manual Part 1
HACS III Operating manual Part 2
USS Enterprise Action Log
The RN Pocket Gunnery Book
Fire Control Fundamentals
Manual for the Mark 1 and Mark 1a Computer
Maintenance Manual for the Mark 1 Computer
Manual for the Mark 6 Stable Element
Gun Fire Control System Mark 37 Operating Instructions at ibiblio.org
Director section of Mark 1 Mod 1 computer operations at NavSource.org
Naval Ordnance and Gunnery, Vol. 2, Chapter 25, AA Fire Control Systems | Wikipedia/Ship_gun_fire-control_system |
Civil control of the military is a doctrine in military and political science that places ultimate responsibility for a country's strategic decision-making in the hands of the state's civil authority, rather than completely with professional military leadership itself. As such, a "fundamental requirement of any nation is to ensure that the activities of its armed forces be subordinated to the political purposes of constitutional government; hence, the armed forces must be under civil control". The concept of civil control falls within the overarching concept of civil-military relations representing the "societal imperative that the military remain subordinate to civil authority and that it reflect, to an appropriate degree, societal values and norms".
Civil oversight over militaries puts the power to take military action in the hands of a civil authority, such as through government ministers or legislative bodies, or the democratic apparatus of the Crown in constitutional monarchies. Allowing the civil component of government to retain control over the military or state security illustrates the power of the citizenry, a healthy respect for democratic values, and what can be described as good governance. Giving power to the civil component of the government over what the military can do and how much money it can spend protects the democratic process from abuse. Nations that can achieve legitimate relationship between the two structures serve to be more effective and provide accountability between government and military.
Civil control can be accomplished in a number of ways, for example through complete civilian control or for a mixed civilian-military approach, for example, "typical for the British model of armed forces administration is the balanced ratio of civilian and military personnel in key ministerial positions". Under the civil control model, a state's government and military are confined to the rule of law and submit to civil oversight to make an effective security apparatus possible. Transparency has taken hold throughout the international system to improve bureaucracy and the democratisation of both democratic countries and resistant authoritarian holdovers. This has grown to involve the armed forces/security forces themselves to work towards the international norm of fully liberalising these organisations.
Civil control is often seen as a prerequisite feature of a stable liberal democracy. Use of the term in scholarly analyses tends to take place in the context of a democracy governed by elected officials, though the subordination of the military to political control is not unique to these societies. For example, there is often civilian control of the military in communist states, such as the People's Republic of China. Mao Zedong stated that "Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party," reflecting the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party over the People's Liberation Army.
As noted by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Richard H. Kohn, "civilian control is not a fact but a process". Affirmations of respect for the values of civil control notwithstanding, the actual level of control sought or achieved by the civil leadership may vary greatly in practice, from a statement of broad policy goals that military commanders are expected to translate into operational plans, to the direct selection of specific targets for attack on the part of governing politicians. National leaders with limited experience in military matters often have little choice but to rely on the advice of professional military commanders trained in the art and science of warfare to inform the limits of policy; in such cases, the military establishment may enter the bureaucratic arena to advocate for or against a particular course of action, shaping the policy-making process and blurring any clear cut lines of civil control.
The reverse situation, where professional military officers control national politics, is called a military dictatorship.
A lack of control over the military may result in a state within a state, as observed in countries like Pakistan. One author, paraphrasing Samuel P. Huntington's writings in The Soldier and the State, has summarised the civil control ideal as "the proper subordination of a competent, professional military to the ends of policy as determined by civilian authority".
== Rationales ==
Advocates of civil control generally take a Clausewitzian view of war, emphasizing its political character. In the words of Georges Clemenceau, "War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men" (also frequently rendered as "War is too important to be left to the generals"), wryly reflects this view. Given that broad strategic decisions, such as the decision to declare a war, start an invasion, or end a conflict, have a major impact on the citizens of the country, they are seen by civil control advocates as best guided by the will of the people (as expressed by their political representatives), rather than left solely to an elite group of tactical experts. The military serves as a special government agency, which is supposed to implement, rather than formulate, policies that require the use of certain types of physical force. Richard Kohn, Professor Emeritus of History at UNC, summarises,
"The point of civilian control is to make security subordinate to the larger purposes of a nation, rather than the other way around. The purpose of the military is to defend society, not to define it."
A state's effective use of force is an issue of great concern for all national leaders, who must rely on the military to supply this aspect of their authority. The danger of granting military leaders full autonomy or sovereignty is that they may ignore or supplant the democratic decision-making process, and use physical force, or the threat of physical force, to achieve their preferred outcomes; in the worst cases, this may lead to a coup or military dictatorship. A related danger is the use of the military to crush domestic political opposition through intimidation or sheer physical force, interfering with the ability to have free and fair elections, a key part of the democratic process. This poses the paradox that "because we fear others we create an institution of violence to protect us, but then we fear the very institution we created for protection". Also, military personnel, because of the nature of their job, are much more willing to use force to settle disputes than civilians because they are trained military personnel that specialise strictly in warfare. The military is authoritative and hierarchical, rarely allowing discussion and prohibiting dissension. For example, in the Empire of Japan, the Prime Minister and politicians were not allowed to exercise authority over the Imperial Army and Navy under the supreme command authority. This was considered an "interference with the supreme command authority" and was said to violate the Emperor's sovereignty. As a result, even if the local military ran wild or an armed conflict broke out, as in the Manchurian Incident in 1931 and the border conflict with the Soviet Union in 1939, the Cabinet had no choice but to ultimately approve, even if it expressed concerns. Even General Tojo Hideki, who held the dual roles of Prime Minister and Minister of the Army, could not directly intervene in operational command, as it was under the jurisdiction of the General Staff. For this reason, Tojo attempted to unify state affairs and supreme command by taking on the dual role of Chief of the General Staff in 1944, but it did not work out.
According to a study of South Korea, the military is responsible for enacting the policy and decisions handed down from the government. This is dependent on the civil government maintaining a strong grip on the power to enact binding decision and the military following these decisions in the agreed approach. Civil control is the authority of a nations political structure to make policy and implementation decisions that can be directed to the military to enact and then oversaw throughout.
Internationally, in the developed world democratic countries have embraced a well-established civil-military relationship that has matured over time into a good working relationship. Newer democracies, depending on their political and military situations, have had to work through overcorrecting towards one side or the other on the seesaw of government control. A government establishing the kind of relationship to avoid civil-military conflict, needs like-minded officials in both organisations to agree and work together. “Democratically accountable civilian control is also associated with more prudent internal uses of armed force.” The main focus of civil control in developing countries remains on ensuring a democratic restraint on militaries acting in their own self-interest. Militaries given too much power or too ethnically focused undermines a nations ability to prevent conflict and provide security. This can lead to the military abusing the very population it is supposed to be protecting with no real controlling mechanism. Most countries have developed similar systems of a ministry of defence to provide civilian oversight and coordination between military and government.
=== Liberal theory and the American Founding Fathers ===
Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States were suspicious of standing militaries. As Samuel Adams wrote in 1768, "Even when there is a necessity of the military power, within a land, a wise and prudent people will always have a watchful and jealous eye over it". Even more forceful are the words of Elbridge Gerry, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, who wrote that "[s]tanding armies in time of peace are inconsistent with the principles of republican Governments, dangerous to the liberties of a free people, and generally converted into destructive engines for establishing despotism."
In Federalist No. 8, one of The Federalist Papers documenting the ideas of some of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton expressed concern that maintaining a large standing army would be a dangerous and expensive undertaking. In his principal argument for the ratification of the proposed constitution, he argued that only by maintaining a strong union could the new country avoid such a pitfall. Using the European experience as a negative example and the British experience as a positive one, he presented the idea of a strong nation protected by a navy with no need of a standing army. The implication was that control of a large military force is, at best, difficult and expensive, and at worst invites war and division. He foresaw the necessity of creating a civil government that kept the military at a distance.
James Madison, another writer of many of The Federalist Papers, expressed his concern about a standing military in comments before the Constitutional Convention in June 1787:
In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.
The United States Constitution placed considerable limitations on the legislature. Coming from a tradition of legislative superiority in government, many were concerned that the proposed Constitution would place so many limitations on the legislature that it would become impossible for such a body to prevent an executive from starting a war. Hamilton argued in Federalist No. 26 that it would be equally as bad for a legislature to be unfettered by any other agency and that restraints would actually be more likely to preserve liberty. James Madison, in Federalist No. 47, continued Hamilton's argument that distributing powers among the various branches of government would prevent any one group from gaining so much power as to become unassailable. In Federalist No. 48, however, Madison warned that while the separation of powers is important, the departments must not be so far separated as to have no ability to control the others.
Finally, in Federalist No. 51, Madison argued that to create a government that relied primarily on the good nature of the incumbent to ensure proper government was folly. Institutions must be in place to check incompetent or malevolent leaders. Most importantly, no single branch of government ought to have control over any single aspect of governing. Thus, all three branches of government must have some control over the military, and the system of checks and balances maintained among the other branches would serve to help control the military.
Hamilton and Madison thus had two major concerns: (1) the detrimental effect on liberty and democracy of a large standing army and (2) the ability of an unchecked legislature or executive to take the country to war precipitously. These concerns drove U.S. military policy for the first century and a half of the country's existence. While the armed forces were built up during wartime, the pattern after every war up to and including World War II was to demobilise quickly and return to something approaching pre-war force levels. However, with the advent of the Cold War in the 1950s, the need to create and maintain a sizable peacetime military force "engendered new concerns" of militarism and about how such a large force would affect civil–military relations in the United States.
=== Domestic law enforcement ===
The United States' Posse Comitatus Act, passed in 1878, prohibits any part of the Army or the Air Force (since the U.S. Air Force evolved from the U.S. Army) from engaging in domestic law enforcement activities unless they do so pursuant to lawful authority. Similar prohibitions apply to the Navy and Marine Corps by service regulation, since the actual Posse Comitatus Act does not apply to them. The Coast Guard is exempt from Posse Comitatus as one of its primary missions is to enforce U.S. laws, even though it is an armed service.
The act is often misunderstood to prohibit any use of federal military forces in law enforcement, but this is not the case. For example, the President has explicit authority under the Constitution and federal law to use federal forces or federalised militias to enforce the laws of the United States. The act's primary purpose is to prevent local law enforcement officials from utilising federal forces in this way by forming a "posse" consisting of federal soldiers or airmen.
There are, however, practical political concerns in the United States that make the use of federal military forces less desirable for use in domestic law enforcement. Under the U.S. Constitution, law and order is primarily a matter of state concern. As a practical matter, when military forces are necessary to maintain domestic order and enforce the laws, state militia forces under state control i.e., that state's Army National Guard and/or Air National Guard are usually the force of first resort, followed by federalized state militia forces i.e., the Army National Guard and/or Air National Guard "federalized" as part of the U.S. Army and/or U.S. Air Force, with active federal forces (to include "federal" reserve component forces other than the National Guard) being the least politically palatable option.
=== NATO and EU member states ===
Strong democratic control of the military is a prerequisite for membership in NATO. Strong democracy and rule of law, implying democratic control of the military, are prerequisites for membership in the European Union.
=== Maoist approach ===
Maoist military-political theories of people's war and democratic centralism also support the subordination of military forces to the directives of the communist party (although the guerrilla experience of many early leading Chinese Communist Party figures may make their status as civilians somewhat ambiguous). In a 1929 essay On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party, Mao Zedong explicitly refuted "comrades [who] regard military affairs and politics as opposed to each other and [who] refuse to recognize that military affairs are only one means of accomplishing political tasks", prescribing control of the People's Liberation Army by the CCP and greater political training of officers and enlistees as a means of reducing military autonomy. In Mao's theory, the military—which serves both as a symbol of the revolution and an instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat—is not merely expected to defer to the direction of the ruling non-uniformed Party members (who today exercise control in the People's Republic of China through the Central Military Commission), but also to actively participate in the revolutionary political campaigns of the Maoist era.
== Methods of asserting civil control ==
Civilian leaders cannot usually hope to challenge their militaries by means of force, and thus must guard against any potential usurpation of powers through a combination of policies, laws, and the inculcation of the values of civil control in their armed services. The presence of a distinct civilian police force, militia, or other paramilitary group may mitigate to an extent the disproportionate strength that a country's military possesses; civilian gun ownership has also been justified on the grounds that it prevents potential abuses of power by authorities (military or otherwise). Opponents of gun control have cited the need for a balance of power in order to enforce the civil control of the military.
=== A civilian commander-in-chief ===
The establishment of a civilian head of state, head of government, or other government figure as the military's commander-in-chief within the chain of command is one legal construct for the propagation of civilian control. However, in many constitutional monarchies, the monarch is both commander-in-chief and a member of the country's military, thus civil control does not necessitate complete control of only civilians.
In the United States, Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war (in the War Powers Clause), while Article II of the Constitution establishes the President as the commander-in-chief. Ambiguity over when the President could take military action without declaring war resulted in the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
American presidents have used the power to dismiss high-ranking officers as a means to assert policy and strategic control. Three examples include Abraham Lincoln's dismissal of George McClellan in the American Civil War when McClellan failed to pursue the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia following the Battle of Antietam, Harry S. Truman relieving Douglas MacArthur of command in the Korean War after MacArthur repeatedly contradicted the Truman administration's stated policies on the war's conduct, and Barack Obama's acceptance of Stanley McChrystal's resignation in the War in Afghanistan after a Rolling Stone article was published where he mocked several members of the Obama administration, including Vice President Joe Biden.
A major exception occurred during World War II, when Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall displaced the civilian Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson as the most significant leader of the United States Army. Another exception occurred in the 2020-21 United States election crisis when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley began requiring subordinates to check with him before carrying out orders from President Donald Trump; he also called People's Liberation Army Commander-in-Chief Li Zuocheng to assure him that the United States would not launch a military strike on China and that its federal government would remain stable. Some commentators, former military officials, and Republican members of Congress criticised Milley's actions as an undermining of civil control of the military, while Milley and others defended his actions and claimed he did not overstep his authority.
=== Composition of the military ===
Differing opinions exist as to the desirability of distinguishing the military as a body separate from the larger society. In The Soldier and the State, Samuel Huntington argued for what he termed "objective civilian control", "focus[ing] on a politically neutral, autonomous, and professional officer corps". This autonomous professionalism, it is argued, best inculcates an esprit de corps and sense of distinct military corporateness that prevents political interference by sworn servicepersons. Conversely, the tradition of the citizen-soldier holds that "civilianizing" the military is the best means of preserving the loyalty of the armed forces towards civil authorities, by preventing the development of an independent "caste" of warriors that might see itself as existing fundamentally apart from the rest of society. In the early history of the United States, according to Michael Cairo,
[the] principle of civilian control... embodied the idea that every qualified citizen was responsible for the defense of the nation and the defense of liberty, and would go to war, if necessary. Combined with the idea that the military was to embody democratic principles and encourage citizen participation, the only military force suitable to the Founders was a citizen militia, which minimized divisions between officers and the enlisted.
In a less egalitarian practice, societies may also blur the line between "civilian" and "military" leadership by making direct appointments of non-professionals (frequently social elites benefitting from patronage or nepotism) to an officer rank. A more invasive method, most famously practiced in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, involves active monitoring of the officer corps through the appointment of political commissars, posted parallel to the uniformed chain of command and tasked with ensuring that national policies are carried out by the armed forces. The regular rotation of soldiers through a variety of different postings is another effective tool for reducing military autonomy, by limiting the potential for soldiers' attachment to any one particular military unit. Some governments place responsibility for approving promotions or officer candidacies with the civil government, requiring some degree of deference on the part of officers seeking advancement through the ranks.
=== Technological developments ===
Historically, direct control over military forces deployed for war was hampered by the technological limits of command, control, and communications; national leaders, whether democratically elected or not, had to rely on local commanders to execute the details of a military campaign, or risk centrally-directed orders' obsolescence by the time they reached the front lines. The remoteness of government from the action allowed professional soldiers to claim military affairs as their own particular sphere of expertise and influence; upon entering a state of war, it was often expected that the generals and field marshals would dictate strategy and tactics, and the civilian leadership would defer to their informed judgments.
Improvements in information technology and its application to wartime command and control (a process sometimes labeled the "Revolution in Military Affairs") has allowed civilian leaders removed from the theatre of conflict to assert greater control over the actions of distant military forces. Precision-guided munitions and real-time videoconferencing with field commanders now allow the civilian leadership to intervene even at the tactical decision-making level, designating particular targets for destruction or preservation based on political calculations or the counsel of non-uniformed advisors.
=== Restrictions on political activities ===
In the United States the Hatch Act of 1939 does not directly apply to the military, however, Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 (DoDD 1344.10) essentially applies the same rules to the military. This helps to ensure a non-partisan military and ensure smooth and peaceful transitions of power.
=== Political officers ===
Political officers screened for appropriate ideology have been integrated into supervisory roles within militaries as a way to maintain the control by political rulers. Historically they are associated most strongly with the Soviet Union and China rather than liberal democracies.
== Military dislike of political directives ==
While civil control forms the normative standard in almost every society outside of military dictatorships, its practice has often been the subject of pointed criticism from both uniformed and non-uniformed observers, who object to what they view as the undue "politicisation" of military affairs, especially when elected officials or political appointees micromanage the military, rather than giving the military general goals and objectives (like "Defeat Country X"), and letting the military decide how best to carry those orders out. By placing responsibility for military decision-making in the hands of non-professional civilians, critics argue, the dictates of military strategy are subsumed to the political, with the effect of unduly restricting the fighting capabilities of the nation's armed forces for what should be immaterial or otherwise lower priority concerns.
=== Gothic Wars ===
In the wars between the Roman Empire and the Goths in Italy during the 500s CE, the incentives of the military and military necessity clashed with the incentives of the civilian leadership in Constantinople led by Emperor Justinian I. Supreme command in principle was held by the magister militum Flavius Belisarius, but his command in Italy was dissented from on a number of instances. Other representatives of the imperial court and generals allied with those representatives disagreed with Belisarius on decisions made, resulting in only a pyrrhic victory in Italy. Justinian sent a message to Belisarius while besieging Ravenna and when the Gothic garrison in the city was close to being defeated, ordering him to return East to assist with the defense of the empire against Khosrow's invasion of the Roman Empire and instructed him to agree to a peace deal with the Goths under conditions considerably favourable to the Goths, but Belisarius objected to the order and delayed his return.
It was a common issue in the Roman Empire that rebellious generals would be able to overthrow the emperor, and emperors commonly clipped the wings of generals who were too successful and too popular, one such assassination of a popular general named Vitelian occurred under the recent reign of Emperor Justin I, the uncle of Justinian. It was a particular issue in the case of Justinian as he had no biological children nor had ever legally adopted a son. During the Plague of Justinian, Belisarius was restricted to Constantinople under the influence of Empress Theodora who was concerned about the risk of a coup while Justinian was struck with a coma as a result of the epidemic.
=== Case study: United States ===
The "Revolt of the Admirals" that occurred in 1949 was an attempt by senior U.S. Navy & Marine Corps personnel, to force a change in budgets directly opposed to the directives given by the civilian leadership.
U.S. President Bill Clinton faced frequent allegations throughout his time in office (particularly after the Battle of Mogadishu) that he was ignoring military goals out of political and media pressure—a phenomenon termed the "CNN effect". Politicians who personally lack military training and experience but who seek to engage the nation in military action may risk resistance and being labeled "chickenhawks" by those who disagree with their political goals.
In contesting these priorities, members of the professional military leadership and their non-uniformed supporters may participate in the bureaucratic bargaining process of the state's policy-making apparatus, engaging in what might be termed a form of regulatory capture as they attempt to restrict the policy options of elected officials when it comes to military matters. An example of one such set of conditions is the "Weinberger Doctrine", which sought to forestall another U.S. intervention like that which occurred in the Vietnam War (which had proved disastrous for the morale and fighting integrity of the U.S. military) by proposing that the nation should only go to war in matters of "vital national interest", "as a last resort", and, as updated by Weinberger's disciple Colin Powell, with "overwhelming force". The process of setting military budgets forms another contentious intersection of military and non-military policy, and regularly draws active lobbying by rival military services for a share of the national budget.
Nuclear weapons of the United States are controlled by the civilian Department of Energy, not by the Department of Defense.
During the 1990s and 2000s, public controversy over LGBT policy in the U.S. military led to many military leaders and personnel being asked for their opinions on the matter and being given deference although the decision was ultimately not theirs to make.
During his tenure, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld raised the ire of the military by attempting to reform its structure away from traditional infantry and toward a lighter, faster, more technologically driven force. In April 2006, Rumsfeld was severely criticised by some retired military officers for his handling of the Iraq War, while other retired military officers came out in support of Rumsfeld. Although no active military officers have spoken out against Rumsfeld, the actions of these officers is still highly unusual. Some news accounts have attributed the actions of these generals to the Vietnam War experience, in which officers did not speak out against the administration's handling of military action. Later in the year, immediately after the November elections in which the Democrats gained control of Congress, Rumsfeld resigned.
== See also ==
Armed Forces & Society
Civil–military relations
Deep state
Kshatriya, a historical class which conflated military leaders and political rulers
Might makes right
Military–industrial complex
National Security Act
Political commissar
Revolt of the Admirals
Separation of powers
Central bank independence
Civil service independence
Editorial independence
Independent media
Judicial independence
Open government
Separation of church and state
== References ==
== Further reading ==
von Clausewitz, Carl. On War – Volume One
1832 German language edition available on the internet at the Clausewitz Homepage
1874 English language translation by Colonel J.J. Granham downloadable here from Project Gutenberg.
1982 Penguin Classics paperback version, ISBN 0-14-044427-0.
Desch, Michael C. (2001). Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6059-8.
Feaver, Peter D. (2005). Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01761-7.
Finer, Samel E. (2002). The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-7658-0922-2.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1957). Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (1981 ed.). Cambridge: Belknap Press. ISBN 0-674-81736-2. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
Levy, Yagil (2012-10-01). "A Revised Model of Civilian Control of the Military: The Interaction between the Republican Exchange and the Control Exchange". Armed Forces & Society. 38 (4): 529–556. doi:10.1177/0095327X12439384. ISSN 0095-327X. S2CID 146975247.
Janowitz, Morris (1964). The Professional Soldier. Free Press. ISBN 0-02-916180-0. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) | Wikipedia/Civilian_control_of_the_military |
A fire-control radar (FCR) is a radar that is designed specifically to provide information (mainly target azimuth, elevation, range and range rate) to a fire-control system in order to direct weapons such that they hit a target. They are sometimes known as narrow beam radars, targeting radars, tracking radars, or in the UK, gun-laying radars. If the radar is used to guide a missile, it is often known as a target illuminator or illuminator radar.
A typical fire-control radar emits a narrow, intense beam of radio waves to ensure accurate tracking information and to minimize the chance of losing track of the target. This makes them less suitable for initial detection of the target, and FCRs are often partnered with a medium-range search radar to fill this role. In British terminology, these medium-range systems were known as tactical control radars.
Most modern radars have a track-while-scan capability, enabling them to function simultaneously as both fire-control radar and search radar. This works either by having the radar switch between sweeping the search sector and sending directed pulses at the target to be tracked, or by using a phased-array antenna to generate multiple simultaneous radar beams that both search and track.
== Operational phases ==
Fire-control radars operate in three different phases:
Designation or vectoring phase
The fire-control radar must be directed to the general location of the target due to the radar's narrow beam width. This phase is also called "lighting up". It ends when lock-on is acquired.
Acquisition phase
The fire-control radar switches to the acquisition phase of operation once the radar is in the general vicinity of the target. During this phase, the radar system searches in the designated area in a predetermined search pattern until the target is located or redesignated. This phase terminates when a weapon is launched.
Tracking phase
The fire-control radar enters into the track phase when the target is located. The radar system locks onto the target during this phase. This phase ends when the target is destroyed.
== Performance ==
The performance of a fire-control radar is determined primarily by two factors: radar resolution and atmospheric conditions. Radar resolution is the ability of the radar to differentiate between two targets closely located. The first, and most difficult, is range resolution, finding exactly how far is the target. To do this well, in a basic fire-control radar system, it must send very short pulses. Bearing resolution is typically ensured by using a narrow (one or two degree) beam width. Atmospheric conditions, such as moisture lapse, temperature inversion, and dust particles affect radar performance as well. Moisture lapse and temperature inversion often cause ducting, in which RF energy is bent as it passes through hot and cold layers. This can either extend or shorten the radar horizon, depending on which way the RF is bent. Dust particles, as well as water droplets, cause attenuation of the RF energy, resulting in a loss of effective range. In both cases, a lower pulse repetition frequency makes the radar less susceptible to atmospheric conditions.
== Countermeasures ==
Most fire-control radars have unique characteristics, such as radio frequency, pulse duration, pulse frequency and power. These can assist in identifying the radar, and therefore the weapon system it is controlling. This can provide valuable tactical information, like the maximum range of the weapon, or flaws that can be exploited, to combatants that are listening for these signs. During the Cold War Soviet fire control radars were often named and NATO pilots would be able to identify the threats present by the radar signals they received.
== Surface based ==
One of the first successful fire-control radars, the SCR-584, was used effectively and extensively by the Allies during World War II for anti-aircraft gun laying. Since World War II, the U.S. Army has used radar for directing anti-aircraft missiles including the MIM-23 Hawk, the Nike series and currently the MIM-104 Patriot.
== Ship based ==
Examples of fire-control radars currently in use by the United States Navy:
Mk 95 — Continuous Wave Illuminator (NATO Sea sparrow Surface Missile System)
Mk 92 — Combined Antenna System (Mk 75 Gun, formerly SM-1 missiles)
AN/SPG-62 — Continuous Wave Illuminator (AEGIS)
AN/SPQ-9B — Pulse Doppler (Mk 45 lightweight gun)
== Aircraft based ==
After World War II, airborne fire control radars have evolved from the simpler gun and rocket laying AN/APG-36 system used in the F-86D to the active electronically scanned array-based AN/APG-81 of the F-35 Lightning II.
== See also ==
Index of aviation articles
Radar configurations and types
List of radars
List of military electronics of the United States
Ship gun fire-control system
== References ==
US Navy, Fire Controlman, Volume 02—Fire Control Radar Fundamentals (Revised)
== External links ==
AN/APG Fire Control Systems at GlobalSecurity.org | Wikipedia/Fire-control_radar |
Naval strategy is the planning and conduct of war at sea, the naval equivalent of military strategy on land.
Naval strategy, and the related concept of maritime strategy, concerns the overall strategy for achieving victory at sea, including the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of naval forces by which a commander secures the advantage of fighting at a place convenient to themselves, and the deception of the enemy. Naval tactics deal with the execution of plans and manoeuvring of ships or fleets in battle.
== Principles ==
The great aims of a fleet in war must be to keep the coast of its own country free from attack, to secure the freedom of its trade, and to destroy the enemy's fleet or confine it to port. The first and second of these aims can be attained by the successful achievement of the third – the destruction or paralysis of the hostile fleet. A fleet that secures the freedom of its own communications from attack is said to have command of the sea.
Naval strategy is fundamentally different from land-based military strategy. At sea there is no territory to occupy. Apart from the fisheries and, more recently, offshore oilfields, there are no economic assets that can be denied to the enemy and no resources that a fleet can exploit. While an army can live off the land, a fleet must rely on whatever supplies it carries with it or can be brought to it.
== Origins ==
=== Torrington and the fleet in being ===
The British Admiral the Earl of Torrington allegedly originated the expression fleet in being. Faced with a clearly superior French fleet in the summer of 1690 during the War of the Grand Alliance, Torrington proposed avoiding battle, except under very favourable conditions, until the arrival of reinforcements. By maintaining his fleet in being, he would prevent the French from gaining command of the sea, which would allow them to invade England. However, Torrington was forced to fight at the Battle of Beachy Head (June 1690), a French victory which gave Paris control of the English Channel for only a few weeks.
=== Introduction of the guerre de course ===
By the mid-1690s, privateers from French Atlantic ports, particularly St. Malo and Dunkirk, were a major threat to Anglo-Dutch commerce. The threat forced the English government to divert warships to the defence of trade, as convoy escorts and cruisers to hunt down the privateers. In France, the success of privateers against the Anglo-Dutch war effort stimulated a gradual shift from the employment of the Royal warships as battlefleets (guerre d’escadre) towards supporting the war on trade (guerre de course). The allied convoys presented large targets for commerce raiding squadrons. The most dramatic result of this shift was the Comte de Tourville’s attack upon the allies’ Smyrna convoy on 17 June 1693.
The disadvantage of the guerre de course when pursued as a battlefleet strategy, rather than just by smaller vessels, is that it leaves a country's own trade defenceless. Individual raiding squadrons are also vulnerable to defeat in detail if the enemy sends larger squadrons in pursuit, as happened to Leissegues at the Battle of San Domingo in 1806 and Von Spee at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914.
=== Hawke, St Vincent and the close blockade ===
Until after the end of the 17th century it was thought impossible, or at least very rash, to keep the great ships out of port between September and May or June. Therefore, continuous watch on an enemy by blockading his ports was beyond the power of any navy. Therefore, too, as an enemy fleet might be at sea before it could be stopped, the movements of fleets were much subordinated to the need for providing convoy to the trade.
It was not until the middle of the 18th century that the continuous blockade first carried out by Sir Edward Hawke in 1758–59, and then brought to perfection by Earl St Vincent and other British admirals between 1793 and 1815, became possible.
== Development ==
It was only at the very end of the 19th century that theories of naval strategy were first codified, even though British statesmen and admirals had been practising it for centuries.
=== Mahan's influence ===
Captain, later rear admiral, Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914) was an American naval officer and historian.
Influenced by Jomini's principles of strategy, he argued that in the coming wars, control of the sea would grant the power to control the trade and resources needed to wage war. Mahan's premise was that in the contests between France and Britain in the 18th century, domination of the sea through naval power was the deciding factor in the outcome, and therefore, that control of seaborne commerce was secondary to domination in war. In Mahan's view, a country obtained "command of the sea" by concentrating its naval forces at the decisive point to destroy or master the enemy's battle fleet; blockade of enemy ports and disruption of the enemy's maritime communications would follow. Mahan believed that the true objective in a naval war was always the enemy fleet.
Mahan's writings were highly influential. His best-known books, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, and The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812, were published in 1890 and 1892 respectively and his theories contributed to the naval arms race between 1898 and 1914.
Theodore Roosevelt, himself an accomplished historian of the naval history of the War of 1812, closely followed Mahan's ideas. He incorporated them into American naval strategy when he served as assistant secretary of the Navy in 1897–1898. As president, 1901–1909, Roosevelt made building up a world-class fighting fleet of high priority, sending his "white fleet" around the globe in 1908–1909 to make sure all the naval powers understood the United States was now a major player. Building the Panama Canal was designed not just to open Pacific trade to East Coast cities, but also to enable the new Navy to move back and forth across the globe.
=== The Colomb brothers ===
In Britain, Captain John H. Colomb (1838–1909) in a series of articles and lectures argued that the navy was the most important component of imperial defence; his brother, Admiral Phillip Colomb (1831–1899), sought to establish from history general rules applicable to modern naval warfare in his Naval Warfare (1891). But their writings achieved nothing like the fame achieved by Mahan.
=== Corbett’s principles ===
Sir Julian Corbett (1854–1922) was a British naval historian who became a lecturer at the Royal Naval War College in Great Britain.
Corbett differed from Mahan in placing much less emphasis on fleet battle. Corbett emphasized the interdependence of naval and land warfare and tended to concentrate on the importance of sea communications rather than battle. Battle at sea was not an end in itself; the primary objective of the fleet was to secure one's own communications and disrupt those of the enemy, not necessarily to seek out and destroy the enemy's fleet. To Corbett, command of the sea was a relative and not an absolute which could be categorized as general or local, temporary or permanent. Corbett defined the two fundamental methods of obtaining control of the lines of communication as the actual physical destruction or capture of enemy warships and merchants, and or a naval blockade.
His most famous work, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, remains a classic.
== Impact of the World Wars ==
World War I and II left a major impact on naval strategies thanks to new technologies. With the creation of new naval vessels like the submarine, strategies like unrestricted warfare were able to be implemented and with the creation of oil based fuel, radar and radio navies were able to act more efficiently and effective since they were able to move faster, know where enemies were located and were able to communicate with ease.
=== Change of fuel from coal to oil ===
Before the start of the World War I, many naval warships ran on coal and manpower. This was very inefficient but the only way they could power these ships at the time. Half the crew on these ships were there to maintain the coal, but oil was seen more efficient to where the number of men needed to maintain it were nowhere near as many. With the newfound use of oil, the benefits were abundant for the warships. With the use of oil, ships were able to travel at 17 knots. This was drastically different compared to the 7 knots ships traveled before with the use of coal. Coal also took up more space in the ships. Oil can be stored in multiple tanks where they all circumvent to one place to be used unlike coal which was stored in the ship, in multiple rooms and had multiple boiler rooms.
=== World War I ===
Leading up to World War I, there was a naval arms race in Europe. With this race introducing many innovations to navies across Europe, in 1906 the British unveiled a revolutionary new warship called HMS Dreadnought powered by steam turbine. This ship reached a speed of 21 knots, one of the fastest at the time; this warship also had advancements in weaponry that no other nation's navy had at the time. With this, the arms race changed to which nation could build the most of those newly made warships. With these new, heavily armed ships the Allies had more opportunities for blockades in the various theaters of the war.
==== Warfare ====
The submarine, introduced in World War I, led to the development of new weapons and tactics. The Germans' fleet at the time was, in some people's opinion, the most advanced, and was constructed by Alfred Peter Friedrich von Tirpitz. The fleet consisted of the U-boat, and smaller class UB and UC boats.
==== Unrestricted warfare in WW1 ====
Unrestricted Warfare was first introduced during World War I by the German navy. This strategy sought to sink vessels, particularly commercial shipping, without warning. This proved decisive in America's entry into the war through the famous sinking of the RMS Lusitania. The strategy provoked international controversy due to the risk posed to the commerce and citizenry of neutral states. Before its entry into the war, the United States lobbied Germany to curtail the use of unrestricted submarine warfare. While this caused Germany to reduce such operations for a time, the strategy was ultimately resumed in an attempt to impede food and munitions supplies to Britain. The resumption of this strategy led many countries to try to ban the subsequent use of unrestricted submarine warfare, though this met with failure by the outbreak of WWII.
==== Technological impact in WW1 ====
===== Radio =====
Radio saw its first use in naval combat during the First World War. Early radio technology was not adopted universally at this point, as Morse code often proved more reliable than inconsistent or unclear radio signals. These two technologies were jointly used to communicate between ships, bases, and naval command. Improved radio technology greatly advanced naval intelligence and coordination by increasing communication speed, efficiency, and range.
=== World War 2 ===
==== Submarine warfare ====
===== Unrestricted warfare in WW2 =====
World War II saw broad use of unrestricted submarine warfare. This was especially notable in the Battle of the Atlantic, as Axis powers sought to restrict British and French contact with their colonial possessions and limit their involvement in the Pacific theater. After American entry in 1941, US forces targeted Axis commercial and military fleets across the Atlantic basin and in the Pacific War.
==== Carrier-based warfare ====
==== Technological impact in WW2 ====
===== Radar =====
Approaching World War II, militaries gained new technological and strategic capabilities through the use of radar. Radar is used by navies to detect planes and ships that enter the nation's coastal zone and to detect objects that pass by vessels at sea. Navies could thus use radar to clearly detect where enemy ships were located before attacking, as well as knowing when enemies were approaching to attack their vessels in turn.
===== Radio =====
Radio continued to play a vital role in naval communication during the Second World War as it did in the First, the major difference being its widespread adoption by all combatants. Additionally, militaries used radio to communicate with the general public.
== Modern ==
Increasingly naval strategy has been merged with general strategy involving land and air warfare.
Naval strategy constantly evolves as improved technologies become available. During the Cold War, for example, the Soviet Navy shifted from a strategy of directly contending against NATO for control of the bluewater oceans to a concentrated defense of the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk bastions.
In 2007, the U.S. Navy joined with the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Coast Guard to adopt a new maritime strategy called A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower that raised the notion of prevention of war to the same philosophical level as the conduct of war. The strategy was presented by the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps and Commandant of the Coast Guard at the International Seapower Symposium in Newport, R.I. The strategy recognized the economic links of the global system and how any disruption due to regional crises – man-made or natural – can adversely impact the U.S. economy and quality of life. This new strategy charted a course for the three U.S. sea services to work collectively with each other and international partners to prevent these crises from occurring or reacting quickly should one occur to avoid negative impacts to the United States. Sometimes a military force is used as a preventative measure to avoid war, not cause it.
== See also ==
Command of the sea
Military strategy
Strategy
Grand strategy
Operational mobility
Military doctrine
Principles of war
Military tactics
Naval tactics
== References ==
Corbett, Julian S., Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.ISBN 1296071545
Mahan, A.T., The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783.
A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower
== Further reading ==
Adams, John A. If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War: An Analysis of World War II Naval Strategy (2008) excerpt and text search
Dewan, Sandeep China's Maritime Ambitions and the PLA Navy Vij Books, ISBN 9789382573227
Hattendorf, John B. Naval Strategy and Policy in the Mediterranean: Past, Present and Future (2000) excerpt and text search
Padfield, Peter, 'Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns That Shaped the Modern World, 1588–1782 (1999) excerpt and text search; Maritime Power and Struggle For Freedom: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World 1788–1851 (2005)
Paret, Peter, ed. Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (1986)
Rose, Lisle A. Power at Sea, Volume 1: The Age of Navalism, 1890–1918 (2006) excerpt and text search vol 1; Power at Sea, Volume 2: The Breaking Storm, 1919–1945 (2006) excerpt and text search vol 2; Power at Sea, Volume 3: A Violent Peace, 1946–2006 (2006) excerpt and text search vol 3
Shulman, Mark Russell. "The Influence of Mahan upon Sea Power." Reviews in American History 1991 19(4): 522–527. in Jstor | Wikipedia/Naval_strategy |
The expression military–industrial complex (MIC) describes the relationship between a country's military and the defense industry that supplies it, seen together as a vested interest which influences public policy. A driving factor behind the relationship between the military and the defense-minded corporations is that both sides benefit—one side from obtaining weapons, and the other from being paid to supply them. The term is most often used in reference to the system behind the armed forces of the United States, where the relationship is most prevalent due to close links among defense contractors, the Pentagon, and politicians. The expression gained popularity after a warning of the relationship's detrimental effects, in the farewell address of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 17, 1961.
Conceptually, it is closely related to the ideas of the iron triangle in the U.S. (the three-sided relationship between Congress, the executive branch bureaucracy, and interest groups) and the defense industrial base (the network of organizations, facilities, and resources that supplies governments with defense-related goods and services).
== Etymology ==
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower originally coined the term in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together. [emphasis added]
The phrase was thought to have been "war-based" industrial complex before becoming "military" in later drafts of Eisenhower's speech, a claim passed on only by oral history. Geoffrey Perret, in his biography of Eisenhower, claims that, in one draft of the speech, the phrase was "military–industrial–congressional complex", indicating the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry, but the word "congressional" was dropped from the final version to appease elected officials. James Ledbetter calls this a "stubborn misconception" not supported by any evidence; likewise a claim by Douglas Brinkley that it was originally "military–industrial–scientific complex". Henry Giroux claims that it was originally "military–industrial–academic complex". The actual authors of the speech were Eisenhower's speechwriters Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos.
== The MIC and the Cold War ==
Attempts to conceptualize something similar to a modern "military–industrial complex" did exist before 1961, as the underlying phenomenon described by the term is generally agreed to have emerged during or shortly after World War II. For example, a similar phrase was used in a 1947 Foreign Affairs article in a sense close to that it would later acquire, and sociologist C. Wright Mills contended in his 1956 book The Power Elite that a democratically unaccountable class of military, business, and political leaders with convergent interests exercised the preponderance of power in the contemporary West.
Following its coinage in Eisenhower's address, the MIC became a staple of American political and sociological discourse. Many Vietnam War–era activists and polemicists, such as Seymour Melman and Noam Chomsky employed the concept in their criticism of U.S. foreign policy, while other academics and policymakers found it to be a useful analytical framework. Although the MIC was bound up in its origins with the bipolar international environment of the Cold War, some contended that the MIC might endure under different geopolitical conditions (for example, George F. Kennan wrote in 1987 that "were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military–industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented."). The collapse of the USSR and the resultant decrease in global military spending (the so-called 'peace dividend') did in fact lead to decreases in defense industrial output and consolidation among major arms producers, although global expenditures rose again following the September 11 attacks and the ensuing "War on terror", as well as the more recent increase in geopolitical tensions associated with strategic competition between the United States, Russia, and China.
== Eras ==
=== First era ===
Some sources divide the history of the United States military–industrial complex into three eras. From 1797 to 1941, the U.S. government only relied on civilian industries while the country was actually at war. The government owned their own shipyards and weapons manufacturing facilities which they relied on through World War I. With World War II came a massive shift in the way that the U.S. government armed the military.
In World War II, the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Production Board to coordinate civilian industries and shift them into wartime production. Arms production in the U.S. went from around one percent of annual Gross domestic product (GDP) to 40 percent of GDP. U.S. companies, such as Boeing and General Motors, maintained and expanded their defense divisions. These companies have gone on to develop various technologies that have improved civilian life as well, such as night-vision goggles and GPS.
=== Second era ===
The second era is identified as beginning with the coining of the term by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. This era continued through the Cold War period, up to the end of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union. A 1965 article written by Marc Pilisuk and Thomas Hayden says benefits of the military–industrial complex of the U.S. include the advancement of the civilian technology market as civilian companies benefit from innovations from the MIC and vice versa. In 1993, the Pentagon urged defense contractors to consolidate due to the fall of communism and a shrinking defense budget.
=== Third era ===
In the third era, U.S. defense contractors either consolidated or shifted their focus to civilian innovation. From 1992 to 1997 there was a total of US$55 billion worth of mergers in the defense industry, with major defense companies purchasing smaller competitors. The U.S. domestic economy is now tied to the success of the MIC which has led to concerns of repression as Cold War-era attitudes are still prevalent among the American public. Shifts in values and the collapse of communism have ushered in a new era for the U.S. military–industrial complex. The Department of Defense works in coordination with traditional military–industrial complex aligned companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Many former defense contractors have shifted operations to the civilian market and sold off their defense departments. In recent years, traditional defense contracting firms have faced competition from Silicon Valley and other tech companies, like Anduril Industries and Palantir, over Pentagon contracts. This represents a shift in defense strategy away from the procurement of more armaments and toward an increasing role of technologies like cloud computing and cybersecurity in military affairs. From 2019 to 2022, venture capital funding for defense technologies doubled.
== Military subsidy theory ==
According to the military subsidy theory, the Cold War–era mass production of aircraft benefited the U.S. civilian aircraft industry. The theory asserts that the technologies developed during the Cold War along with the financial backing of the military led to the dominance of U.S. aviation companies. There is also strong evidence that the United States federal government intentionally paid a higher price for these innovations to serve as a subsidy for civilian aircraft advancement.
== Current applications ==
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), total world spending on military expenses in 2022 was $2,240 billion. 39% of this total, or $837 billion, was spent by the United States. China was the second largest spender, with $292 billion and 13% of the global share. The privatization of the production and invention of military technology also leads to a complicated relationship with significant research and development of many technologies. In 2011, the United States spent more (in absolute numbers) on its military than the next 13 countries combined.
The military budget of the United States for the 2009 fiscal year was $515.4 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending brings the sum to $651.2 billion. This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department's budget. Overall, the U.S. federal government is spending about $1 trillion annually on military-related purposes.
U.S. President Joe Biden signed a record $886 billion defense spending bill into law on December 22, 2023.
In a 2012 story, Salon reported, "Despite a decline in global arms sales in 2010 due to recessionary pressures, the United States increased its market share, accounting for a whopping 53 percent of the trade that year. Last year saw the United States on pace to deliver more than $46 billion in foreign arms sales." The U.S. military and arms industry also tend to contribute heavily to incumbent members of Congress.
== Political geography ==
The datagraphic represents the 20 largest US defense contractors based on the amount of their defense revenue. Among these corporations, 53.5% of total revenues are derived from defense, and the median proportion is 63.4%; 6 firms derive over 75% of their revenue from defense.
According to the Wikipedia entries for the companies, the headquarters of 11 of these corporations are located in the Washington metropolitan area, of which 5 are in Reston, Virginia.
== Similar concepts ==
A thesis similar to the military–industrial complex was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government ties to heavy industry. It can be defined as, "an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs."
An exhibit of the trend was made in Franz Leopold Neumann's book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942, a study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state.
Within decades of its inception, the idea of the military–industrial complex gave rise to the ideas of other similar industrial complexes, including:: ix–xxv
Animal–industrial complex;
Prison–industrial complex;
Pharmaceutical–industrial complex;
Entertainment-industrial complex;
Medical–industrial complex;
Corporate consumption complex.
Virtually all institutions in sectors ranging from agriculture, medicine, entertainment, and media, to education, criminal justice, security, and transportation, began reconceiving and reconstructing in accordance with capitalist, industrial, and bureaucratic models with the aim of realizing profit, growth, and other imperatives. According to Steven Best, all these systems interrelate and reinforce one another.
The concept of the military–industrial complex has been also expanded to include the entertainment and creative industries as well. For an example in practice, Matthew Brummer describes Japan's Manga Military and how the Ministry of Defense uses popular culture and the moe that it engenders to shape domestic and international perceptions.
An alternative term to describe the interdependence between the military-industrial complex and the entertainment industry is coined by James Der Derian as "Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network". Ray McGovern extended this appellation to Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, MICIMATT.
=== Tech–industrial complex ===
In his 2025 farewell address, outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden warned of a 'tech–industrial complex', stating that "Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power." Commentators noted that this statement was made following Elon Musk's upcoming role in the second Donald Trump administration and public overtures towards Trump by technology industry leaders including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, including the dismantling of Facebook's fact-checking program.
== See also ==
Literature and media
The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (2008 book by Nick Turse)
The Power Elite (1956 book by C. Wright Mills)
War Is a Racket (1935 book by Smedley Butler)
War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2007 documentary film)
Why We Fight (2005 documentary film by Eugene Jarecki)
Other complexes or axes
List of industrial complexes
Miscellaneous
Last Supper (Defense industry)
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Sources ===
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Khaki capitalism, The Economist, December 3, 2011
Militaryindustrialcomplex.com, Features running daily, weekly and monthly defense spending totals plus Contract Archives section.
C. Wright Mills, Structure of Power in American Society, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 9. No. 1 1958
Dwight David Eisenhower, Farewell Address On the military–industrial complex and the government–universities collusion – January 17, 1961
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address As delivered transcript and complete audio from AmericanRhetoric.com
William McGaffin and Erwin Knoll, The military–industrial complex, An analysis of the phenomenon written in 1969
The Cost of War & Today's Military Industrial Complex, National Public Radio, January 8, 2003.
Human Rights First; Private Security Contractors at War: Ending the Culture of Impunity (2008)
Fifty Years After Eisenhower's Farewell Address, A Look at the Military–Industrial Complex – video report by Democracy Now!
Online documents, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
50th Anniversary of Eisenhower's Farewell Address – Eisenhower Institute
Part 1 – Anniversary Discussion of Eisenhower's Farewell Address – Gettysburg College
Part 2 – Anniversary Discussion of Eisenhower's Farewell Address – Gettysburg College | Wikipedia/Military–industrial_complex |
The Command and Control Research Program (CCRP) was an active DoD Research Program from 1994 to 2015. It was housed within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (NII) and it focused upon (1) improving both the state of the art and the state of the practice of command and control (C2) and
(2) enhancing DoD's understanding of the national security implications of the Information Age. It provides "Out of the Box" thinking and explores ways to help DoD take full advantage of Information Age opportunities. The CCRP served as a bridge between the operational and technical communities and enhanced the body of knowledge and research infrastructure needed for future progress.
Dr. David S. Alberts, served as both the Director of Research for OASD(C3I), OASD(NII) / DoD CIO and the Director, DoD CCRP throughout the program's existence
In 2015, a non-profit entity, the International Command and Control Institute IC2I) assumed responsibility for the annual International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium as well as the task of maintaining on-line access to the body of literature created by the CCRP. The IC2I website can be found at: www.internationalc2institute.org
== Purpose ==
The CCRP pursued a broad program of research and analysis in command and control (C2) theory, doctrine, applications, systems, the implications of emerging technology, and C2 experimentation. It also developed new concepts for C2 in joint, combined, and coalition operations in the context of both traditional and non-traditional missions (OOTW). Additionally, the CCRP supported professional military education in the areas of C2, Information Superiority, network-centric operations, and related technologies. To complement its own program of research, the CCRP provided a clearinghouse and archive for other C2 research, published books and monographs, and sponsored workshops and symposia.
The CCRP program served to bridge among the operational, technical, analytical, and educational communities. It focused on emerging requirements and mission areas where new concepts were needed. Combined and coalition operations constituted one of these areas. The evolution of Mission Capability Packages (MCPs) was the CCRP's approach to transforming new and promising concepts into real operational capabilities through the judicious blending of new C2 technologies and the essential elements of all related capabilities needed to field C2 mission capabilities.
== Conferences and Events ==
The CCRP sponsored a number of events each year. These symposia, workshops, and special meetings brought together the brightest and most innovative minds of the military, government, industry, and academia to share ideas, explore new concepts, and understand the implications of emerging technologies. They were designed to encourage the coalescence of a knowledgeable and energized command, control, and transformation community that would be better able to meet the national security challenges of the 21st century. The challenges that were of interest to the DoD CCRP included not only those associated with warfighting but also the challenges of stabilization, homeland defense, peacekeeping, and the full range of disaster relief and humanitarian missions.
The largest CCRP events were the (International) Command and Control Research and Technology Symposia or (I)CCRTS. These events were held in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
At each event, the attendees presented hundreds of technical papers on diverse subjects related to command and control. Recurring subjects included Experimentation, Modeling and Simulation, Cognitive and Social Domain issues, Architectures, Metrics, Information Operations, New Technologies, Networks and Networking, Lessons Learned, Coalition Interoperability, and the Future of C2.
== FACT ==
The CCRP also sponsored the Focus, Agility, and Convergence Team (FACT). FACT was a forum for bringing practitioners, theorists, and analysts together to explore and develop new approaches to achieving the agility, focus and convergence needed to successfully prepare for and participate in complex endeavors across the spectrum of crisis to conflict.
== International C2 Journal ==
The International C2 Journal was an internationally directed and peer reviewed publication that presented articles written by authors from all over the world in many diverse fields of Command and Control such as systems, human factors, experimentation, and operations. The journal featured special issues addressing a single topic or theme. The journal was headed by David S. Alberts, serving as chairman of the editorial board.
== References ==
== External links ==
new home of The Command and Control Research Program Website
The DOD Office for Networking and Information Integration
The DOD Office for Force Transformation | Wikipedia/Command_and_Control_Research_Program |
Strategemata, or Stratagems, is a Latin work by the Roman author Frontinus (c. 40 – 103 AD). It is a collection of examples of military stratagems from Greek and Roman history, ostensibly for the use of generals. Frontinus is assumed to have written Strategemata towards the end of the first century AD, possibly in connection with a lost work on military theory.
Frontinus is best known as a writer on water engineering, but he had a distinguished military career. In Stratagems he draws partly on his own experience as a general in Germany under Domitian. However, most of the (more than five hundred) examples which he gives are less recent, for example he mentions the Siege of Uxellodunum in 51 BC. Similarities to versions in other Roman authors like Valerius Maximus and Livy suggest that he drew mainly on literary sources.
The work consists of four books, of which three are undoubtedly by Frontinus. The authenticity of the fourth book has been challenged.
Jean de Rovroy translated the Strategemata into French for King Charles VII of France (r. 1422–1461). Another French translation by Nicolas Volcyr de Serrouville appeared in print at Paris in 1535. In 1664, Nicolas Perrot d'Ablancourt published a new French translation.
A Spanish translation by Diego Guillén de Ávila appeared in print in 1516.
In the 20th century, Charles E. Bennett translated the Strategemata into English. His version was published with De aquaeductu (translated as Aqueducts of Rome) in the Loeb Classical Library.
== Editions ==
Stratagemata (in French). Paris: Louis Billaine. 1664.
Iuli Frontini Strategematon (in Latin). Leipzig: B.G. Teubner. 1888.
== References ==
== External sources ==
Strategemata (in Latin)
The Stratagems and The Aqueducts of Rome public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Frontinus: The man and the works (LacusCurtius website): this source provides the Latin text and the English translation from the 1925 Loeb edition. | Wikipedia/Strategemata |
Special forces or special operations forces (SOF) are military units trained to conduct special operations. NATO has defined special operations as "military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, selected, trained and equipped forces using unconventional techniques and modes of employment".
Special forces emerged in the early 20th century, with a significant growth in the field during World War II, when "every major army involved in the fighting" created formations devoted to special operations behind enemy lines. Depending on the country, special forces may perform functions including airborne operations, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, foreign internal defense, covert ops, direct action, hostage rescue, high-value targets/manhunt, intelligence operations, mobility operations, and unconventional warfare.
In Russian-speaking countries, special forces of any country are typically called spetsnaz, an acronym for "special purpose". In the United States, the term special forces often refers specifically to the U.S. Army Special Forces, while the term special operations forces is used more broadly for these types of units.
== Capabilities ==
Special forces capabilities include the following:
Special reconnaissance and surveillance in hostile environments
Foreign internal defense: Training and development of other states' military and security forces
Offensive action
Support to counter-insurgency through population engagement and support
Counter-terrorism operations
Sabotage and demolition
Hostage rescue
Other capabilities can include close personal protection; waterborne operations involving combat diving/combat swimming, maritime boarding and amphibious missions; as well as support of air force operations.
== History ==
=== Early period ===
Special forces have played an important role throughout the history of warfare, whenever the aim was to achieve disruption by "hit and run" and sabotage, rather than more traditional conventional combat. Other significant roles lay in reconnaissance, providing essential intelligence from near or among the enemy and increasingly in combating irregular forces, their infrastructure and activities.
Chinese strategist Jiang Ziya, in his Six Secret Teachings, described recruiting talented and motivated men into specialized elite units with functions such as commanding heights and making rapid long-distance advances. Hamilcar Barca in Sicily (249 BC) had specialized troops trained to launch several offensives per day. In the late Roman or early Byzantine period, Roman fleets used small, fast, camouflaged ships crewed by selected men for scouting and commando missions. In the Middle Ages, special forces trained to conduct special operations were employed in several occasions. An example of this were the special forces of Gerald the Fearless, a Portuguese warrior and folk hero of the Reconquista. Muslim forces also had naval special operations units, including one that used camouflaged ships to gather intelligence and launch raids and another of soldiers who could pass for Crusaders who would use ruses to board enemy ships and then capture and destroy them. In Japan, ninjas were used for reconnaissance, espionage and as assassins, bodyguards or fortress guards, or otherwise fought alongside conventional soldiers. During the Napoleonic wars, rifle regiments and sapper units were formed that held specialised roles in reconnaissance and skirmishing and were not committed to the formal battle lines.
=== First specialized units ===
Between the 17th and 18th centuries, there were wars between American colonists and Native American tribes. In Colonial America specialized Rangers formed and first mentioned by Capt. John Smith, in 1622. Learning frontier skills from friendly Native Americans the Rangers helped carry out offensive strikes "frontier combat" against hostile Natives. Thus Ranger companies were formed to provide reconnaissance, intelligence, light infantry, and scouting. Colonel Benjamin Church (c. 1639–1718) was the captain of the first Ranger force in America (1676).
Many Colonial officers would take the philosophies of Benjamin Church's ranging and form their own Ranger units.
Several Ranger companies were established in the American colonies, including Knowlton's Rangers, an elite corps of Rangers who supplied reconnaissance and espionage for George Washington's Continental Army.
Daniel Morgan, was known as leader of The Corps of Rangers for the Continental Army. Rogers' Rangers on Roger's Island, in modern-day Fort Edward, New York, is regarded as the "spiritual home" of the United States Special Operations Forces, specifically the United States Army Rangers. These early American light infantry battalions were trained under Robert Rogers' 28 "Rules of Ranging", which is considered the first known manual of modern asymmetric warfare tactics used in modern special operations.
Various military Ranger units such as the United States Mounted Rangers, United States Rangers, Loudoun Rangers, 43rd Virginia Rangers, and Texas Military Rangers continued throughout the 19th-20th century until the modern formation of the Army Ranger Battalions in WWII.
The British Indian Army deployed two special forces during their border wars: the Corps of Guides formed in 1846 and the Gurkha Scouts (a force that was formed in the 1890s and was first used as a detached unit during the 1897–1898 Tirah Campaign).
During the Second Boer War (1899–1902) the British Army felt the need for more specialised units. Scouting units such as the Lovat Scouts, a Scottish Highland regiment made up of exceptional woodsmen outfitted in ghillie suits and well practised in the arts of marksmanship, field craft, and military tactics filled this role. This unit was formed in 1900 by Lord Lovat and early on reported to an American, Major Frederick Russell Burnham, the Chief of Scouts under Lord Roberts. After the war, Lovat's Scouts went on to formally become the British Army's first sniper unit. Additionally, the Bushveldt Carbineers, formed in 1901, can be seen as an early unconventional warfare unit.
The Luna Sharpshooters, also known as the "Marksmen of Death" (Spanish: Tiradores de la Muerte), was an elite unit formed on 1899 by General Antonio Luna to serve under the Philippine Revolutionary Army. They became famous for fighting fiercer than the regular Filipino army soldiers. Most of the members of this unit came from the old Spanish Army filipino members which fought during the Philippine Revolution.
The sharpshooters became famous for their fierce fighting and proved their worth by being the usual spearheading unit in every major battle in the Philippine–American War. In the Battle of Paye on December 19, 1899, Bonifacio Mariano, a sharpshooter under the command of General Licerio Gerónimo, killed General Henry Ware Lawton of the United States Army, making the latter the highest ranking casualty during the course of the war.
=== World War I ===
The German Stormtroopers and the Italian Arditi were the first modern shock troops. They were both elite assault units trained to a much higher level than that of average troops and tasked to carry out daring attacks and bold raids against enemy defenses. Unlike Stormtroopers, Arditi were not units within infantry divisions, but were considered a separate combat arm.
=== Interwar period ===
==== Chaco war ====
The Macheteros de Jara was an auxiliary cavalry regiment that was organized since August 15, 1932, before the Battle of Boquerón began. The regiment was recruited from former outlaws from Paraguay who fought against Bolivian officers and soldiers.
The 50th Infantry Regiment (Cuchilleros de la Muerte) was a Bolivian infantry regiment that fought in the Chaco War. Nicknamed the Knives of Death (Spanish: Cuchillos de la Muerte), the regiment relied almost exclusively on the use of blade weapons, particularly bayonets.
=== World War II ===
==== British ====
Modern special forces emerged during the Second World War. In 1940, the British Commandos were formed following Winston Churchill's call for "specially trained troops of the hunter class, who can develop a reign of terror down the enemy coast." A staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke, had already submitted such a proposal to General Sir John Dill, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Dill, aware of Churchill's intentions, approved Clarke's proposal and on 23 June 1940, the first Commando raid took place.
By the autumn of 1940 more than 2,000 men had volunteered and in November 1940 these new units were organised into a Special Service Brigade consisting of four battalions under the command of Brigadier J. C. Haydon. The Special Service Brigade was quickly expanded to 12 units which became known as Commandos. Each Commando had a lieutenant colonel as the commanding officer and numbered around 450 men (divided into 75-man troops that were further divided into 15-man sections).
In December 1940 a Middle East Commando depot was formed with the responsibility of training and supplying reinforcements for the Commando units in that theatre. In February 1942 the Commando training depot at Achnacarry in the Scottish Highlands was established by Brigadier Charles Haydon. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Vaughan, the Commando depot was responsible for training complete units and individual replacements. The training regime was for the time innovative and physically demanding, and far in advance of normal British Army training. The depot staff were all hand picked, with the ability to outperform any of the volunteers.
Training and assessment started immediately on arrival, with the volunteers having to complete an 8-mile (13 km) march with all their equipment from the Spean Bridge railway station to the commando depot. Exercises were conducted using live ammunition and explosives to make training as realistic as possible. Physical fitness was a prerequisite, with cross country runs and boxing matches to improve fitness. Speed and endurance marches were conducted up and down the nearby mountain ranges and over assault courses that included a zip-line over Loch Arkaig, all while carrying arms and full equipment. Training continued by day and night with river crossings, mountain climbing, weapons training, unarmed combat, map reading, and small boat operations on the syllabus.
Reaching a wartime strength of over 30 individual units and four assault brigades, the Commandos served in all theatres of war from the Arctic Circle to Europe and from the Mediterranean and Middle East to South-East Asia. Their operations ranged from small groups of men landing from the sea or by parachute to a brigade of assault troops spearheading the Allied invasions of Europe and Asia. The first modern special forces units were established by men who had served with the Commandos, including the Parachute Regiment, Special Air Service, and Special Boat Service. The No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando organised by British of volunteers from occupied Europe led to French Commandos Marine, Dutch Korps Commandotroepen, Belgian Paracommando Brigade.
===== Special Air Service (SAS) =====
The first modern special forces unit was the Special Air Service (SAS), formed in July 1941 from an unorthodox idea and plan by Lieutenant David Stirling. In June 1940 he volunteered for the No. 8 (Guards) Commando (later named "Layforce"). After Layforce was disbanded, Stirling remained convinced that due to the mechanized nature of war a small team of highly trained soldiers with the advantage of surprise could exact greater damage to the enemy's ability to fight than an entire platoon. His idea was for small teams of parachute trained soldiers to operate behind enemy lines to gain intelligence, destroy enemy aircraft, and attack their supply and reinforcement routes. Following a meeting with the C-in-C Middle East, General Claude Auchinleck, his plan was endorsed by the Army High Command.
The force initially consisted of five officers and 60 other ranks. Following extensive training at Kabrit camp, by the River Nile, L Detachment, SAS Brigade, undertook its first operations in the Western Desert. Stirling's vision was eventually vindicated after a series of successful operations. In 1942, the SAS attacked Bouerat. Transported by the Long Range Desert Group (which carried out deep penetration, covert reconnaissance patrols, intelligence missions and attacks behind the enemy lines from 1940), they caused severe damage to the harbour, petrol tanks and storage facilities. This was followed up in March by a raid on Benghazi harbour with limited success but they did damage to 15 aircraft at Al-Berka. The June 1942 Crete airfield raids at Heraklion, Kasteli, Tympaki and Maleme significant damage was caused, and raids at Fuka and Mersa Matruh airfields destroyed 30 aircraft.
===== Chindits =====
In the Burma Campaign, the Chindits, whose long-range penetration groups were trained to operate from bases deep behind Japanese lines, contained commandos (King's Regiment (Liverpool), 142 Commando Company) and Gurkhas. Their jungle expertise, which would play an important part in many British special forces operations post-war, was learned at a great cost in lives in the jungles of Burma fighting the Japanese.
===== The Company of Chosen Immortals =====
Immediately after the German occupation of Greece in April–May 1941, the Greek government fled to Egypt and started to form military units in exile. Air Force Lt. Colonel G. Alexandris suggested the creation of an Army unit along the lines of the British SAS. In August 1942 the Company of Chosen Immortals (Greek: Λόχος Επιλέκτων Αθανάτων) was formed under Cavalry Major Antonios Stefanakis in Palestine, with 200 men. In 1942, the unit was renamed Sacred Band. In close cooperation with the commander of the British SAS Regiment, Lt. Colonel David Stirling, the company moved to the SAS base at Qabrit in Egypt to begin its training in its new role. The special forces unit fought alongside the SAS in the Western Desert and the Aegean.
==== Poland ====
During the start of World War II “September campaign,” the Polish Government did not sign the capitulation, but moved to Paris and then to London. In an attempt to achieve its aims the government in exile gave orders to the Polish resistance and formed a special military unit in Britain with the soldiers called Cichociemni (“silent and unseen”) paratroopers to be deployed into Poland. The Cichociemni were trained similar to the British Special Forces, with the curricula differing according to each soldier's specialization. Their task, on deployment to Poland, was to sustain the structures of the Polish state, training the members of the Resistance in fighting the German occupant. This included taking part in the Warsaw Uprising.
==== Australian ====
Following advice from the British, Australia began raising special forces. The first units to be formed were independent companies, which began training at Wilson's Promontory in Victoria in early 1941 under the tutelage of British instructors. With an establishment of 17 officers and 256 men, the independent companies were trained as "stay behind" forces, a role that they were later employed in against the Japanese in the South West Pacific Area during 1942–43, most notably fighting a guerrilla campaign in Timor, as well as actions in New Guinea. In all, a total of eight independent companies were raised before they were re-organised in mid-1943 into commando squadrons and placed under the command of the divisional cavalry regiments that were re-designated as cavalry commando regiments. As a part of this structure, a total of 11 commando squadrons were raised.
They continued to act independently and were often assigned at brigade level during the later stages of the war, taking part in the fighting in New Guinea, Bougainville and Borneo, where they were employed largely in long-range reconnaissance and flank protection roles. In addition to these units, the Australians also raised the Z Special Unit and M Special Unit. M Special Unit was largely employed in an intelligence-gathering role, while Z Special Force undertook direct action missions. One of its most notable actions came as part of Operation Jaywick, in which several Japanese ships were sunk in Singapore Harbour in 1943. A second raid on Singapore in 1944, known as Operation Rimau, was unsuccessful.
==== United States ====
===== Office of Strategic Services =====
The United States formed the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II under the Medal of Honor recipient William J. Donovan. This organization was the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and was responsible for both intelligence and special forces missions. The CIA's elite Special Activities Division is the direct descendant of the OSS.
===== Marine Raiders =====
On February 16, 1942, the U.S. Marine Corps activated a battalion of Marines with the specific purpose of securing beach heads, and other special operations. The battalion became the first modern special operations force of the U.S. The battalion became known as Marine Raiders due to Admiral Chester Nimitz's request for "raiders" in the Pacific front of the war.
===== United States Army Rangers =====
The history of the United States Army Rangers specialist soldier dates back to the 17th through 19th century from military units such as United States Mounted Rangers, United States Rangers and Texas Rangers. In WWII mid-1942, Major-General Lucian Truscott of the U.S. Army, a General Staff submitted a proposal to General George Marshall conceived under the guidance of then Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, that selectively trained Ranger soldiers were recruited for the newly established special operations Army Ranger Battalion.
===== 1st Special Service Force =====
The United States and Canada formed the 1st Special Service Force as a sabotage ski brigade for operations in Norway. Later known as the "Devil's Brigade" (and called "The Black Devils" by mystified German soldiers), the First Special Service Force was dispatched to the occupied Aleutian Islands, Italy and Southern France.
===== Merrill's Marauders =====
Merrill's Marauders were modeled on the Chindits and took part in similar operations in Burma. In late November 1943, the Alamo Scouts (Sixth Army Special Reconnaissance Unit) were formed to conduct reconnaissance and raider work in the Southwest Pacific Theater under the personal command of then Lt. General Walter Krueger, Commanding General, Sixth U.S. Army. Krueger envisioned that the Alamo Scouts, consisting of small teams of highly trained volunteers, would operate deep behind enemy lines to provide intelligence-gathering and tactical reconnaissance in advance of Sixth U.S. Army landing operations.
===== Special Forces Tab =====
In 1983, nearly 40 years after the end of World War II, the US Army created the Special Forces Tab. It was later decided that personnel with at least 120 days' wartime service prior to 1955 in certain units, including the Devil's Brigade, the Alamo Scouts and the OSS Operational Groups, would receive the Tab for their services in World War II, placing them all in the lineage of today's U.S. and Canadian (via Devil's Brigade) Special Forces.
==== Axis powers ====
The Axis powers did not adopt the use of special forces on the same scale as the British.
===== German =====
The German army's Brandenburger Regiment was founded as a special forces unit used by the Abwehr for infiltration and long distance reconnaissance in Fall Weiss of 1939 and the Fall Gelb and Barbarossa campaigns of 1940 and 1941.
Later during the war the 502nd SS Jäger Battalion, commanded by Otto Skorzeny, sowed disorder behind the Allied lines by mis-directing convoys away from the front lines. A handful of his men were captured by the Americans and spread a rumor that Skorzeny was leading a raid on Paris to kill or capture General Dwight Eisenhower. Although this was untrue, Eisenhower was confined to his headquarters for several days and Skorzeny was labelled "the most dangerous man in Europe".
===== Italian =====
In Italy, the Decima Flottiglia MAS was responsible for the sinking and damage of considerable British tonnage in the Mediterranean. Also there were other Italian special forces like A.D.R.A. (Arditi Distruttori Regia Aeronautica). This regiment was used in raids on Allied airbases and railways in North Africa in 1943. In one mission they destroyed 25 B-17 Flying Fortress bombers.
===== Japanese =====
The Imperial Japanese Army first deployed army paratroops in combat during the Battle of Palembang, on Sumatra in the Netherlands East Indies, on 14 February 1942. The operation was well-planned, with 425 men of the 1st Parachute Raiding Regiment seizing Palembang airfield, while the paratroopers of the 2nd Parachute Raiding Regiment seized the town and its important oil refinery. Paratroops were subsequently deployed in the Burma campaign. The 1st Glider Tank Troop was formed in 1943, with four Type 95 Ha-Go light tanks. The paratroop brigades were organized into the Teishin Shudan as the first division-level raiding unit, at the main Japanese airborne base, Karasehara Airfield, Kyūshū, Japan.
However, as with similar airborne units created by the Allies and other Axis powers, the Japanese paratroops suffered from a disproportionately high casualty rate, and the loss of men who required such extensive and expensive training limited their operations to only the most critical ones. Two regiments of Teishin Shudan were formed into the 1st Raiding Group, commanded by Major General Rikichi Tsukada under the control of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group, during the Philippines campaign. Although structured as a division, its capabilities were much lower, as its six regiments had manpower equivalent to a standard infantry battalion, and it lacked any form of artillery, and had to rely on other units for logistical support. Its men were no longer parachute-trained, but relied on aircraft for transport.
Some 750 men from the 2nd Raiding Brigade, of this group were assigned to attack American air bases on Luzon and Leyte on the night of 6 December 1944. They were flown in Ki-57 transports, but most of the aircraft were shot down. Some 300 commandos managed to land in the Burauen area on Leyte. The force destroyed some planes and inflicted numerous casualties, before they were annihilated.
===== Finnish =====
During World War II, the Finnish Army and Border Guard organized sissi forces into a long-range reconnaissance patrol (kaukopartio) units. These were open only to volunteers and operated far behind enemy lines in small teams. They conducted both intelligence-gathering missions and raids on e.g. enemy supply depots or other strategic targets. They were generally highly effective. For example, during the Battle of Ilomantsi, Soviet supply lines were harassed to the point that the Soviet artillery was unable to exploit its massive numerical advantage over Finnish artillery. Their operations were also classified as secret because of the political sensitivity of such operations. Only authorized military historians could publish on their operations; individual soldiers were required to take the secrets to the grave. A famous LRRP commander was Lauri Törni, who later joined the U.S. Army to train U.S. personnel in special operations.
=== Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) ===
In June 1971, during the Bangladesh Liberation War, the World Bank sent a mission to observe the situation in East Pakistan. The media cell of Pakistan's government was circulating the news that the situation in East Pakistan was stable and normal. Khaled Mosharraf, a sector commander of Mukti Bahini, planned to deploy a special commando team. The task assigned to the team was to carry out commando operations and to terrorize Dhaka. The major objective of this team was to prove that the situation was not actually normal. Moreover, Pakistan, at that time, was expecting economic aid from World Bank, which was assumed to be spent to buy arms. The plan was to make World Bank Mission understand the true situation of East Pakistan and to stop sanctioning the aid. Khaled, along with A. T. M. Haider, another sector commander, formed the Crack Platoon. Initially, the number of commandos in the platoon was 17, trained in Melaghar Camp. From Melaghar, commandos of Crack Platoon headed for Dhaka on 4 June 1971 and launched a guerrilla operation on 5 June. Later, the number of commandos increased, the platoon split and deployed in different areas surrounding Dhaka city. The basic objectives of the Crack Platoon were to demonstrate the strength of Mukti Bahini, terrorising Pakistan Army and their collaborators. Another major objective was proving to the international community that the situation in East Pakistan was not normal. That commando team also aimed at inspiring the people of Dhaka, who were frequently victims of killing and torture. The Crack Platoon successfully fulfilled these objectives. The World Bank mission, in its report, clearly described the hazardous situation prevailing in East Pakistan and urged ending the military regime in East Pakistan. The Crack Platoon carried out several successful and important operations. The power supply in Dhaka was devastated which caused severe problems for the Pakistan Army and the military administration in Dhaka.
=== Modern special forces ===
Stemming from Resolution 598, Operation Prime Chance was the first deployment of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) troops, which were a product of the Reagan administration under Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Admiral William H. McRaven, formerly the ninth commanding officer of USSOCOM (2011–2014), described two approaches to special forces operations in the 2012 posture statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services: "the direct approach is characterized by technologically enabled small-unit precision lethality, focused intelligence, and inter-agency cooperation integrated on a digitally-networked battlefield", whereas the "indirect approach includes empowering host nation forces, providing appropriate assistance to humanitarian agencies, and engaging key populations." Elements of national power must be deployed in concert without over-reliance on a single capability, such as special forces, that leaves the entire force unprepared and hollow across the spectrum of military operations.
Throughout the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st century, special forces have come to higher prominence, as governments have found objectives can sometimes be better achieved by a small team of anonymous specialists than a larger and much more politically controversial conventional deployment. In both Kosovo and Afghanistan, special forces were used to co-ordinate activities between local guerrilla fighters and air power. Typically, guerrilla fighters would engage enemy soldiers and tanks causing them to move, where they could be seen and attacked from the air.
Special forces have been used in both wartime and peacetime military operations such as the Laotian Civil War, Bangladesh Liberation War-1971, Vietnam War, Portuguese Colonial War, South African Border War, Falklands War, The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Jaffna University Helidrop, the first and second Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia, the first and second Chechen Wars, the Iranian Embassy siege (London), the Air France Flight 8969 (Marseille), Operation Defensive Shield, Operation Khukri, the Moscow theater hostage crisis, Operation Orchard, the Japanese Embassy hostage crisis (Lima), in Sri Lanka against the LTTE, the raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, the 2016 Indian Line of Control strike the 2015 Indian counter-insurgency operation in Myanmar and the Barisha Raid in Syria of 2019.
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan involved special forces from several coalition nations, who played a major role in removing the Taliban from power in 2001–2002. Special forces have continued to play a role in combating the Taliban in subsequent operations.
As gender restrictions are being removed in parts of the world, females are applying for special forces units selections and in 2014 the Norwegian Special Operation Forces established an all female unit Jegertroppen (English: Hunter Troop).
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
Bellamy, Chris (2011). The Gurkhas: Special Force. UK: Hachette. p. 115. ISBN 9781848545151.
Breuer, William B. (2001). Daring missions of World War II. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-40419-4.
Clemente Ramos, Julián. 1994. "La Extremadura musulmana (1142–1248): Organización defensiva y sociedad". Anuario de estudios medievales, 24:647–701. Web.
Haskew, Michael E (2007). Encyclopaedia of Elite Forces in the Second World War. Barnsley: Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1-84415-577-4.
Horner, David (1989). SAS: Phantoms of the Jungle: A History of the Australian Special Air Service (1st ed.). St Leonards: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 1-86373-007-9.
Molinari, Andrea (2007). Desert Raiders: Axis and Allied Special Forces 1940–43. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84603-006-2.
Otway, Lieutenant-Colonel T.B.H. (1990). The Second World War 1939–1945 Army – Airborne Forces. Imperial War Museum. ISBN 0-901627-57-7.
Thomas, David (October 1983). "The Importance of Commando Operations in Modern Warfare 1939–82". Journal of Contemporary History. 18 (4): 689–717. JSTOR 260308. | Wikipedia/Special_forces |
A strategic military goal is used in strategic military operation plans to define the desired end-state of a war or a campaign. Usually it entails either a strategic change in an enemy's military posture, intentions or ongoing operations, or achieving a strategic victory over the enemy that ends the conflict, although the goal can be set in terms of diplomatic or economic conditions, defined by purely territorial gains, or the evidence that the enemy's will to fight has been broken. Sometimes the strategic goal can be to limit the scope of the conflict.
== Description ==
It is the highest level of organisational achievement in a military organisation, and is usually defined by the national defence policy. In terms of goal assignment it corresponds to operations performed by a front or a fleet on a theatre scale, and by an Army group or, during the World War II, by a Red Army Front.
A strategic goal is achieved by reaching specific strategic objectives that represent intermediary and incremental advances within the overall strategic plan. This is necessary because "high-level" strategic goals are often abstract, and therefore difficult to assess in terms of achievement without referring to some specific, often physical objectives. However, aside from the obstacles used by the enemy to prevent achievement of the strategic goal, inappropriate technological capabilities and operational weakness in combat may prevent fulfilment of the strategic plan. As an example, these are illustrated by the failure of the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command during the winter of 1943-44:
A critical product of the analysis which leads to the strategic decision to use military force is determination of the national goal to be achieved by that application of force.
However, analysis of military history abounds with examples of the two factors that plague goal setting in military strategies, their change during the campaign or war due to changes in economic, political or social changes within the state, or in a change of how achievement of the existing goal is being assessed, and the criteria of its achievement. For example:
The complex and varied nature of the Vietnam War made it especially difficult to translate abstract, strategic goals into specific missions for individual organizations.
This occurred because of the economic change that saw the cost of the war escalate beyond the original predictions and the changing political leadership, which was no longer willing to commit to the conduct of the war, but also due to the radical change which United States society experienced during the war, and more importantly because:
The American strategic goal was not the destruction of an organized military machine armed with tanks, planes, helicopters, and war ships, for which the United States had prepared, but the preservation of a fragile regime from the lightly armed attacks of both its own people and the North Vietnamese.
The United States did not intend to conquer North Vietnam for fear of a Chinese or Soviet military reaction. Likewise, the United States strategically assumed that the full extent of its power was not merited in the Vietnam War.
== See also ==
U.S. Army Strategist
== References ==
== Sources ==
Aron, Raymond, (ed.), Peace & War: A Theory of International Relations, Transaction Publishers, 2003. ISBN 978-0-7658-0504-1
Millett, Allan R. & Murray, Williamson, (eds.), Military Effectiveness: The First World War, Volume I., Mershon Center series on International Security and Foreign Policy, Routledge, 1988
Newell, Clayton R., Framework of Operational War, Routledge, 1991
Gartner, Scott Sigmund, Strategic Assessment in War, Yale University Press, 1999
Anderson, David L. Columbia's Guide to the Vietnam War, New York: Columbia UP, 2002. ISBN 978-0-231114936 | Wikipedia/Strategic_goal_(military) |
Command and control (C2) is a military term with several definitions.
Command and control may also refer to:
Command and control regulation, especially relevant in environmental economics
Command and control (management), the maintenance of authority with somewhat more distributed decision making
Command and control (malware), in computer security
Command Control (event), cybersecurity event
Command and Control (book), a 2013 book by Eric Schlosser
Command and Control (film), a 2016 American documentary film directed by Robert Kenner
Command and Control Research Program, within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks & Information Integration (ASD (NII))
Global Command and Control System (GCCS), the United States' armed forces DoD joint command and control (C2) system
Nuclear command and control, the command and control of nuclear weapons | Wikipedia/Command_and_control_(disambiguation) |
A show of force is a military operation intended to warn (such as a warning shot) or to intimidate an opponent by showcasing a capability or will to act if one is provoked. Shows of force may also be executed by police forces and other armed, non-military groups.
== Function ==
Shows of force have historically been undertaken mostly by a military actor unwilling to engage in all-out hostilities, but fearing to 'lose face' (to appear weak). By performing a carefully calculated provocation, the opponent is to be shown that violent confrontation remains an option, and there will be no backing off on the principle that the show of force is to defend.
Shows of force may be actual military operations, but in times of official peace, they may also be limited to military exercises.
Shows of force also work on a smaller scale: military forces on a tactical level using mock attacks to deter potential opponents, especially when a real attack on suspected (but unconfirmed) enemies might harm civilians. As an example, most air "attacks" during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom have been simple shows of force with jet aircraft dropping flares only while making loud, low-level passes. A 2009 12-month report for Afghanistan noted 18,019 strike sorties by US military aircraft, with weapons use for only 3,330 of the missions.
== Notable examples ==
Operation Paul Bunyan, carried out on August 21, 1976 by American and UNC troops into the Korean Demilitarized Zone in reaction to the unprovoked killing of two United States Army officers by Korean People's Army soldiers in the Korean axe murder incident.
Operation Poomalai, on 4 June 1987, the Indian Air Force mounted a mercy mission to airdrop humanitarian relief supplies over the besieged town of Jaffna in Sri Lanka during the Sri Lankan Civil War. The mission was undertaken as a symbolic act of support for the Tamil Tigers two days after a previous unarmed effort which was mounted in the form of a small naval flotilla and was thwarted by the Sri Lankan Navy.
Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, was the effect of a series of missile tests conducted by the People's Republic of China in the waters surrounding Taiwan including the Taiwan Strait from 21 July 1995 to 23 March 1996. The first set of missiles fired in mid to late 1995 were allegedly intended to send a strong signal to the Republic of China government under Lee Teng-hui, who had been seen as moving ROC foreign policy away from the One-China policy. The second set of missiles were fired in early 1996, allegedly intending to intimidate the Taiwanese electorate in the run-up to the 1996 presidential election.
Operation Restore Democracy in Gambia to remove the former president Yahya Jammeh. Nigerian jets flew over Banjul and ECOWAS forces surrounded Gambia's borders to deter resistance from the smaller Gambian army.
== See also ==
Demoralization (warfare)
Deterrence theory
Gunboat diplomacy
Peace through strength
Shock and awe
== References == | Wikipedia/Show_of_force |
Strategic defence is a type of military planning doctrine and a set defense and/or combat activities used for the purpose of deterring, resisting, and repelling a strategic offensive, conducted as either a territorial or airspace, invasion or attack; or as part of a cyberspace attack in cyberwarfare; or a naval offensive to interrupt shipping lane traffic as a form of economic warfare.
Strategic defense is not always passive in nature. In fact, it often involves military deception, propaganda and psychological warfare, as well as pre-emptive strategies. All forms of military defense are included in the planning, and often civil defense organisations are also included.
In military theory, strategic defense thinking seeks to understand and appreciate the theoretical and historical background to any given war or conflict scenario facing the decision-makers at the highest level. Therefore, to fully understand strategic defense activities, analysts need to have a detailed understanding of the relevant geopolitical and socioeconomic challenges and issues that faced the nation state or large organization being studied.
Some of the more common issues encountered by strategic defense planners include:
Problems of security and confidence-building in interstate relationships in the strategic neighbourhood
National defense policy
Arms proliferation and arms control in the immediate strategic region, or within reach of the weapon systems in question
Policy advice to the higher levels of the national defense organisation
The strategic implications of developments in the nation's geographic region
Reviewing security agenda and formulating a new one if necessary
Strategic defense is also a predominant peacetime posture of most nation-states in the world at any given time. Although national military intelligence services are always conducting operations to discover offensive threats to security to ensure adequate warning is provided to bring defense forces to a state of combat readiness.
In terms of combat scale, a strategic defensive is considered a war that can last from days to generations or a military campaign as a phase of the war, involving a series of operations delimited by time and space and with specific major achievable goal allocated to a defined part of the available armed force. As a campaign, a strategic defence may consist of several battles, some of which may be offensive in nature, or may result in the conduct of withdrawals to new positions, encirclements, or sieges by the defender or the attacker as a means of securing strategic initiative.
The strategic goal of a strategic defensive may require a conduct of an offensive operation far removed from the main national territory, such as the case with the 1982 Falklands campaign, which sets logistics apart as the dominant consideration in strategic defensive as a doctrine.
== See also ==
Defence in depth
Strategic depth
== Notes ==
== Sources ==
Dupuy, Trevor N., Understanding War: Military History And The Theory Of Combat, Leo Cooper, New York, 1986
Thompson, Julian, Lifeblood of war: logistics in armed conflict, Brassey's Classics, London, 1991
== Recommended reading ==
The Adelphi Papers, Volume 359, Number 1, August 1, 2003 Stephen J. Lukasik; S.E. Goodman; D.W. Longhurst, Chapter 2: Strategic Defence Options, pp. 15–24(10) | Wikipedia/Strategic_defence |
Nuclear command and control (NC2) is the command and control of nuclear weapons. The U. S. military's Nuclear Matters Handbook 2015 defined it as the "activities, processes, and procedures performed by appropriate military commanders and support personnel that, through the chain of command, allow for senior-level decisions on nuclear weapons employment." The current Nuclear Matters Handbook 2020 [Revised] defines it as "the exercise of authority and direction, through established command lines, over nuclear weapon operations by the President as the chief executive and head of state."
== United States ==
In the United States, leadership decisions are communicated to the nuclear forces via an intricate Nuclear Command and Control System (NCCS). The NCCS provides the President of the United States with the means to authorize the use of nuclear weapons in a crisis and to prevent unauthorized or accidental use. It is an essential element to ensure crisis stability, deter attack against the United States and its allies, and maintain the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Nuclear Command and Control and Communications (NC3), is managed by the Military Departments, nuclear force commanders, and the defense agencies. NCCS facilities include the fixed National Military Command Center (NMCC), the Global Operation Center (GOC), the airborne E-4B National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC), and the E-6B Take Charge and Move Out (TACAMO)/Airborne Command Post (Looking Glass)
The current Nuclear Matters Handbook 2020 [Revised] states: "The President bases this decision [to employ nuclear weapons] on many factors and will consider the advice and recommendations of senior advisors, to include the Secretary of Defense, the CJCS, and CCDRs." Note that both the 2015 and the 2020 Handbooks describe themselves as "unofficial."
The Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) is entering the design review phase, as of 22 September 2021.
== Other countries ==
Nuclear Command Authority (India), the authority responsible for command, control and operational decisions regarding India's nuclear weapons programme
National Command Authority (Pakistan), the command that oversees the deployment, research and development, and operational command and control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal
Category:United Kingdom nuclear command and control
Nuclear Command Corps
== See also ==
Emergency Action Message
Launch control center (ICBM)
== References == | Wikipedia/Nuclear_command_and_control |
An officer is a person who holds a position of authority as a member of an armed force or uniformed service.
Broadly speaking, "officer" means a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer (NCO), or a warrant officer. However, absent contextual qualification, the term typically refers only to a force's commissioned officers, the more senior members who derive their authority from a commission from the head of state.
== Numbers ==
The proportion of officers varies greatly. Commissioned officers typically make up between an eighth and a fifth of modern armed forces personnel. In 2013, officers were the senior 17% of the British armed forces, and the senior 13.7% of the French armed forces. In 2012, officers made up about 18% of the German armed forces, and about 17.2% of the United States armed forces.
Historically armed forces have generally had much lower proportions of officers. During the First World War, fewer than 5% of British soldiers were officers (partly because World War One junior officers suffered high casualty rates). In the early 20th century, the Spanish army had the highest proportion of officers of any European army, at 12.5%, which was at that time considered unreasonably high by many Spanish and foreign observers.
Within a nation's armed forces, armies (which are usually larger) tend to have a lower proportion of officers, but a higher total number of officers, while navies and air forces have higher proportions of officers, especially since military aircraft are flown by officers and naval ships and submarines are commanded by officers. For example, 13.9% of British Army personnel and 22.2% of the RAF personnel were officers in 2013, but the British Army had a larger total number of officers.
== Commission sources and training ==
Commissioned officers generally receive training as generalists in leadership and in management, in addition to training relating to their specific military occupational specialty or function in the military.
Many militaries typically require university degrees as a prerequisite for commissioning, even when accessing candidates from the enlisted ranks.
Others, including the Australian Defence Force, the British Armed Forces, the Nepali Army, the Pakistan Armed Forces (PAF), the Swiss Armed Forces, the Singapore Armed Forces, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Swedish Armed Forces, and the New Zealand Defence Force, are different in not requiring a university degree for commissioning, although a significant number of officers in these countries are graduates.
In the Israel Defense Forces, a university degree is a requirement for an officer to advance to the rank of lieutenant colonel and beyond. The IDF often sponsors the studies for its officers in the rank major, while aircrew and naval officers obtain academic degrees as a part of their training programmes.
=== United Kingdom ===
In the United Kingdom, there are three routes of entry for British Armed Forces officers.
The first, and primary route are those who receive their commission directly into the officer grades following completion at their relevant military academy. This is known as a Direct Entry (DE) officer scheme.
In the second method, individuals may gain a commission after first enlisting and serving in the junior ranks, and typically reaching one of the senior non-commissioned officer ranks (which start at sergeant (Sgt), and above), as what are known as Service Entry (SE) officers (and are typically and informally known as "ex-rankers"). Service personnel who complete this process at or above the age of 30 are known as Late Entry (LE) officers.
The third route is similar to the second, in that candidates convert from an enlisted rank to a commission; but these are only taken from the highest ranks of SNCOs (warrant officers and equivalents). This route typically involves reduced training requirements in recognition of existing experience. Some examples of this scheme are the RAF's Commissioned Warrant Officer (CWO) course or the Royal Navy's Warrant Officers Commissioning Programme.
In the British Army, commissioning for DE officers occurs after a 44-week course at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. The course comprises three 14 weeks terms, focussing on militarisation, leadership and exercises respectively. Army Reserve officers will attend the Army Reserve Commissioning Course, which consists of four two-week modules (A-D). The first two modules may be undertaken over a year for each module at an Officers' Training Corps; the last two must be undertaken at Sandhurst.
Royal Navy officer candidates must complete a 30-week Initial Navy Training (Officer) (INT(O))course at Britannia Royal Naval College. This comprises 15 weeks militarisation training, followed by 15 weeks professional training, before the candidate commences marinisation.
Royal Air Force (RAF) DE officer candidates must complete a 24-week Modular Initial Officer Training Course (MIOTC) at RAF College Cranwell. This course is split into four 6-week modules covering: militarisation, leadership, management and assessment respectively.
Royal Marines officers receive their training in the Command Wing of the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines during a 15-month course. The courses consist not only of tactical and combat training, but also of leadership, management, etiquette, and international-affairs training.
Until the Cardwell Reforms of 1871, commissions in the British Army were purchased by officers. The Royal Navy, however, operated on a more meritocratic, or at least socially mobile, basis.
=== United States ===
==== Types of officers ====
Commissioned officers exist in all eight uniformed services of the United States. All six armed forces of the United States have both commissioned officer and non-commissioned officer (NCO) ranks, and all of them (except the United States Space Force) have warrant-officer ranks. The two noncombatant uniformed services, the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps (NOAA Corps), have only commissioned officers, with no warrant-officer or enlisted personnel.
Commissioned officers are considered commanding officers under presidential authority. A superior officer is an officer with a higher rank than another officer, who is a subordinate officer relative to the superior.
NCOs, including U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard petty officers and chief petty officers, in positions of authority can be said to have control or charge rather than command per se (although the word "command" is often used unofficially to describe any use of authority). These enlisted naval personnel with authority are officially referred to as 'officers-in-charge" rather than as "commanding officers".
==== Commissioning programs ====
Commissioned officers in the armed forces of the United States come from a variety of accessions sources:
===== Service academies =====
United States Military Academy (USMA) (commissions second lieutenants in the U.S. Army)
United States Naval Academy (USNA) (commissions both ensigns in the U.S. Navy and second lieutenants in the U.S. Marine Corps)
United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) (commissions second lieutenants in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force)
United States Coast Guard Academy (USCGA) (commissions ensigns in the U.S. Coast Guard and provides basic officer-training classes for NOAA Corps officer candidates)
United States Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) (commissions ensigns in the U.S. Navy Reserve; graduates may apply for active or reserve duty in any of the eight uniformed services of the United States)
Graduates of the United States service academies attend their institutions for no less than four years and, with the exception of the USMMA, are granted active-duty regular commissions immediately upon completion of their training. They make up approximately 20% of the U.S. armed forces officer corps.
===== Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) =====
Officers in the U.S. Armed Forces may also be commissioned through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC).
Army ROTC
Naval ROTC (commissions both ensigns in the U.S. Navy and second lieutenants in the U.S. Marine Corps)
Air Force ROTC (commissions 2nd lieutenants in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force)
The ROTC is composed of small training programs at several hundred American colleges and universities. There is no Marine Corps ROTC program per se, but there exists a Marine Corps option for selected midshipmen in the Naval ROTC programs at civilian colleges and universities or at non-Federal military colleges such as The Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute.
The Coast Guard has no ROTC program, but does have a Direct Commission Selected School Program for military colleges such as The Citadel and VMI.
Army ROTC graduates of the United States' four junior military colleges can also be commissioned in the U.S. Army with only a two-year associate degree through its Early Commissioning Program, conditioned on subsequently completing a four-year bachelor's degree from an accredited four-year institution within a defined time.
===== Federal officer candidate schools =====
College-graduate candidates (initial or prior-service) may also be commissioned in the U.S. uniformed services via an officer candidate school, officer training school, or other programs:
Army OCS
Navy OCS
Marine Corps OCS
Air Force Officer Training School (OTS)
Coast Guard OCS
USPHS Officer Basic Course (OBC)
NOAA Corps Basic Officer Training Class (BOTC)
===== Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Class (PLC) =====
A smaller number of Marine Corps officers may be commissioned via the Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Class (PLC) program during summers while attending college. PLC is a sub-element of Marine Corps OCS and college and university students enrolled in PLC undergo military training at Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in two segments: the first of six weeks between their sophomore and junior year and the second of seven weeks between their junior and senior year. There is no routine military training during the academic year for PLC students as is the case for ROTC cadets and midshipmen, but PLC students are routinely visited and their physical fitness periodically tested by Marine Corps officer-selection officers (OSOs) from the nearest Marine Corps officer-recruiting activity. PLC students are placed in one of three general tracks: PLC-Air for prospective marine naval aviators and marine naval flight officers; PLC-Ground for prospective marine infantry, armor, artillery and combat-support officers; and PLC-Law, for prospective Marine Corps judge advocate general officers. Upon graduation from college, PLC students are commissioned as active-duty 2nd lieutenants in the U.S. Marine Corps.
===== National Guard OCS =====
In addition to the ROTC, Army National Guard (ARNG) officers may also be commissioned through state-based officer-candidate schools. These schools train and commission college graduates, prior-servicemembers, and enlisted guard soldiers specifically for the National Guard. Air National Guard officers without prior active duty commissioned service attend the same active-duty OTS at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, as do prospective active duty USAF officers and prospective direct entry Air Force Reserve officers not commissioned via USAFA or AFROTC.
===== Other commissioning programs =====
In the United States Armed Forces, enlisted military personnel without a four-year university degree at the bachelor's level can, under certain circumstances, also be commissioned in the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard limited duty officer (LDO) program. Officers in this category constitute less than 2% of all officers in those services.
Another category in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard are warrant officers / chief warrant officers (WO/CWO). These are specialist officers who do not require a bachelor's degree and are exclusively selected from experienced mid- to senior-level enlisted ranks (e.g., E-5 with eight years' time in service for the Marine Corps, E-7 and above for Navy and Coast Guard). The rank of warrant officer (WO1, also known as W-1) is an appointed rank by warrant from the respective branch secretary until promotion to chief warrant officer (CWO2, also known as W-2) by presidential commission, and holders are entitled to the same customs and courtesies as commissioned officers. Their difference from line and staff corps officers is their focus as single specialty/military occupational field subject-matter experts, though under certain circumstances they can fill command positions.
The Air Force has discontinued its warrant-officer program and has no LDO program. Similarly, the Space Force was created with no warrant-officer or LDO programs; both services require all commissioned officers to possess a bachelor's degree prior to commissioning.
The U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and NOAA Corps have no warrant officers or enlisted personnel, and all personnel must enter those services via commissioning.
==== Direct commission ====
Direct commission is another route to becoming a commissioned officer. Credentialed civilian professionals such as scientists, pharmacists, physicians, nurses, clergy, and attorneys are directly commissioned upon entry into the military or another federal uniformed service. However, these officers generally do not exercise command authority outside of their job-specific support corps (e.g., U.S. Army Medical Corps; U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, etc.). The United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps almost exclusively use direct commission to commission their officers, although NOAA will occasionally accept commissioned officers from the U.S. Navy, primarily Naval Aviators, via interservice transfer.
During the U.S. participation in World War II (1941–1945), civilians with expertise in industrial management also received direct commissions to stand up materiel production for the U.S. armed forces.
==== Discontinued U.S. officer-commissioning programs ====
Although significantly represented in the retired senior commissioned officer ranks of the U.S. Navy, a much smaller cohort of current active-duty and active-reserve officers (all of the latter being captains or flag officers as of 2017) were commissioned via the Navy's since discontinued Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS) program for college graduates. The AOCS focused on producing line officers for naval aviation who would become Naval Aviators and Naval Flight Officers upon completion of flight training, followed by a smaller cohort who would become Naval Air Intelligence officers and Aviation Maintenance Duty Officers.
Designated as "aviation officer candidates" (AOCs), individuals in the AOCS program were primarily non-prior military service college graduates, augmented by a smaller cohort of college-educated active duty, reserve or former enlisted personnel.
In the late 1970s, a number of Air Force ROTC cadets and graduates originally slated for undergraduate pilot training (UPT) or undergraduate navigator training (UNT) lost their flight training slots either immediately prior to or subsequent to graduation, but prior to going on active duty, due to a post-Vietnam reduction in force (RIF) that reduced the number of flight training slots for AFROTC graduates by approximately 75% in order to retain flight-training slots for USAFA cadets and graduates during the same time period. Many of these individuals, at the time all male, declined or resigned their inactive USAF commissions and also attended AOCS for follow-on naval flight-training. AOCs were active-duty personnel in pay grade E-5 (unless having previously held a higher active duty or reserve enlisted grade in any of the U.S. armed forces) for the duration of their 14-week program. Upon graduation, they were commissioned as ensigns in the then-U.S. Naval Reserve on active duty, with the option to augment their commissions to the Regular Navy after four to six years of commissioned service.
The AOCS also included the embedded Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate (AVROC) and Naval Aviation Cadet (NAVCAD) programs. AVROC was composed of college students who would attend AOCS training in two segments similar to Marine Corps PLC but would do so between their junior and senior years of college and again following college graduation, receiving their commission upon completion of the second segment. The NAVCAD program operated from 1935 through 1968 and again from 1986 through 1993. NAVCADs were enlisted or civilian personnel who had completed two years of college but lacked bachelor's degrees. NAVCADs would complete the entire AOCS program but would not be commissioned until completion of flight training and receiving their wings. After their initial operational tour, they could be assigned to a college or university full-time for no more than two years in order to complete their bachelor's degree. AVROC and NAVCAD were discontinued when AOCS was merged into OCS in the mid-1990s.
Similar to NAVCAD was the Marine Aviation Cadet (MarCad) program, created in July 1959 to access enlisted Marines and civilians with at least two years of college. Many, but not all, MarCads attended enlisted "boot camp" at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island or Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, as well as the School of Infantry, before entering naval flight-training. MarCads would then complete their entire flight-training syllabus as cadets. Graduates were designated Naval Aviators and commissioned as 2nd Lieutenants on active duty in the Marine Corps Reserve. They would then report to The Basic School (TBS) for newly commissioned USMC officers at Marine Corps Base Quantico prior to reporting to a replacement air group (RAG)/fleet replacement squadron (FRS) and then to operational Fleet Marine Force (FMF) squadrons. Like their NAVCAD graduate counterparts, officers commissioned via MarCad had the option to augment to the Regular Marine Corps following four to six years of commissioned service. The MarCad program closed to new applicants in 1967 and the last trainee graduated in 1968.
Another discontinued commissioning program was the Air Force's aviation cadet program. Originally created by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1907 to train pilots for its then-fledgling aviation program, it was later used by the subsequent U.S. Army Air Service, U.S. Army Air Corps and U.S. Army Air Forces to train pilots, navigators, bombardiers and observers through World War I, the interwar period, World War II, and the immediate postwar period between September 1945 and September 1947. With the establishment of the U.S. Air Force as an independent service in September 1947, it then became a source for USAF pilots and navigators. Cadets had to be between the ages of 19 and 25 and to possess either at least two years of college/university-level education or three years of a scientific or technical education. In its final iteration, cadets received the pay of enlisted pay grade E-5 and were required to complete all pre-commissioning training and flight training before receiving their wings as pilots or navigators and their commissions as 2nd lieutenants on active duty in the U.S. Air Force Reserve on the same day. Aviation cadets were later offered the opportunity to apply for a commission in the regular Air Force and to attend a college or university to complete a four-year degree. As the Air Force's AFROTC and OTS programs began to grow, and with the Air Force's desire for a 100% college-graduate officer corps, the aviation cadet program was slowly phased out. The last aviation cadet pilot graduated in October 1961 and the last aviation cadet navigators in 1965. By the 1990s, the last of these officers had retired from the active duty Regular Air Force, the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard.
=== Commonwealth of Nations ===
In countries whose ranking systems are based upon the models of the British Armed Forces (BAF), officers from the rank of second lieutenant (army), sub-lieutenant (navy) or pilot officer (air force) to the rank of general, admiral or air chief marshal respectively, are holders of a commission granted to them by the appropriate awarding authority. In United Kingdom (UK) and other Commonwealth realms, the awarding authority is the monarch (or a governor general representing the monarch) as head of state. The head of state often has the power to award commissions, or has commissions awarded in his or her name.
In Commonwealth nations, commissioned officers are given commissioning scrolls (also known as commissioning scripts) signed by the sovereign or the governor general acting on the monarch's behalf. Upon receipt, this is an official legal document that binds the mentioned officer to the commitment stated on the scroll.
Non-commissioned members rise from the lowest ranks in most nations. Education standards for non-commissioned members are typically lower than for officers (with the exception of specialized military and highly-technical trades; such as aircraft, weapons or electronics engineers). Enlisted members only receive leadership training after promotion to positions of responsibility, or as a prerequisite for such. In the past (and in some countries today but to a lesser extent), non-commissioned members were almost exclusively conscripts, whereas officers were volunteers.
In certain Commonwealth nations, commissioned officers are made commissioners of oaths by virtue of their office and can thus administer oaths or take affidavits or declarations, limited in certain cases by rank or by appointment, and generally limited to activities or personnel related to their employment.
== Warrant officers ==
In some branches of many armed forces, there exists a third grade of officer known as a warrant officer. In the armed forces of the United States, warrant officers are initially appointed by the Secretary of the service and then commissioned by the President of the United States upon promotion to chief warrant officer. In many other countries (as in the armed forces of the Commonwealth nations), warrant officers often fill the role of very senior non-commissioned officers. Their position is affirmed by warrant from the bureaucracy directing the force—for example, the position of regimental sergeant major in regiments of the British Army is held by a warrant officer appointed by the British government.
In the U.S. military, a warrant officer is a technically focused subject matter expert, such as helicopter pilot or information technology specialist. Until 2024, there were no warrant officers in the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Space Force continues to have no warrant officers; the last of the previous cohort of USAF warrant officers retired in the 1980s and the ranks became dormant until the program was resurrected in 2024. The USSF has not established any warrant officer ranks. All other U.S. Armed Forces have warrant officers, with warrant accession programs unique to each individual service's needs. Although Warrant Officers normally have more years in service than commissioned officers, they are below commissioned officers in the rank hierarchy. In certain instances, commissioned chief warrant officers can command units.
== Non-commissioned officers ==
A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is an enlisted member of the armed forces holding a position of some degree of authority who has (usually) obtained it by advancement from within the non-commissioned ranks. Officers who are non-commissioned usually receive management and leadership training, but their function is to serve as supervisors within their area of trade specialty. Senior NCOs serve as advisers and leaders from the duty section level to the highest levels of the armed forces establishment, while lower NCO grades are not yet considered management specialists. The duties of an NCO can vary greatly in scope, so that an NCO in one country may hold almost no authority, while others such as the United States and the United Kingdom consider their NCOs to be "the backbone of the military" due to carrying out the orders of those officers appointed over them.
In most maritime forces (navies and coast guards), the NCO ranks are called petty officers and chief petty officers while enlisted ranks prior to attaining NCO/petty officer status typically known as seaman, airman, fireman, or some derivation thereof. In most traditional infantry, marine and air forces, the NCO ranks are known as corporals and sergeants, with non-NCO enlisted ranks referred to as privates and airmen.
However, some countries use the term commission to describe the promotion of enlisted soldiers, especially in countries with mandatory service in the armed forces. These countries refer to their NCOs as professional soldiers, rather than as officers.
== Officer ranks and accommodation ==
Officers in nearly every country of the world are segregated from the enlisted soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guardsmen in many facets of military life. Facilities accommodating needs such as messing (i.e., mess hall or mess deck versus officers mess or wardroom), separate billeting/berthing, domiciles, and general recreation facilities are separated between officers and enlisted personnel. This system is focused on discouraging fraternization and encouraging professional and ethical relations between officers and enlisted military personnel.
Officers do not routinely perform physical labor; they typically supervise enlisted personnel doing so, either directly or via non-commissioned officers. Commissioned officers will and do perform physical labor when operationally required to do so, e.g., in combat. However, it would be very unusual for an officer to perform physical labor in garrison, at home station or in homeport. Article 49 of the Third Geneva Convention stipulates that even as prisoners of war, commissioned officers cannot be compelled to work, and NCOs can only be given supervisory work.
== See also ==
Brevet (military)
Exchange officer
Foreign Service Officer
List of comparative military ranks
Mustang (military officer)
Officer (disambiguation)
Roving commission
STA-21
Staff officer
== References ==
== External links ==
U.S. DoD Officer Rank Insignia Archived 11 July 2017 at the Wayback Machine
Simpson, William Augustus (1911). "Officers" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). pp. 16–22. | Wikipedia/Officer_(armed_forces) |
Grand strategy or high strategy is a state's strategy of how means (military and nonmilitary) can be used to advance and achieve national interests in the long-term. Issues of grand strategy typically include the choice of military doctrine, force structure and alliances, as well as economic relations, diplomatic behavior, and methods to extract or mobilize resources.
In contrast to strategy, grand strategy encompasses more than military means (such as diplomatic and economic means); does not equate success with purely military victory but also the pursuit of peacetime goals and prosperity; and considers goals and interests in the long-term rather than short-term.
In contrast to foreign policy, grand strategy emphasizes the military implications of policy; considers costs benefits of policies, as well as limits on capabilities; establishes priorities; and sets out a practical plan rather than a set of ambitions and wishes. A country's political leadership typically directs grand strategy with input from the most senior military officials. Development of a nation's grand strategy may extend across many years or even multiple generations.
Much scholarship on grand strategy focuses on the United States, which has since the end of World War II had a grand strategy oriented around primacy, "deep engagement", and/or liberal hegemony, which entail that the United States maintains military predominance; maintains an extensive network of allies (exemplified by NATO, bilateral alliances and foreign US military bases); and integrates other states into US-designed international institutions (such as the IMF, WTO/GATT and World Bank). Critics of this grand strategy, which includes proponents for offshore balancing, selective engagement, restraint, and isolationism, argue for pulling back.
== Definition ==
There is no universally accepted definition of grand strategy. One common definition is that grand strategy is a state's strategy of how means (military and nonmilitary) can be used to advance and achieve national interests in the long-term.
Grand strategy expands on the traditional idea of strategy in three ways:
expanding strategy beyond military means to include diplomatic, financial, economic, informational, etc. means
examining internal in addition to external forces – taking into account both the various instruments of power and the internal policies necessary for their implementation (conscription, for example)
including consideration of periods of peacetime in addition to wartime
Thinkers differ as to whether grand strategy should serve to promote peace (as emphasized by B. H. Liddell Hart) or advance the security of a state (as emphasized by Barry Posen).
British military historian B. H. Liddell Hart played an influential role in popularizing the concept of grand strategy in the mid-20th century. Subsequent definitions tend to build on his. He defines grand strategy as follows:
[T]he role of grand strategy – higher strategy – is to co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment of the political object of the war – the goal defined by fundamental policy.
Grand strategy should both calculate and develop the economic resources and man-power of nations in order to sustain the fighting services. Also the moral resources – for to foster the people's willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power. Grand strategy, too, should regulate the distribution of power between the several services, and between the services and industry. Moreover, fighting power is but one of the instruments of grand strategy – which should take account of and apply the power of financial pressure, and, not least of ethical pressure, to weaken the opponent's will. ...
Furthermore, while the horizons of strategy is bounded by the war, grand strategy looks beyond the war to the subsequent peace. It should not only combine the various instruments, but so regulate their use as to avoid damage to the future state of peace – for its security and prosperity.
=== History ===
In antiquity, the Greek word "strategy" referred to the skills of a general. By the sixth century, Byzantines distinguished between "strategy" (the means by which a general defends the homeland and defeats the enemy) and "tactics" (the science of organizing armies). Byzantine Emperor Leo VI distinguished between the two terms in his work Taktika.
Prior to the French Revolution, most thinkers wrote on military science rather than grand strategy. The term grand strategy first emerged in France in the 19th century. Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert, wrote an influential work, General Essay on Tactics, that distinguished between "tactics" and "grand tactics" (which scholars today would refer to as grand strategy). Emperor Leo's Taktika was shortly thereafter translated into French and German, leading most thinkers to distinguish between tactics and strategy.
Carl von Clausewitz proposed in an influential work that politics and war were intrinsically linked. Clausewitz defined strategy as "the use of engagements for the object of the war". Antoine-Henri Jomini argued that because of the intrinsically political nature of war that different types of wars (e.g. offensive wars, defensive wars, wars of expediency, wars with/without allies, wars of intervention, wars of conquest, wars of opinion, national wars, civil wars) had to be waged differently, thus creating the need for a grand strategy. Some contemporaries of Clausewitz and Jomini disputed the links between politics and war, arguing that politics ceases to be important once war has begun.
Narrow definitions, similar to those of Clausewitz, were commonplace during the 19th century. Towards the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century (in particular with B. H. Liddell Hart's writings), some writers expanded the definition of strategy to refer to the distribution and application of military means to achieve policy objectives. For these thinkers, grand strategy was not only different from the operational strategy of winning a particular battle, but it also encompassed both peacetime and wartime policies. For them, grand strategy should operate for decades (or longer) and should not cease at war's end or begin at war's start.
In the 20th century, some thinkers argued that all manners of actions (political, economic, military, cultural) counted as grand strategy in an era of total warfare. However, most definitions saw a division of labor between the actions of political leaders and those of the executing military.
According to Helmuth von Moltke, the initial task of strategy was to serve politics and the subsequent task was to prepare the means to wage war. Moltke however warned that plans may not survive an encounter with the enemy. Other thinkers challenged Clausewitz's idea that politics could set the aims of war, as the aims of war would change during the war given the success or failure of military operations.These thinkers argued that strategy was a process that required adaptation to changing circumstances.
Scholarship on grand strategy experienced a resurgence in the late 1960s and 1970s. Bernard Brodie defined strategy as "guide to accomplishing something and doing it efficiently... a theory for action".
== Historical examples ==
According to historian Hal Brands, "all states... do grand strategy, but many of them do not do it particularly well."
=== Peloponnesian War ===
One of the earlier writings on grand strategy comes from Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, an account of the war between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Athens).
=== Roman Empire ===
From the era of Hadrian, Roman emperors employed a military strategy of "preclusive security—the establishment of a linear barrier of perimeter defence around the Empire. The Legions were stationed in great fortresses". These "fortresses" existed along the perimeter of the Empire, often accompanied by actual walls (for example, Hadrian's Wall). Due to the perceived impenetrability of these perimeter defenses, the Emperors kept no central reserve army. The Roman system of roads allowed for soldiers to move from one frontier to another (for the purpose of reinforcements during a siege) with relative ease. These roads also allowed for a logistical advantage for Rome over her enemies, as supplies could be moved just as easily across the Roman road system as soldiers. This way, if the legions could not win a battle through military combat skill or superior numbers, they could simply outlast the invaders, who, as historian E.A. Thompson wrote, "Did not think in terms of millions of bushels of wheat."
The emperor Constantine moved the legions from the frontiers to one consolidated roving army as a way to save money and to protect wealthier citizens within the cities. However, this grand strategy, according to some ancient sources, had costly effects on the Roman empire by weakening its frontier defenses and allowing it to be susceptible to outside armies coming in. Also, people who lived near the Roman frontiers would begin to look to the barbarians for protection after the Roman armies departed. This argument is considered to have originated in the writings of Eunapius. As stated by the 5th century AD historian Zosimus:
Constantine abolished this frontier security by removing the greater part of the soldiery from the frontiers to cities that needed no auxiliary forces. He thus deprived of help the people who were harassed by the barbarians and burdened tranquil cities with the pest of the military, so that several straightway were deserted. Moreover, he softened the soldiers who treated themselves to shows and luxuries. Indeed, to speak plainly, he personally planted the first seeds of our present devastated state of affairs.
This charge by Zosimus is considered to be a gross exaggeration and inaccurate assessment of the situations in the fourth century under Constantine by many modern historians. B.H. Warmington, for instance, argues that the statement by Zosimus is "[an] oversimplification," reminding us that "the charge of exposure of the frontier regions is at best anachronistic and probably reflects Zosimus' prejudices against Constantine; the corruption of the soldiers who lived in the cities was a literary commonplace."
=== World War II ===
An example of modern grand strategy is the decision of the Allies in World War II to concentrate on the defeat of Germany first. The decision, a joint agreement made after the attack on Pearl Harbor (1941) had drawn the US into the war, was a sensible one in that Germany was the most powerful member of the Axis, and directly threatened the existence of the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. Conversely, while Japan's conquests garnered considerable public attention, they were mostly in colonial areas deemed less essential by planners and policy-makers. The specifics of Allied military strategy in the Pacific War were therefore shaped by the lesser resources made available to the theatre commanders.
=== Cold War ===
The US and the UK used a policy of containment as part of their grand strategy during the Cold War.
== In the United States ==
The conversation around grand strategy in the United States has evolved significantly since the country's founding, with the nation shifting from a strategy of continental expansion, isolation from European conflicts, and opposition to European empires in the Western hemisphere in its first century, to a major debate about the acquisition of an empire in the 1890s (culminating in the conquest of the Philippines and Cuba during the Spanish–American War), followed by rapid shifts between offshore balancing, liberal internationalism, and isolationism around the world wars. The Cold War saw increasing use of deep, onshore engagement strategies (including the creation of a number of permanent alliances, significant involvement in other states' internal politics, and a major counterinsurgency war in Vietnam.) With the end of the Cold War, an early strategic debate eventually coalesced into a strategy of primacy, culminating in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The aftershocks of this war, along with an economic downturn, rising national debt, and deepening political gridlock, have led to a renewed strategic debate, centered on two major schools of thought: primacy and restraint. A return to offshore balancing has also been proposed by prominent political scientists Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer.
=== In the 1990s ===
The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union removed the focal point of U.S. strategy: containing the Soviet Union. A major debate emerged about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy. In a 1997 article, Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross identified four major grand strategic alternatives in the debate:
neo-isolationism
selective engagement
cooperative security
primacy
==== Neo-isolationism ====
Stemming from a defensive realist understanding of international politics, what the authors call "neo-isolationism" advocates the United States remove itself from active participation in international politics in order to maintain its national security. It holds that because there are no threats to the American homeland, the United States does not need to intervene abroad. Stressing a particular understanding of nuclear weapons, the authors describe how proponents believe the destructive power of nuclear weapons and retaliatory potential of the United States assure the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of the United States, while the proliferation of such weapons to countries like Britain, France, China and Russia prevents the emergence of any competing hegemon on the Eurasian landmass. The United States' security and the absence of threats means that "national defense will seldom justify intervention abroad." Even further, its proponents argue that "the United States is not responsible for, and cannot afford the costs of, maintaining world order." They also believe that "the pursuit of economic well-being is best left to the private sector," and that the United States should not attempt to spread its values because doing so increases resentment towards the U.S. and in turn, decreases its security. In short, neo-isolationism advises the United States to preserve its freedom of action and strategic independence.
In more practical terms, the authors discuss how the implementation of a so-called "neo-isolationist" grand strategy would involve less focus on the issue of nuclear proliferation, withdrawal from NATO, and major cuts to the United States military presence abroad. The authors see a military force structure that prioritizes a secure nuclear second-strike capability, intelligence, naval and special operations forces while limiting the forward-deployment of forces to Europe and Asia.
Posen and Ross identify such prominent scholars and political figures as Earl Ravenal, Patrick Buchanan and Doug Bandow.
==== Selective engagement ====
With similar roots in the realist tradition of international relations, selective engagement advocates that the United States should intervene in regions of the world only if they directly affect its security and prosperity. The focus, therefore, lies on those powers with significant industrial and military potential and the prevention of war amongst those states. Most proponents of this strategy believe Europe, Asia and the Middle East matter most to the United States. Europe and Asia contain the great powers, which have the greatest military and economic impact on international politics, and the Middle East is a primary source of oil for much of the developed world. In addition to these more particular concerns, selective engagement also focuses on preventing nuclear proliferation and any conflict that could lead to a great power war, but provides no clear guidelines for humanitarian interventions.
The authors envision that a strategy of selective engagement would involve a strong nuclear deterrent with a force structure capable of fighting two regional wars, each through some combination of ground, air and sea forces complemented with forces from a regional ally. They question, however, whether such a policy could garner sustained support from a liberal democracy experienced with a moralistic approach to international relations, whether the United States could successfully differentiate necessary versus unnecessary engagement and whether a strategy that focuses on Europe, Asia and the Middle East actually represents a shift from current engagement.
In the piece, Barry Posen classified himself as a "selective engagement" advocate, with the caveat that the United States should not only act to reduce the likelihood of great power war, but also oppose the rise of a Eurasian hegemon capable of threatening the United States.
Robert J. Art argues that selective engagement is the best strategy for the twenty-first century because it is, by definition, selective. "It steers the middle course between an isolationist, unilateralist course, on the one hand, and world policeman, highly interventionist role, on the other." Therefore, Art, concludes, it avoids both overly restrictive and overly expansive definitions of U.S. interests, finding instead a compromise between doing too much and too little militarily. Additionally, selective engagement is the best strategy for achieving both realist goals—preventing WMD terrorism, maintaining great power peace, and securing the supply of oil; and liberal goals—preserving free trade, spreading democracy, observing human rights, and minimizing the impact of climate change. The realist goals represent vital interests and the liberal goals represent desirable interests. Desirable interests are not unimportant, Art maintains, but they are of lesser importance when a trade-off between them and vital interests must be made. Selective engagement, however, mitigates the effect of the trade-off precisely because it is a moderate, strategic policy.
==== Cooperative security ====
The authors write "the most important distinguishing feature of cooperative security is the proposition that peace is effectively indivisible." Unlike the other three alternatives, cooperative security draws upon liberalism as well as realism in its approach to international relations. Stressing the importance of world peace and international cooperation, the view supposes the growth in democratic governance and the use of international institutions will hopefully overcome the security dilemma and deter interstate conflict. Posen and Ross propose that collective action is the most effective means of preventing potential state and non-state aggressors from threatening other states. Cooperative security considers nuclear proliferation, regional conflicts and humanitarian crises to be major interests of the United States.
The authors imagine that such a grand strategy would involve stronger support for international institutions, agreements, and the frequent use of force for humanitarian purposes. Were international institutions to ultimately entail the deployment of a multinational force, the authors suppose the United States' contribution would emphasize command, control, communications and intelligence, defense suppression, and precision-guided munitions-what they considered at the time to be the United States' comparative advantage in aerospace power. Collective action problems, the problems of the effective formation of international institutions, the vacillating feelings of democratic populations, and the limitations of arms control are all offered by the authors as noted criticisms of collective security.
==== Primacy ====
Primacy is a grand strategy with four parts:
Military preponderance
Reassurances and containment of allies
Integration of other states into US-designed institutions
Limits to the spread of nuclear weapons
As a result, it advocates that the United States pursue ultimate hegemony and dominate the international system economically, politically and militarily, rejecting any return to bipolarity or multipolarity and preventing the emergence of any peer competitor. Therefore, its proponents argue that U.S. foreign policy should focus on maintaining U.S. power and preventing any other power from becoming a serious challenger to the United States. With this in mind, some supporters of this strategy argue that the U.S. should work to contain China and other competitors rather than engage them. In regards to humanitarian crises and regional conflicts, primacy holds that the U.S. should only intervene when they directly impact national security, more along the lines of selective engagement than collective security. It does, however, advocate for the active prevention of nuclear proliferation at a level similar to collective security.
Implementation of such a strategy would entail military forces at similar levels to those during the Cold War, with emphasis on military modernization and research and development. They note, however, that "the quest for primacy is likely to prove futile for five reasons": the diffusion of economic and technological capabilities, interstate balancing against the United States, the danger that hegemonic leadership will fatally undermine valuable multilateral institutions, the feasibility of preventive war and the dangers of imperial overstretch.
Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, outlines three arguments offered by primacy enthusiasts contending that military preeminence generates positive economic externalities. "One argument, which I label 'geoeconomic favoritism,' hypothesizes that the military hegemon will attract private capital because it provides the greatest security and safety to investors. A second argument posits that the benefits from military primacy flow from geopolitical favoritism: that sovereign states, in return for living under the security umbrella of the military superpower, voluntarily transfer resources to help subsidize the cost of the economy. The third argument postulates that states are most likely to enjoy global public goods under a unipolar distribution of military power, accelerating global economic growth and reducing security tensions. These public goods benefit the hegemon as much, if not more, than they do other actors." Drezner maintains the empirical evidence supporting the third argument is the strongest, though with some qualifiers. "Although the precise causal mechanism remain disputed, hegemonic eras are nevertheless strongly correlated with lower trade barriers and greater levels of globalization." However, Drezner highlights a caveat: The cost of maintaining global public goods catches up to the superpower providing them. "Other countries free-ride off of the hegemon, allowing them to grow faster. Technologies diffuse from the hegemonic power to the rest of the world, facilitating catch-up. Chinese analysts have posited that these phenomena, occurring right now, are allowing China to outgrow the United States."
==== Primacy vs. selective engagement ====
Barry Posen, director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes the activist U.S. foreign policy that continues to define U.S. strategy in the twenty-first century is an "undisciplined, expensive, and bloody strategy" that has done more harm than good to U.S. national security. "It makes enemies almost as fast as it slays them, discourages allies from paying for their own defense, and convinces powerful states to band together and oppose Washington's plans, further raising the costs of carrying out its foreign policy." The United States was able to afford such adventurism during the 1990s, Posen argues, because American power projection was completely unchallenged. Over the last decade, however, American power has been relatively declining while the Pentagon continues to "depend on continuous infusions of cash simply to retain its current force structure—levels of spending that the Great Recession and the United States' ballooning debt have rendered unsustainable."
Posen proposes the United States abandon its hegemonic strategy and replace it with one of restraint. This translates into jettisoning the quest of shaping a world that is satisfactory to U.S. values and instead advances vital national security interests: The U.S. military would go to war only when it must. Large troop contingents in unprecedentedly peaceful regions such as Europe would be significantly downsized, incentivizing NATO members to provide more for their own security. Under such a scenario, the United States would have more leeway in using resources to combat the most pressing threats to its security. A strategy of restraint, therefore, would help preserve the country's prosperity and security more so than a hegemonic strategy. To be sure, Posen makes clear that he is not advocating isolationism. Rather, the United States should focus on three pressing security challenges: preventing a powerful rival from upending the global balance of power, fighting terrorists, and limiting nuclear proliferation.
John Ikenberry of Princeton University and Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, both of Dartmouth College, push back on Posen's selective engagement thesis, arguing that American engagement is not as bad as Posen makes it out to be. Advocates of selective engagement, they argue, overstate the costs of current U.S. grand strategy and understate the benefits. "The benefits of deep engagement...are legion. U.S. security commitments reduce competition in key regions and act as a check against potential rivals. They help maintain an open world economy and give Washington leverage in economic negotiations. And they make it easier for the United States to secure cooperation for combating a wide range of global threats."
Ikenberry, Brooks, and Wohlforth are not convinced that the current U.S. grand strategy generates subsequent counterbalancing. Unlike the prior hegemons, the United States is geographically isolated and faces no contiguous great power rivals interested in balancing it. This means the United States is far less threatening to great powers that are situated oceans away, the authors claim. Moreover, any competitor would have a hard time matching U.S. military might. "Not only is the United States so far ahead militarily in both quantitative and qualitative terms, but its security guarantees also give it the leverage to prevent allies from giving military technology to potential U.S. rivals. Because the United States dominates the high-end defense industry, it can trade access to its defense market for allies' agreement not to transfer key military technologies to its competitors."
Finally, when the United States wields its security leverage, the authors argue, it shapes the overall structure of the global economy. "Washington wins when U.S. allies favor [the] status quo, and one reason they are inclined to support the existing system is because they value their military alliances."
Ted Carpenter, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, believes that the proponents of primacy suffer from the "light-switch model," in which only two positions exist: on and off. "Many, seemingly most, proponents of U.S. preeminence do not recognize the existence of options between current policy of promiscuous global interventionism and isolationism." Adherence to the light switch model, Carpenter argues, reflects intellectual rigidity or an effort to stifle discussion about a range of alternatives to the status quo. Selective engagement is a strategy that sits in between primacy and isolationism and, given growing multipolarity and American fiscal precariousness, should be taken seriously. "Selectivity is not merely an option when it comes to embarking on military interventions. It is imperative for a major power that wishes to preserve its strategic insolvency. Otherwise, overextension and national exhaustion become increasing dangers." Carpenter thinks that off-loading U.S. security responsibility must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Nevertheless, the United States must refrain from using military might in campaigns that do not directly deal with U.S. interests. "If a sense of moral indignation, instead of a calculating assessment of the national interest, governs U.S. foreign policy, the United States will become involved in even more murky conflicts in which few if any tangible American interests are at stake."
=== Today ===
Posen has argued that the four schools of U.S. grand strategy that he identified in the 1990s have been replaced by just two: liberal hegemony, which came from a fusion of primacy and cooperative security, and restraint, which came from a fusion of neo-isolationism and selective engagement. Other scholars have proposed a third policy, offshore balancing.
==== Liberal hegemony ====
Proponents of liberal hegemony favor a world order in which the United States is a hegemon and uses this power advantage to create a liberal international system and at times use force to enforce or spread liberal values (such as individual rights, free trade, and the rule of law). The United States strives to retain overwhelming military power, under a theory that potential competitors will not even try to compete on the global stage. It also retains an extensive network of permanent alliance commitments around the world, using the alliance system both to advance and retain hegemonic power and to solidify emerging liberal political systems. According to Posen, this strategy sees "threats emanating from three major sources: failed states, rogue states, and illiberal peer competitors." Failed states, in this view, are sources of instability; rogue states can sponsor terrorism, acquire weapons of mass destruction, and behave unpredictably; illiberal peer competitors would compete directly with the United States and "would complicate the spread of liberal institutions and the construction of liberal states." Support for liberal hegemonic strategies among major thinkers in both political parties helps explain the broad elite support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2011 intervention in Libya, even though U.S. military involvement in those conflicts had been initiated by presidents of different parties. The chief difference on foreign policy between Republican and Democratic proponents of liberal hegemony, according to Posen, is on support for international institutions as a means to achieving hegemony.
==== Restraint ====
Proponents of a grand strategy of restraint call for the United States to significantly reduce its overseas security commitments and largely avoid involvement in conflicts abroad. America would take advantage of what Posen calls a "remarkably good" strategic position: "[The United States] is rich, distant from other great powers, and defended by a powerful nuclear deterrent. Other great powers are at present weaker than the United States, close to one another, and face the same pressures to defend themselves as does the United States." Proponents of strategic restraint argue, consistent with the realist tradition, that states are self-interested and accordingly will look out for their own interests and balance against aggressors; however, when possible, states prefer to "free ride" or "cheap ride," passing the buck to other states to bear the cost of balancing. Restraint proponents also emphasize the deterrent power of nuclear weapons, which tremendously raise the stakes of confrontations between great powers, breeding caution, rather than rewarding aggression. Restraint advocates see nationalism as a powerful force, one that makes states even more resistant to outside conquest and thus makes the international system more stable. Restraint proponents also argue, drawing on thinkers like the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, that military force is a blunt, expensive, and unpredictable instrument, and that it accordingly should only be used rarely, for clear goals.
Restraint is distinct from isolationism: isolationists favor restricting trade and immigration and tend to believe that events in the outside world have little impact within the United States. As already noted, it is sometimes confused with non-interventionism. Restraint, however, sees economic dynamism as a key source of national power and accordingly tends to argue for a relatively open trade system. Some restrainers call for supporting this trade system via significant naval patrols; others suggest that the international economy is resilient against disruptions and, with rare exceptions, does not require a powerful state to guarantee the security of global trade.
==== Offshore balancing ====
In offshore balancing, the United States would refrain from significant involvement in security affairs overseas except to prevent a state from establishing hegemony in what offshore balancers identify as the world's three key strategic regions: Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf. This strategy advocates a significantly reduced overseas presence compared to liberal hegemony, but argues that intervention is necessary in more circumstances than restraint. Offshore balancing is associated with offensive realist theories of state behavior: it believes that conquest can often enable states to gain power, and thus that a hegemon in regions with large economies, high populations, or critical resources could quickly become a global menace to U.S. national interests.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Sources ==
Heuser, Beatrice (2010). The Evolution of Strategy. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511762895. ISBN 978-0-521-19968-1.
Kennedy, Paul M. (1991). Grand Strategies in War and Peace. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-05666-2.
Posen, Barry R. (2014). Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-7086-8.
Platias, Athanassios; Koliopoulos, Constantinos (2017). Thucydides on Strategy: Grand Strategies in the Peloponnesian War and Their Relevance Today. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-754805-9.
== Further reading ==
Gaddis, John Lewis (2018). On Grand Strategy. United States: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-1594203510.
Art, Robert J (2004). A Grand Strategy for America. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-8957-0.
Biddle, Stephen. American Grand Strategy After 9/11: An Assessment Archived 2018-04-26 at the Wayback Machine. April 2005
Clausewitz, Carl von. On War
Liddell Hart, B. H. Strategy. London:Faber, 1967 (2nd rev. ed.)
Luttwak, E. The Grand strategy of the Roman Empire
Papasotiriou, Harry. Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire
Borgwardt, Elizabeth; Nichols, Christopher Mcknight; Preston, Andrew, eds. (2021). Rethinking American Grand Strategy. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190695668.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-069566-8.
== External links ==
Neal, Andrew; Gardner, Roy. (2025). National Security and Defence Documents Dataset (1987-2024) v2.0, 1987-2024 [dataset]. University of Edinburgh. Politics and International Relations. | Wikipedia/Grand_strategy |
Economy of force is one of the nine Principles of War, based upon Carl von Clausewitz's approach to warfare. It is the principle of employing all available combat power in the most effective way possible, in an attempt to allocate a minimum of essential combat power to any secondary efforts. It is the judicious employment and distribution of forces towards the primary objective of any person's conflict. Economy of force is the reciprocal of mass.
No part of a force should ever be left without purpose. The allocation of available combat power to such tasks, like limited attacks, defense, delays, deception or even retrograde operations is measured, in order to achieve mass at decisive points elsewhere on the battlefield.
Carl von Clausewitz once said that "Every unnecessary expenditure of time, every unnecessary detour, is a waste of power, and therefore contrary to the principles of strategy."
The Principles of War are a part of United States Army doctrine. The current doctrinal manual for army operations is FM 3–0 Operations, which defines, and describes, economy of force as follows: "Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts. Economy of force is the reciprocal of mass. It requires accepting prudent risk in selected areas to achieve superiority—overwhelming effects—in the decisive operation. Economy of force involves the discriminating employment and distribution of forces. Commanders never leave any element without a purpose. When the time comes to execute, all elements should have tasks to perform."
== Notes ==
== See also ==
Carl Von Clausewitz's Vom Krieg (On War)
J.F.C. Fuller's The Nine Principles of War.
Col. John Boyd's OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act) theory.
== Further reading ==
Handel, Michael I. (2001). Robert Cowley, Geoffrey Parker (ed.). The Reader's Companion to Military History. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 147–. ISBN 978-0-618-12742-9. Retrieved 6 September 2011. | Wikipedia/Economy_of_force |
The just war theory (Latin: bellum iustum) is a doctrine, also referred to as a tradition, of military ethics that aims to ensure that a war is morally justifiable through a series of criteria, all of which must be met for a war to be considered just. It has been studied by military leaders, theologians, ethicists and policymakers. The criteria are split into two groups: jus ad bellum ("right to go to war") and jus in bello ("right conduct in war"). There have been calls for the inclusion of a third category of just war theory (jus post bellum) dealing with the morality of post-war settlement and reconstruction. The just war theory postulates the belief that war, while it is terrible but less so with the right conduct, is not always the worst option. The just war theory presents a justifiable means of war with justice being an objective of armed conflict. Important responsibilities, undesirable outcomes, or preventable atrocities may justify war.
Opponents of the just war theory may either be inclined to a stricter pacifist standard (proposing that there has never been nor can there ever be a justifiable basis for war) or they may be inclined toward a more permissive nationalist standard (proposing that a war need only to serve a nation's interests to be justifiable). In many cases, philosophers state that individuals do not need to be plagued by a guilty conscience if they are required to fight. A few philosophers ennoble the virtues of the soldier while they also declare their apprehensions for war itself. A few, such as Rousseau, argue for insurrection against oppressive rule.
The historical aspect, or the "just war tradition", deals with the historical body of rules or agreements that have applied in various wars across the ages. The just war tradition also considers the writings of various philosophers and lawyers through history, and examines both their philosophical visions of war's ethical limits and whether their thoughts have contributed to the body of conventions that have evolved to guide war and warfare.
In the twenty-first century there has been significant debate between traditional just war theorists, who largely support the existing law of war and develop arguments to support it, and revisionists who reject many traditional assumptions, although not necessarily advocating a change in the law.
== Origins ==
=== Ancient Egypt ===
A 2017 study found that the just war tradition can be traced as far back as to Ancient Egypt. Egyptian ethics of war usually centered on three main ideas, these including the cosmological role of Egypt, the pharaoh as a divine office and executor of the will of the gods, and the superiority of the Egyptian state and population over all other states and peoples. Egyptian political theology held that the pharaoh had the exclusive legitimacy in justly initiating a war, usually claimed to carry out the will of the gods. Senusret I, in the Twelfth Dynasty, claimed, "I was nursed to be a conqueror...his [Atum's] son and his protector, he gave me to conquer what he conquered." Later pharaohs also considered their sonship of the god Amun-Re as granting them absolute ability to declare war on the deity's behalf. Pharaohs often visited temples prior to initiating campaigns, where the pharaoh was believed to receive their commands of war from the deities. For example, Kamose claimed that "I went north because I was strong (enough) to attack the Asiatics through the command of Amon, the just of counsels." A stele erected by Thutmose III at the Temple of Amun at Karnak "provides an unequivocal statement of the pharaoh's divine mandate to wage war on his enemies." As the period of the New Kingdom progressed and Egypt heightened its territorial ambition, so did the invocation of just war aid the justification of these efforts. The universal principle of Maat, signifying order and justice, was central to the Egyptian notion of just war and its ability to guarantee Egypt virtually no limits on what it could take, do, or use to guarantee the ambitions of the state.
=== India ===
The Indian Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, offers the first written discussions of a "just war" (dharma-yuddha or "righteous war"). In it, one of five ruling brothers (Pandavas) asks if the suffering caused by war can ever be justified. A long discussion then ensues between the siblings, establishing criteria like proportionality (chariots cannot attack cavalry, only other chariots; no attacking people in distress), just means (no poisoned or barbed arrows), just cause (no attacking out of rage), and fair treatment of captives and the wounded.
In Sikhism, the term dharamyudh describes a war that is fought for just, righteous or religious reasons, especially in defence of one's own beliefs. Though some core tenets in the Sikh religion are understood to emphasise peace and nonviolence, especially before the 1606 execution of Guru Arjan by Mughal Emperor Jahangir, military force may be justified if all peaceful means to settle a conflict have been exhausted, thus resulting in a dharamyudh.
=== East Asian ===
Chinese philosophy produced a massive body of work on warfare, much of it during the Zhou dynasty, especially the Warring States era. War was justified only as a last resort and only by the rightful sovereign; however, questioning the decision of the emperor concerning the necessity of a military action was not permissible. The success of a military campaign was sufficient proof that the campaign had been righteous.
Japan did not develop its own doctrine of just war but between the 5th and the 7th centuries drew heavily from Chinese philosophy, and especially Confucian views. As part of the Japanese campaign to take the northeastern island Honshu, Japanese military action was portrayed as an effort to "pacify" the Emishi people, who were likened to "bandits" and "wild-hearted wolf cubs" and accused of invading Japan's frontier lands.
=== Ancient Greece and Rome ===
The notion of just war in Europe originates and is developed first in ancient Greece and then in the Roman Empire.
It was Aristotle who first introduced the concept and terminology to the Hellenic world that called war a last resort requiring conduct that would allow the restoration of peace. Aristotle argues that the cultivation of a military is necessary and good for the purpose of self-defense, not for conquering: "The proper object of practising military training is not in order that men may enslave those who do not deserve slavery, but in order that first they may themselves avoid becoming enslaved to others" (Politics, Book 7).
Stoic philosopher Panaetius considered war inhuman, but he contemplated just war when it was impossible to bring peace and justice by peaceful means. Just war could be waged solely for retribution or defense, in both cases having to be declared officially. He also established the importance of treating the defeated in a civilized way, especially those who surrendered, even after a prolonged conflict.
In ancient Rome, a "just cause" for war might include the necessity of repelling an invasion, or retaliation for pillaging or a breach of treaty. War was always potentially nefas ("wrong, forbidden"), and risked religious pollution and divine disfavor. A "just war" (bellum iustum) thus required a ritualized declaration by the fetial priests. More broadly, conventions of war and treaty-making were part of the ius gentium, the "law of nations", the customary moral obligations regarded as innate and universal to human beings.
=== Christian views ===
Christian theory of the Just War begins around the time of Augustine of Hippo (Saint Augustine). The Just War theory, with some amendments, is still used by Christians today as a guide to whether or not a war can be justified. Christians may argue "Sometimes war may be necessary and right, even though it may not be good." In the case of a country that has been invaded by an occupying force, war may be the only way to restore justice.
==== Saint Augustine ====
Saint Augustine held that individuals should not resort immediately to violence, but God has given the sword to government for a good reason (based upon Romans 13:4). In Contra Faustum Manichaeum book 22 sections 69–76, Augustine argues that Christians, as part of a government, need not be ashamed of protecting peace and punishing wickedness when they are forced to do so by a government. Augustine asserted that was a personal and philosophical stance: "What is here required is not a bodily action, but an inward disposition. The sacred seat of virtue is the heart."
Nonetheless, he asserted, peacefulness in the face of a grave wrong that could be stopped by only violence would be a sin. Defense of oneself or others could be a necessity, especially when it is authorized by a legitimate authority:They who have waged war in obedience to the divine command, or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."While not breaking down the conditions necessary for war to be just, Augustine nonetheless originated the very phrase itself in his work The City of God:
But, say they, the wise man will wage Just Wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars.
Augustine further taught:
No war is undertaken by a good state except on behalf of good faith or for safety.
J. Mark Mattox writes,In terms of the traditional notion of jus ad bellum (justice of war, that is, the circumstances in which wars can be justly fought), war is a coping mechanism for righteous sovereigns who would ensure that their violent international encounters are minimal, a reflection of the Divine Will to the greatest extent possible, and always justified. In terms of the traditional notion of jus in bello (justice in war, or the moral considerations which ought to constrain the use of violence in war), war is a coping mechanism for righteous combatants who, by divine edict, have no choice but to subject themselves to their political masters and seek to ensure that they execute their war-fighting duty as justly as possible.
==== Isidore of Seville ====
Isidore of Seville writes:
Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without cause. For aside from vengeance or to fight off enemies no just war can be waged.
==== Peace and Truce of God ====
The medieval Peace of God (Latin: pax dei) was a 10th century mass movement in Western Europe instigated by the clergy that granted immunity from violence for non-combatants.
Starting in the 11th Century, the Truce of God (Latin: treuga dei) involved Church rules that successfully limited when and where fighting could occur: Catholic forces (e.g. of warring barons) could not fight each other on Sundays, Thursdays, holidays, the entirety of Lent and Advent and other times, severely disrupting the conduct of wars. The 1179 Third Council of the Lateran adopted a version of it for the whole church.
==== Saint Thomas Aquinas ====
The just war theory by Thomas Aquinas has had a lasting impact on later generations of thinkers and was part of an emerging consensus in medieval Europe on just war. In the 13th century Aquinas reflected in detail on peace and war. Aquinas was a Dominican friar and contemplated the teachings of the Bible on peace and war in combination with ideas from Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Saint Augustine and other philosophers whose writings are part of the Western canon. Aquinas' views on war drew heavily on the Decretum Gratiani, a book the Italian monk Gratian had compiled with passages from the Bible. After its publication in the 12th century, the Decretum Gratiani had been republished with commentary from Pope Innocent IV and the Dominican friar Raymond of Penafort. Other significant influences on Aquinas just war theory were Alexander of Hales and Henry of Segusio.
In Summa Theologica Aquinas asserted that it is not always a sin to wage war, and he set out criteria for a just war. According to Aquinas, three requirements must be met. Firstly, the war must be waged upon the command of a rightful sovereign. Secondly, the war needs to be waged for just cause, on account of some wrong the attacked have committed. Thirdly, warriors must have the right intent, namely to promote good and to avoid evil. Aquinas came to the conclusion that a just war could be offensive and that injustice should not be tolerated so as to avoid war. Nevertheless, Aquinas argued that violence must only be used as a last resort. On the battlefield, violence was only justified to the extent it was necessary. Soldiers needed to avoid cruelty and a just war was limited by the conduct of just combatants. Aquinas argued that it was only in the pursuit of justice, that the good intention of a moral act could justify negative consequences, including the killing of the innocent during a war.
==== Renaissance and Christian Humanists ====
Various Renaissance humanists promoted Pacificist views.
John Colet famously preached a Lenten sermon before Henry VIII, who was preparing for a war, quoting Cicero "Better an unjust peace rather than the justest war."
Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote numerous works on peace which criticized Just War theory as a smokescreen and added extra limitations, notably The Complaint of Peace and the Treatise on War (Dulce bellum inexpertis).
A leading humanist writer after the Reformation was legal theorist Hugo Grotius, whose De jura belli ac pacis re-considered Just War and fighting wars justly.
==== First World War ====
At the beginning of the First World War, a group of theologians in Germany published a manifesto that sought to justify the actions of the German government. At the British government's request, Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, took the lead in collaborating with a large number of other religious leaders, including some with whom he had differed in the past, to write a rebuttal of the Germans' contentions. Both German and British theologians based themselves on the just war theory, each group seeking to prove that it applied to the war waged by its own side.
==== Contemporary Catholic doctrine ====
The just war doctrine of the Catholic Church found in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 2309, lists four strict conditions for "legitimate defense by military force:"
The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain.
All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.
There must be serious prospects of success.
The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church elaborates on the just war doctrine in paragraphs 500 to 501, while citing the Charter of the United Nations:
If this responsibility justifies the possession of sufficient means to exercise this right to defense, States still have the obligation to do everything possible "to ensure that the conditions of peace exist, not only within their own territory but throughout the world". It is important to remember that "it is one thing to wage a war of self-defense; it is quite another to seek to impose domination on another nation. The possession of war potential does not justify the use of force for political or military objectives. Nor does the mere fact that war has unfortunately broken out mean that all is fair between the warring parties".
The Charter of the United Nations ... is based on a generalized prohibition of a recourse to force to resolve disputes between States, with the exception of two cases: legitimate defence and measures taken by the Security Council within the area of its responsibilities for maintaining peace. In every case, exercising the right to self-defence must respect "the traditional limits of necessity and proportionality".
Therefore, engaging in a preventive war without clear proof that an attack is imminent cannot fail to raise serious moral and juridical questions. International legitimacy for the use of armed force, on the basis of rigorous assessment and with well-founded motivations, can only be given by the decision of a competent body that identifies specific situations as threats to peace and authorizes an intrusion into the sphere of autonomy usually reserved to a State.
Pope John Paul II in an address to a group of soldiers noted the following: Peace, as taught by Sacred Scripture and the experience of men itself, is more than just the absence of war. And the Christian is aware that on earth a human society that is completely and always peaceful is, unfortunately, an utopia and that the ideologies which present it as easily attainable only nourish vain hopes. The cause of peace will not go forward by denying the possibility and the obligation to defend it.
==== Russian Orthodox Church ====
The War and Peace section in the Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church is crucial for understanding the Russian Orthodox Church's attitude towards war. The document offers criteria of distinguishing between an aggressive war, which is unacceptable, and a justified war, attributing the highest moral and sacred value of military acts of bravery to a true believer who participates in a justified war. Additionally, the document considers the just war criteria as developed in Western Christianity to be eligible for Russian Orthodoxy; therefore, the justified war theory in Western theology is also applicable to the Russian Orthodox Church.
In the same document, it is stated that wars have accompanied human history since the fall of man, and according to the gospel, they will continue to accompany it. While recognizing war as evil, the Russian Orthodox Church does not prohibit its members from participating in hostilities if there is the security of their neighbours and the restoration of trampled justice at stake. War is considered to be necessary but undesirable. It is also stated that the Russian Orthodox Church has had profound respect for soldiers who gave their lives to protect the life and security of their neighbours.
=== Just war tradition ===
The just war theory, propounded by the medieval Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas, was developed further by legal scholars in the context of international law. Cardinal Cajetan, the jurist Francisco de Vitoria, the two Jesuit priests Luis de Molina and Francisco Suárez, as well as the humanist Hugo Grotius and the lawyer Luigi Taparelli were most influential in the formation of a just war tradition. The just war tradition, which was well established by the 19th century, found its practical application in the Hague Peace Conferences (1899 and 1907) and in the founding of the League of Nations in 1920. After the United States Congress declared war on Germany in 1917, Cardinal James Gibbons issued a letter that all Catholics were to support the war because "Our Lord Jesus Christ does not stand for peace at any price... If by Pacifism is meant the teaching that the use of force is never justifiable, then, however well meant, it is mistaken, and it is hurtful to the life of our country."
Armed conflicts such as the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Cold War were, as a matter of course, judged according to the norms (as established in Aquinas' just war theory) by philosophers such as Jacques Maritain, Elizabeth Anscombe and John Finnis.
The first work dedicated specifically to just war was the 15th-century sermon De bellis justis of Stanisław of Skarbimierz (1360–1431), who justified war by the Kingdom of Poland against the Teutonic Knights. Francisco de Vitoria criticized the conquest of America by the Spanish conquistadors on the basis of just-war theory. With Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius, just war theory was replaced by international law theory, codified as a set of rules, which today still encompass the points commonly debated, with some modifications.
Just-war theorists combine a moral abhorrence towards war with a readiness to accept that war may sometimes be necessary. The criteria of the just-war tradition act as an aid in determining whether resorting to arms is morally permissible. Just-war theories aim "to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable uses of organized armed forces"; they attempt "to conceive of how the use of arms might be restrained, made more humane, and ultimately directed towards the aim of establishing lasting peace and justice".
The just war tradition addresses the morality of the use of force in two parts: when it is right to resort to armed force (the concern of jus ad bellum) and what is acceptable in using such force (the concern of jus in bello).
In 1869 the Russian military theorist Genrikh Antonovich Leer theorized on the advantages and potential benefits of war.
The Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin defined only three types of just war.
But picture to yourselves a slave-owner who owned 100 slaves warring against a slave-owner who owned 200 slaves for a more "just" distribution of slaves. Clearly, the application of the term "defensive" war, or war "for the defense of the fatherland" in such a case would be historically false, and in practice would be sheer deception of the common people, of philistines, of ignorant people, by the astute slaveowners. Precisely in this way are the present-day imperialist bourgeoisie deceiving the peoples by means of "national ideology" and the term "defense of the fatherland" in the present war between slave-owners for fortifying and strengthening slavery.
The anarcho-capitalist scholar Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) stated that "a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try to impose domination on another people or try to retain an already-existing coercive rule over them."
Jonathan Riley-Smith writes:
The consensus among Christians on the use of violence has changed radically since the crusades were fought. The just war theory prevailing for most of the last two centuries—that violence is an evil that can, in certain situations, be condoned as the lesser of evils—is relatively young. Although it has inherited some elements (the criteria of legitimate authority, just cause, right intention) from the older war theory that first evolved around AD 400, it has rejected two premises that underpinned all medieval just wars, including crusades: first, that violence could be employed on behalf of Christ's intentions for mankind and could even be directly authorized by him; and second, that it was a morally neutral force that drew whatever ethical coloring it had from the intentions of the perpetrators.
== Criteria ==
The just war theory has two sets of criteria, the first establishing jus ad bellum (the right to go to war), and the second establishing jus in bello (right conduct within war).
=== Jus ad bellum ===
The just war theory directs jus ad bellum to norms that aim to require certain circumstances to enable the right to go to war.
Competent authority
Only duly constituted public authorities may wage war. "A just war must be initiated by a political authority within a political system that allows distinctions of justice. Dictatorships (e.g. Hitler's regime) or deceptive military actions (e.g. the 1968 US bombing of Cambodia) are typically considered as violations of this criterion. The importance of this condition is key. Plainly, we cannot have a genuine process of judging a just war within a system that represses the process of genuine justice. A just war must be initiated by a political authority within a political system that allows distinctions of justice".
Probability of success
According to this principle, there must be good grounds for concluding that aims of the just war are achievable. This principle emphasizes that mass violence must not be undertaken if it is unlikely to secure the just cause. This criterion is to avoid invasion for invasion's sake and links to the proportionality criteria. One cannot invade if there is no chance of actually winning. However, wars are fought with imperfect knowledge, so one must simply be able to make a logical case that one can win; there is no way to know this in advance. These criteria move the conversation from moral and theoretical grounds to practical grounds. Essentially, this is meant to gather coalition building and win approval of other state actors.
Last resort
The principle of last resort stipulates that all non-violent options must first be exhausted before the use of force can be justified. Diplomatic options, sanctions, and other non-military methods must be attempted or validly ruled out before the engagement of hostilities. Further, in regard to the amount of harm—proportionally—the principle of last resort would support using small intervention forces first and then escalating rather than starting a war with massive force such as carpet bombing or nuclear warfare.
Just cause
The reason for going to war needs to be just and cannot, therefore, be solely for recapturing things taken or punishing people who have done wrong; innocent life must be in imminent danger and intervention must be to protect life. A contemporary view of just cause was expressed in 1993 when the US Catholic Conference said: "Force may be used only to correct a grave, public evil, i.e., aggression or massive violation of the basic human rights of whole populations."
=== Jus in bello ===
Once war has begun, just war theory (jus in bello) also directs how combatants are to act or should act:
Distinction
Just war conduct is governed by the principle of distinction. The acts of war should be directed towards enemy combatants, and not towards non-combatants caught in circumstances that they did not create. The prohibited acts include bombing civilian residential areas that include no legitimate military targets, committing acts of terrorism or reprisal against civilians or prisoners of war (POWs), and attacking neutral targets. Moreover, combatants are not permitted to attack enemy combatants who have surrendered, or who have been captured, or who are injured and not presenting an immediate lethal threat, or who are parachuting from disabled aircraft and are not airborne forces, or who are shipwrecked.
Proportionality
Just war conduct is governed by the principle of proportionality. Combatants must make sure that the harm caused to civilians or civilian property is not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated by an attack on a legitimate military objective. This principle is meant to discern the correct balance between the restriction imposed by a corrective measure and the severity of the nature of the prohibited act.
Military necessity
Just war conduct is governed by the principle of military necessity. An attack or action must be intended to help in the defeat of the enemy; it must be an attack on a legitimate military objective, and the harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Jus in bello allows for military necessity and does not favor a specific justification in allowing for counter-attack recourse. This principle is meant to limit excessive and unnecessary death and destruction.
Fair treatment of prisoners of war
Enemy combatants who surrendered or who are captured no longer pose a threat. It is therefore wrong to torture them or otherwise mistreat them.
No means malum in se
Combatants may not use weapons or other methods of warfare that are considered evil, such as mass rape, forcing enemy combatants to fight against their own side or using weapons whose effects cannot be controlled (e.g., nuclear/biological weapons).
=== Ending a war: Jus post bellum ===
In recent years, some theorists, such as Gary Bass, Louis Iasiello and Brian Orend, have proposed a third category within the just war theory. "Jus post bellum is described by some scholars as a new "discipline," or as "a new category of international law currently under construction". Jus post bellum concerns justice after a war, including peace treaties, reconstruction, environmental remediation, war crimes trials, and war reparations. Jus post bellum has been added to deal with the fact that some hostile actions may take place outside a traditional battlefield. Jus post bellum governs the justice of war termination and peace agreements, as well as the prosecution of war criminals, and publicly labelled terrorists. The idea has largely been added to help decide what to do if there are prisoners that have been taken during battle. It is, through government labelling and public opinion, that people use jus post bellum to justify the pursuit of labelled terrorist for the safety of the government's state in a modern context. The actual fault lies with the aggressor and so by being the aggressor, they forfeit their rights for honourable treatment by their actions. That theory is used to justify the actions taken by anyone fighting in a war to treat prisoners outside of war.
== Traditionalists and Revisionists ==
There are two altering views related to the just war theory that scholars align with, which are traditionalists and revisionists. The debates between these different viewpoints rest on the moral responsiblites of actors in jus in bello.
=== Traditionalists ===
In the just war theory as it pertains to jus in bello, traditionalist scholars view that the two principles, jus ad bellum and jus in bello, are distinct in which actors in war are morally responsible. The traditional view places accountability on leaders who start the war, while soldiers are accountable for actions breaking jus in bello.
=== Revisionists ===
Revisionist scholars view that moral responsibility in conduct of war is placed on individual soldiers who participate in war, even if they follow the rules associated with jus in bello. Soldiers that participate in unjust wars are morally responsible. The revisionist view is based on an individual level, rather than on a collective whole.
== See also ==
Appeasement
Christian pacifism
Cost–benefit analysis
Democratic peace theory
Deterrence theory
Peace and conflict studies
Right of conquest
Moral equality of combatants
Supreme emergency
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Benson, Richard. "The Just War Theory: A Traditional Catholic Moral View", The Tidings (2006). Showing the Catholic view in three points, including John Paul II's position concerning war.
Blattberg, Charles. Taking War Seriously. A critique of just war theory.
Brough, Michael W., John W. Lango, Harry van der Linden, eds., Rethinking the Just War Tradition (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2007). Discusses the contemporary relevance of just war theory. Offers an annotated bibliography of current writings on just war theory.
Brunsletter, D., & D. O'Driscoll, Just war thinkers from Cicero to the 21st century (Routledge, 2017).
Butler, Paul (2002–2003). "By Any Means Necessary: Using Violence and Subversion to Change Unjust Law". UCLA Law Review. 50: 721 – via HeinOnline.
Churchman, David. Why we fight: the origins, nature, and management of human conflict (University Press of America, 2013) online.
Crawford, Neta. "Just War Theory and the US Countertenor War", Perspectives on Politics 1(1), 2003. online
Elshtain, Jean Bethke, ed. Just war theory (NYU Press, 1992) online.
Evans, Mark (editor) Just War Theory: A Reappraisal (Edinburgh University Press, 2005)
Fotion, Nicholas. War and Ethics (London, New York: Continuum, 2007). ISBN 0-8264-9260-6. A defence of an updated form of just war theory.
Heindel, Max. The Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers – Volume II (The Philosophy of War, World War I reference, ed. 1918), ISBN 0-911274-90-1 (Describing a philosophy of war and just war concepts from the point of view of his Rosicrucian Fellowship)
Gutbrod, Hans. Russia's Recent Invasion of Ukraine and Just War Theory ("Global Policy Journal", March 2022); applies the concept to Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Holmes, Robert L. On War and Morality (Princeton University Press, 1989.
Khawaja, Irfan. Review of Larry May, War Crimes and Just War, in Democratiya 10, ([1]), an extended critique of just war theory.
Kwon, David. Justice after War: Jus Post Bellum in the 21st Century (Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America Press, 2023). ISBN 978-0-813236-51-3
MacDonald, David Roberts. Padre E. C. Crosse and 'the Devonshire Epitaph': The Astonishing Story of One Man at the Battle of the Somme (with Antecedents to Today's 'Just War' Dialogue), 2007 Cloverdale Books, South Bend. ISBN 978-1-929569-45-8
McMahan, Jeff. "Just Cause for War," Ethics and International Affairs, 2005.
Nájera, Luna. "Myth and Prophecy in Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda's Crusading "Exhortación" Archived 11 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine, in Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, 35:1 (2011). Discusses Sepúlveda's theories of war in relation to the war against the Ottoman Turks.
Nardin, Terry, ed. The ethics of war and peace: Religious and secular perspectives (Princeton University Press, 1998) online
O'Donovan, Oliver. The Just War Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Steinhoff, Uwe. On the Ethics of War and Terrorism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007). Covers the basics and some of the most controversial current debates.
Walzer, Michael. Arguing about War, (Yale University Press, 2004). ISBN 978-0-300-10978-8
== External links ==
"Just war theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Catholic Teaching Concerning Just War at Catholicism.org
"Just War" In Our Time, BBC Radio 4 discussion with John Keane and Niall Ferguson (3 June 1999) | Wikipedia/Just_war_theory |
Network-centric warfare, also called network-centric operations or net-centric warfare, is a military doctrine or theory of war that aims to translate an information advantage, enabled partly by information technology, into a competitive advantage through the computer networking of dispersed forces. It was pioneered by the United States Department of Defense in the 1990s.
== Background and history ==
In 1996, Admiral William Owens introduced the concept of a 'system of systems' in a paper published by the Institute for National Security Studies in the United States. He described a system of intelligence sensors, command and control systems, and precision weapons that provided situational awareness, rapid target assessment, and distributed weapon assignment.
Also in 1996, the United States' Joint Chiefs of Staff released Joint Vision 2010, which introduced the military concept of full-spectrum dominance. Full Spectrum Dominance described the ability of the US military to dominate the battlespace from peace operations through to the outright application of military power that stemmed from the advantages of information superiority.
=== Network Centric Warfare ===
The term "network-centric warfare" and associated concepts first appeared in the United States Department of Navy's publication, "Copernicus: C4ISR for the 21st Century." The ideas of networking sensors, commanders, and shooters to flatten the hierarchy, reduce the operational pause, enhance precision, and increase speed of command were captured in this document. As a distinct concept, however, network-centric warfare first appeared publicly in a 1998 US Naval Institute Proceedings article by Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski and John Garstka. However, the first complete articulation of the idea was contained in the book Network Centric Warfare : Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority by David S. Alberts, John Garstka and Frederick Stein, published by the Command and Control Research Program (CCRP). This book derived a new theory of warfare from a series of case studies on how business was using information and communication technologies to improve situation analysis, accurately control inventory and production, as well as monitor customer relations.
The information revolution has permeated the military world as well, with network-centric warfare replacing traditional combat methods. Technology is now at the forefront of battlefields, creating a new era of warfare - network-centric.
It's a new level of communication and coordination through what is known as tactical interoperability. From human soldiers to smart weapon systems, command & control systems, automatic sentry systems, and platforms on land, air, and space - all these elements are seamlessly connected in a single communication fabric, with encompass battle management systems for all services, catering to individuals from General HQs to soldiers on the field.
=== Understanding Information Age Warfare ===
Network-centric warfare was followed in 2001 by Understanding Information Age Warfare (UIAW), jointly authored by Alberts, Garstka, Richard Hayes of Evidence Based Research and David A. Signori of RAND. UIAW pushed the implications of the shifts identified by network-centric warfare in order to derive an operational theory of warfare.
Starting with a series of premises on how the environment is sensed, UIAW describes three domains. The first is a physical domain, where events take place and are perceived by sensors and people. Data emerging from the physical domain is transmitted through an information domain. It is processed in a cognitive domain before being acted upon.
The process is similar to a "observe, orient, decide, act" loop described by Col. John Boyd of the USAF.
=== Power to the Edge ===
The last publication dealing with the developing theory of network centric warfare appeared in 2003 with Power to the Edge, also published by the CCRP. Power to the Edge is a speculative work suggesting that modern military environments are far too complex to be understood by any one individual, organisation, or even military service.
Modern information technology permits the rapid and effective sharing of information to such a degree that "edge entities" or those that are essentially conducting military missions themselves, should be able to "pull" information from ubiquitous repositories, rather than having centralised agencies attempt to anticipate their information needs and "push" it to them. This would imply a major flattening of traditional military hierarchies, however.
Power To The Edge's radical ideas had been under investigation by the Pentagon since at least 2001. In UIAW, the concept of peer-to-peer activity combined with more traditional hierarchical flow of data in the network had been introduced.
Shortly thereafter, the Pentagon began investing in peer-to-peer research, telling software engineers at a November 2001 peer-to-peer conference that there were advantages to be gained in the redundancy and robustness of a peer-to-peer network topology on the battlefield.
Network-centric warfare/operations is a cornerstone of the ongoing transformation effort at the Department of Defense initiated by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It is also one of the five goals of the Office of Force Transformation, Office of the Secretary of Defense.
See Revolution in Military Affairs for further information on what is now known as "defense transformation" or "transformation".
== Related technologies and programs ==
The US DOD has mandated that the Global Information Grid (GIG) will be the primary technical framework to support US network-centric warfare/network-centric operations. Under this directive, all advanced weapons platforms, sensor systems, and command and control centers are eventually to be linked via the GIG. The term system of systems is often used to describe the results of these types of massive integration efforts.
The topic Net-Centric Enterprise Services addresses the applications context of the GIG.
A number of significant U.S. military programs are taking technical steps towards supporting network-centric warfare. These include the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) of the United States Navy and the BCT Network of the United States Army.
Net-Centric Enterprise Solutions for Interoperability (NESI) provides, for all phases of the acquisition of net-centric solutions, actionable guidance that meets network-centric warfare goals of the United States Department of Defense. The guidance in NESI is derived from the higher level, more abstract concepts provided in various directives, policies and mandates such as the Net-Centric Operations and Warfare Reference Model (NCOW RM) and the ASD(NII) Net-Centric Checklist.
== Doctrinal tenets in United States ==
The doctrine of network-centric warfare for the United States armed forces draws its highest level of guidance from the concept of "team warfare", meaning the integration and synchronization of all appropriate capabilities across the various services, ranging from Army to Air Force to Coast Guard. This is part of the principle of joint warfare.
The tenets of network-centric warfare are:
Tenet 1: A robustly networked force improves information sharing.
Tenet 2: Information sharing and collaboration enhance the quality of information and shared situational awareness.
Tenet 3: Shared situational awareness enables self-synchronization.
Tenet 4: These, in turn, dramatically increase mission effectiveness.
Net-Centric operations are compatible with Mission Command doctrine, which theoretically allows considerable freedom of action for combat troops, and with more decentralized approaches to Command and Control (C2).
== Some architectural and design challenges ==
The complexity of the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) offers insight into the challenges of integrating numerous different communications systems into a unified whole. It is intended to be a software-defined radio for battlefield communications that will be backwards compatible with a very large number of other military and civilian radio systems.
An April 10, 2008 GAO report (GAO FCS report) highlighted the scalability of the network as a major risk factor to the Network Centric FCS program. The proposed system will be unable to network all the units into one self-forming, self-healing network.
The problem of coordinating bandwidth usage in a battlespace is a significant challenge, when every piece of mobile equipment and human participant becomes a potential source or relay of RF emissions.
It is difficult to efficiently transfer information between networks having different levels of security classification. Although multi-level security systems provide part of the solution, human intervention and decision-making is still needed to determine what specific data can and cannot be transferred.
Accurate locational awareness is limited when maneuvering in areas where Global Positioning System (GPS) coverage is weak or non-existent. These areas include the inside of buildings, caves, etc. as well as built-up areas and urban canyons, which are also settings for many modern military operations. Much work on reliable fusion of positional data from multiple sensors remains to be done.
Providing secure communications in network-centric warfare/network-centric operations is difficult, since successful key management for encryption is typically the most difficult aspect of cryptography, especially with mobile systems. The problem is exacerbated with the need for speedy deployment and nimble reconfiguration of military teams, to respond to rapidly changing conditions in the modern battlespace.
== International activities ==
There is significant need to harmonize the technical and operational aspects of net-centric warfare and net-centric operations among multiple nations, in order to support coalition activities, joint operations, etc.
The NATO Command Structure and many NATO and non-NATO nations have joined the Federated Mission Networking (FMN) initiative and work together under the FMN Framework Process to coordinate the design, development and delivery of operational and technical capabilities required to conduct net-centric operations. Within the Alliance the NATO Interoperability Standards and Profiles (NISP) provides the necessary guidance and technical components to support project implementations and Federated Mission Networking. Individual Standardization Agreements are the coordinating vehicle for establishing shared technical standards among NATO nations.
See also Partnership for Peace for information on extending coordination efforts to non-NATO nations that are keen to support military operations other than war activities, such as international peacekeeping, disaster response, humanitarian aid, etc.
== Supporting comments ==
"With less than half of the ground forces and two-thirds of the military aircraft used 12 years ago in Desert Storm, we have achieved a far more difficult objective. ... In Desert Storm, it usually took up to two days for target planners to get a photo of a target, confirm its coordinates, plan the mission, and deliver it to the bomber crew. Now we have near real-time imaging of targets with photos and coordinates transmitted by e-mail to aircraft already in flight. In Desert Storm, battalion, brigade, and division commanders had to rely on maps, grease pencils, and radio reports to track the movements of our forces. Today, our commanders have a real-time display of our armed forces on their computer screen."—former Vice President Richard Cheney.
"Net-centric warfare's effectiveness has greatly improved in 12 years. Desert Storm forces, involving more than 500,000 troops, were supported with 100 Mbit/s of bandwidth. Today, OIF forces, with about 350,000 warfighters, had more than 3,000 Mbit/s of satellite bandwidth, which is 30 times more bandwidth for a force 45 percent smaller. U.S. troops essentially used the same weapon platforms used in Operation Desert Storm with significantly increased effectiveness."—Lieutenant general Harry D. Raduege Jr, director, Defense Information Systems Agency.
== Contradictory views ==
"Our incipient NCW plans may suffer defeat by [adversaries] using primitive but cagey techniques, inspired by an ideology we can neither match nor understand; or by an enemy who can knock out our vulnerable Global Positioning System or use electromagnetic pulse weapons on a limited scale, removing intelligence as we have construed it and have come to depend upon. Fighting forces accustomed to relying upon downlinks for information and commands would have little to fall back upon."
The aspiration of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to embrace network-centric warfare is outlined in the document ADF Force 2020. This vision has been criticized by Aldo Borgu, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). By developing interoperability with U.S. systems, in his view, the three arms of the Australian Defence Force could end up operating better with their sister United States services than with each other.
Network centric warfare is criticized by proponents of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) doctrine.
Also, since Network-centric warfare focuses so much on distributing information, one has to be wary of the effect of false, misleading, or misinterpreted information entering the system, be it through enemy deception or simple error. Just as the usefulness of correct information can be amplified, so too can the repercussions of incorrect data entering the system achieve much greater non-positive outcomes.
One way that this can happen is through errors in initial conditions in an uncorrected, closed system that subsequently skew result-sets; the result-sets are then reused, amplifying the initial error by orders of magnitude in subsequent generations of result-sets; see chaos theory.
Other possible failure modes or problem areas in network-centric warfare include the occurrence of the Byzantine generals' problem in peer-to-peer systems; problems caused by an inadequate or a shallow understanding of (or general disregard for) self-regulation, self-organization, systems theory, emergent behavior and cybernetics; in addition to this, there are potential issues arising from the very nature of any complex, rapidly developed artificial system arising from complexity theory, which implies the possibility of failure modes such as congestion collapse or cascading failure.
== See also ==
Autonomous logistics
Battlespace
C4ISTAR
Cyberwarfare
Information warfare
List of cyber warfare forces
Network simulator
== References ==
== External links ==
C4I Systems
The OASD-NII Command and Control Research Program (CCRP)
Net-Centric Enterprise Solutions for Interoperability (NESI)
NCW related article on Crosstalk - Defense Software Engineering Journal
Army War College article: Principles of Warfare on the Network-Centric Battlefield
globalsecurity.org
C4I.org - Computer Security & Intelligence | Wikipedia/Network-centric_warfare |
Arms control is a term for international restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of small arms, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. Historically, arms control may apply to melee weapons (such as swords) before the invention of firearm. Arms control is typically exercised through the use of diplomacy which seeks to impose such limitations upon consenting participants through international treaties and agreements, although it may also comprise efforts by a nation or group of nations to enforce limitations upon a non-consenting country.
== Enactment ==
Arms control treaties and agreements are often seen as a way to avoid costly arms races which could prove counter-productive to national aims and future peace. Some are used as ways to stop the spread of certain military technologies (such as nuclear weaponry or missile technology) in return for assurances to potential developers that they will not be victims of those technologies. Additionally, some arms control agreements are entered to limit the damage done by warfare, especially to civilians and the environment, which is seen as bad for all participants regardless of who wins a war.
While arms control treaties are seen by many peace proponents as a key tool against war, by the participants, they are often seen simply as ways to limit the high costs of the development and building of weapons, and even reduce the costs associated with war itself. Arms control can even be a way of maintaining the viability of military action by limiting those weapons that would make war so costly and destructive as to make it no longer a viable tool for national policy.
== Enforcement ==
Enforcement of arms control agreements has proven difficult over time. Most agreements rely on the continued desire of the participants to abide by the terms to remain effective. Usually, when a nation no longer desires to abide by the terms, they usually will seek to either covertly circumvent the terms or to end their participation in the treaty. This was seen with the Washington Naval Treaty (and the subsequent London Naval Treaty), where most participants sought to work around the limitations, some more legitimately than others. The United States developed better technology to get better performance from their ships while still working within the weight limits, the United Kingdom exploited a loop-hole in the terms, the Italians misrepresented the weight of their vessels, and when up against the limits, Japan left the treaty. The nations which violated the terms of the treaty did not suffer great consequences for their actions. Within little more than a decade, the treaty was abandoned. The Geneva Protocol has lasted longer and been more successful at being respected, but still nations have violated it at will when they have felt the need. Enforcement has been haphazard, with measures more a matter of politics than adherence to the terms. This meant sanctions and other measures tended to be advocated against violators primarily by their natural political enemies, while violations have been ignored or given only token measures by their political allies.
More recent arms control treaties have included more stringent terms on enforcement of violations as well as verification. This last has been a major obstacle to effective enforcement, as violators often attempt to covertly circumvent the terms of the agreements. Verification is the process of determining whether or not a nation is complying with the terms of an agreement, and involves a combination of release of such information by participants as well as some way to allow participants to examine each other to verify that information. This often involves as much negotiation as the limits themselves, and in some cases questions of verification have led to the breakdown of treaty negotiations (for example, verification was cited as a major concern by opponents of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, ultimately not ratified by the United States).
States may remain in a treaty while seeking to break the limits of that treaty as opposed to withdrawing from it. This is for two major reasons. To openly defy an agreement, even if one withdraws from it, often is seen in a bad light politically and can carry diplomatic repercussions. Additionally, if one remains in an agreement, competitors who are also participatory may be held to the limitations of the terms, while withdrawal releases your opponents to make the same developments you are making, limiting the advantage of that development.
== Theory of arms control ==
Scholars and practitioners such as John D. Steinbruner, Thomas Schelling, Morton Halperin, Jonathan Dean or Stuart Croft worked extensively on the theoretical backing of arms control. Arms control is meant to break the security dilemma. It aims at mutual security between partners and overall stability (be it in a crisis situation, a grand strategy, or stability to put an end to an arms race). Other than stability, arms control comes with cost reduction and damage limitation. It is different from disarmament since the maintenance of stability might allow for mutually controlled armament and does not take a peace-without-weapons-stance. Nevertheless, arms control is a defensive strategy in principle, since transparency, equality, and stability do not fit into an offensive strategy.
According to a 2020 study in the American Political Science Review, arms control is rare because successful arms control agreements involve a difficult trade-off between transparency and security. For arms control agreements to be effective, there needs to be a way to thoroughly verify that a state is following the agreement, such as through intrusive inspections. However, states are often reluctant to submit to such inspections when they have reasons to fear that the inspectors will use the inspections to gather information about the capabilities of the state, which could be used in a future conflict.
== History ==
=== Pre-19th century ===
One of the first recorded attempts in arms control was a set of rules laid down in ancient Greece by the Amphictyonic Leagues. Rulings specified how war could be waged, and breaches of this could be punished by fines or by war.
In the 8th and 9th centuries AD, swords and chain mail armor manufactured in the Frankish empire were highly sought after for their quality, and Charlemagne (r. 768–814), made their sale or export to foreigners illegal, punishable by forfeiture of property or even death. This was an attempt to limit the possession and use of this equipment by the Franks' enemies, including the Moors, the Vikings and the Slavs.
The church used its position as a trans-national organization to limit the means of warfare. The 989 Peace of God (extended in 1033) ruling protected noncombatants, agrarian and economic facilities, and the property of the church from war. The 1027 Truce of God also tried to prevent violence between Christians. The Second Lateran Council in 1139 prohibited the use of crossbows against other Christians, although it did not prevent its use against non-Christians.
The development of firearms led to an increase in the devastation of war. The brutality of wars during this period led to efforts to formalize the rules of war, with humane treatment for prisoners of war or wounded, as well as rules to protect non-combatants and the pillaging of their property. However, during the period until the beginning of the 19th century few formal arms control agreements were recorded, except theoretical proposals and those imposed on defeated armies.
One treaty which was concluded was the Strasbourg Agreement of 1675. This is the first international agreement limiting the use of chemical weapons, in this case, poison bullets. The treaty was signed between France and The Holy Roman Empire
=== 19th century ===
The 1817 Rush–Bagot Treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom was the first arms control treaty of what can be considered the modern industrial era, leading to the demilitarization of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain region of North America. This was followed by the 1871 Treaty of Washington which led to total demilitarization.
The industrial revolution led to the increasing mechanization of warfare, as well as rapid advances in the development of firearms; the increased potential of devastation (which was later seen in the battlefields of World War I) led to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia calling together the leaders of 26 nations for the First Hague Conference in 1899. The Conference led to the signing of the Hague Convention of 1899 that led to rules of declaring and conducting warfare as well as the use of modern weaponry, and also led to the setting up of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
=== 1900 to 1945 ===
A Second Hague Conference was called in 1907 leading to additions and amendments to the original 1899 agreement. A Third Hague Conference was called for 1915, but this was abandoned due to the First World War.
After the World War I, the League of Nations was set up which attempted to limit and reduce arms. However the enforcement of this policy was not effective. Various naval conferences, such as the Washington Naval Conference, were held during the period between the First and Second World Wars to limit the number and size of major warships of the five great naval powers.
The 1925 Geneva Conference led to the banning of chemical weapons being deployed against enemy nationals in international armed conflict as part of the Geneva Protocol. The 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, whilst ineffective, attempted for "providing for the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy".
=== Since 1945 ===
After World War II, the United Nations was set up as a body to promote and to maintain international peace and security. The United States proposed the Baruch Plan in 1946 as a way to impose stringent international control over the nuclear fuel cycle and thereby avert a global nuclear arms race, but the Soviet Union rejected the proposal and negotiations failed. Following President Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace speech to the UN General Assembly, the International Atomic Energy Agency was set up in 1957 to promote peaceful uses of nuclear technology and apply safeguards against the diversion of nuclear material from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons.
Under the auspices of the United Nations, the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which aimed to end nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, underwater and in outer-space, was established in 1963. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was signed to prevent further spread of nuclear weapons technology to countries outside the five that already possessed them: the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China. With the three main goals of establishing nonproliferation with inspections, nuclear arms reduction, and the right to use nuclear energy peacefully, this treaty initially met some reluctance from countries developing their own nuclear programs such as Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. Still, all countries with the exception of India, Israel, Pakistan and South Sudan decided to sign or ratify the document.
The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between the United States and Soviet Union in the late 1960s/early 1970s led to further weapons control agreements. The SALT I talks led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an Interim Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement (see SALT I), both in 1972. The SALT II talks started in 1972 leading to agreement in 1979. Due to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan the United States never ratified the treaty, but the agreement was honoured by both sides.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed between the United States and Soviet Union in 1987 and ratified in 1988, leading to an agreement to destroy all missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers. This came in the context of a revitalised peace movement during the previous decade which included huge demonstrations around the world for nuclear disarmament.
The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention was signed banning the manufacture and use of chemical weapons.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties were signed, as START I and START II, by the US and Soviet Union, further restricting weapons. This was further moved on by the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, which was in turn superseded by the New START Treaty.
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1996 banning all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes, but it has not entered into force due to the non-ratification of eight specific states.
In 1998 the United Nations founded the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA). Its goal is to promote nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and the strengthening of the disarmament regimes in respect to other weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons. It also promotes disarmament efforts in the area of conventional weapons, especially landmines and small arms, which are often the weapons of choice in contemporary conflicts.
In addition to treaties focused primarily on stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, there has been a recent movement to regulate the sale and trading of conventional weapons. As of December 2014, the United Nations is preparing for entry into force of the Arms Trade Treaty, which has been ratified by 89 nations. However, it is currently missing ratification by key arms producers such as Russia and China, and while the United States has signed the treaty it has not yet ratified it. The Treaty regulates the international trade in almost all categories of conventional weapons – from small arms to battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships. Ammunition, as well as parts and components, are also covered.
More recently, the United Nations announced the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2020, following the 50th ratification or accession by member states.
== List of treaties and conventions related to arms control ==
Some of the more important international arms control agreements follow:
Treaty of Versailles, 1919 – limited the size of the Germany's military after World War I
Washington Naval Treaty, 1922–1939 (as part of the naval conferences) – set limitations on construction of battleships, battlecruisers, and aircraft carriers as well as tonnage quotas on cruisers, destroyers, and submarines between the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, and Italy
Geneva Protocol, 1925 – prohibited the use of biological and chemical weapons against enemy nationals in international armed conflict
Antarctic Treaty, signed 1959, entered into force 1961 – prohibited military conflict in Antarctica
Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed and entered into force 1963 – prohibited nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere
Outer Space Treaty, signed and entered into force 1967 – prohibited deployment of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, in space
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed 1968, entered into force 1970 – prohibited countries without nuclear weapons from acquiring them while committing nuclear-armed states to eventual disarmament
Seabed Arms Control Treaty, signed 1971, entered into force 1972 – prohibited underwater nuclear tests
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), signed and ratified 1972, in force 1972–1977 – limited introduction of new intercontinental ballistic missile launchers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed and entered into force 1972, terminated following U.S. withdrawal 2002 – restricted anti-ballistic missiles
Biological Weapons Convention, signed 1972, entered into force 1975 – prohibited production of biological weapons
Threshold Test Ban Treaty, signed 1974, entered into force 1990 – limited nuclear weapons tests to 150 kilotons
SALT II signed 1979, never entered into force – limited production of long-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles
Environmental Modification Convention, signed 1977, entered into force 1978 – prohibited military use of environmental modification techniques
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, signed 1980, entered into force 1983 – restricted certain conventional weapons such as landmines, incendiary weapons, and laser weapons as well as requiring clearance of unexploded ordnances.
Moon Treaty, signed 1979, entered into force 1984 – prohibits militarization of the Moon
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), signed 1987, entered into force 1988, United States and Russia announced withdrawal 2019 – limited short-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles
Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, (CFE Treaty) signed 1990, entered into force 1992 – established limits on deployment of conventional military forces in Europe between NATO and the Warsaw Pact
Vienna Document, adopted 1990, updated 1992, 1994, 1999, 2011 – European agreement on confidence- and security-building measures such as prior notification of military force activities and inspections of military activities
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I (START I), signed 1991, entered into force 1994, expired 2009 (START I was a successor to the expired SALT agreements.) – provided limitations on strategic offensive arms
Chemical Weapons Convention, signed 1993, entered into force 1997 – prohibited production and stockpiling of chemical weapons
START II, signed 1993, ratified 1996 (United States) and 2000 (Russia), terminated following Russian withdrawal 2002 – prohibited intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles
Open Skies Treaty, signed 1992, entered into force 2002 – allowed unarmed reconnaissance flights between NATO and Russia
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, signed 1996, has not entered into force. – prohibited nuclear weapons testing
Ottawa Treaty on anti-personnel landmines, signed 1997, entered into force 1999
Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), signed 2002, entered into force 2003, expires 2012 – limited nuclear warheads
International Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation, signed 2002 – limited proliferation of ballistic missiles
Convention on Cluster Munitions, signed 2008, entered into force 2010 – prohibits deployment, production, and stockpiling of cluster bombs
New START Treaty, signed by Russia and the United States April 2010, entered into force February 2011 – reduced strategic nuclear missiles by half
Arms Trade Treaty, concluded 2013, entered into force 24 December 2014 – regulates trade of conventional weapons
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, signed 2017, entered into force January 2021 – prohibits nuclear weapons
=== Nuclear weapon-free zone treaties ===
Treaty of Tlatelolco (Latin America and the Caribbean), signed 1967, entered into force 1972
Treaty of Rarotonga (South Pacific), signed 1985, entered into force 1986
Treaty of Bangkok (Southeast Asia), signed 1995, entered into force 1997
Treaty of Pelindaba (Africa), signed 1996, entered into force 2009
Treaty of Semipalatinsk (Central Asia), signed 2006, entered into force 2008
Other treaties also envision the creation of NWFZ, among other objectives. These are the following:
Antarctic Treaty, signed 1959, entered into force 1961
Outer Space Treaty, signed and entered into force 1967
Seabed Arms Control Treaty, signed 1971, entered into force 1972
=== Treaties not entered into force ===
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed 1996 – prohibits nuclear weapons testing
=== Proposed treaties ===
Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty – would prohibit all further production of fissile material
Nuclear weapons convention – would prohibit nuclear weapons
=== Export control regimes ===
Zangger Committee since 1971
Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) since 1974
Australia Group since 1985
Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), since 1987
Wassenaar Arrangement, since 1996
=== Nonbinding declarations ===
Ayacucho Declaration 1974
== Arms control organizations ==
The intergovernmental organizations for arms control are the following:
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which has other functions besides arms control
Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO PrepCom)
Conference on Disarmament (CD)
United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA)
United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR)
the now disbanded United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), the successor to United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM)
failed proposal for Organisation for the Prohibition of Biological Weapons
There are also numerous non-governmental organizations that promote a global reduction in nuclear arms and offer research and analysis about U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Pre-eminent among these organizations is the Arms Control Association, founded in 1971 to promote public understanding of and support for arms control. Others include:
Federation of American Scientists (FAS)—founded in 1945 as the Federation of Atomic Scientists by veterans of the Manhattan Project.
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament—a leading disarmament organization in the United Kingdom, founded in 1957.
Peace Action—formerly SANE (the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), founded in 1957
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)—founded by Bernard Lown in 1961.
Council for a Livable World—founded in 1962 by physicist Leó Szilárd and other scientists who believed that nuclear weapons should be controlled and eventually eliminated.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)—founded in 1966.
Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)—founded in 1969 by faculty and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Arms Control Association—founded in 1971.
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation—founded in 1980 as a sister organization to the Council for a Livable World.
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)—founded in 1981.
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability—a national network of organizations working to address issues of nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup, founded in 1987 as the Military Production Network.
Global Zero—founded in 2008.
T.M.C. Asser Instituut—founded in 1965.
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Adelman, Kenneth L. (1986). "Arms control and human rights". World Affairs. 149 (3): 157–162. JSTOR 20672104.
Amnesty International (2014). "Arms control and human rights". amnesty.org. Amnesty International.
Bailes, Alyson J. K. "The changing role of arms control in historical perspective." in Arms Control in the 21st Century (2013): 15–38.
Coe, Andrew J. and Jane Waynman. 2019. "Why Arms Control Is So Rare." American Political Science Review. doi:10.1017/S000305541900073X|
Croft, Stuart. Strategies of arms control: a history and typology (Manchester University Press, 1996).
Foradori, Paolo, et al. eds. Arms Control and Disarmament: 50 Years of Experience in Nuclear Education (2017) excerpt
Forsberg, Randall, ed., Arms Control Reporter 1995–2005. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995–2004.
Gillespie, Alexander. A History of the Laws of War: Volume 3: The Customs and Laws of War with Regards to Arms Control (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011).
Glynn, Patrick. Closing Pandora's Box: Arms Races, Arms Control, and the History of the Cold War (1992) online
Graham Jr, Thomas. Disarmament sketches: Three decades of arms control and international law (University of Washington Press, 2012).
Kaufman, Robert Gordon. Arms Control During the Pre-Nuclear Era (Columbia University Press, 1990).
Larsen, Jeffrey A. Historical dictionary of arms control and disarmament (2005) online
Mutschlerm, Max M. Arms Control in Space: Exploring Conditions for Preventive Arms Control (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Reinhold, Thomas, and Christian Reuter. "Arms control and its applicability to cyberspace." in Information Technology for Peace and Security: IT Applications and Infrastructures in Conflicts, Crises, War, and Peace (2019): 207–231.
Smith, James M. and Gwendolyn Hall, eds. Milestones in strategic arms control, 1945–2000: United States Air Force roles and outcomes (2002) online
Thompson, Kenneth W., ed. Presidents and Arms Control: Process, Procedures, and Problems (University Press of America, 1997).
Williams Jr, Robert E., and Paul R. Viotti. Arms Control: History, Theory, and Policy (2 vol. ABC-CLIO, 2012).
Young, Nigel J. ed. The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace (4 vol. 2010) 1:89–122.
=== Primary sources ===
U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements: Texts and Histories of the Negotiations (1996) ISBN 9780160486890
== External links ==
online books on arms control (on Internet Archive)
Arms Control and Nonproliferation: A Catalog of Treaties and Agreements Congressional Research Service, May 8, 2018.
"The Arms Trade Treaty at a Glance". armscontrol.org. Arms Control Association. July 2013.
National Counterproliferation Center – Office of the Director of National Intelligence (archived 28 April 2015)
UN – Disarmament Affairs
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
Council for a Livable World (archived 11 July 2007)
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's Research on Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (archived 17 February 2011)
Lecture by Masahiko Asada entitled Nuclear Weapons and International Law in the Lecture Series of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law
Disarmament insight website | Wikipedia/Arms_control |
The United States Air Force's 505th Command and Control Wing is organized under the United States Air Force Warfare Center. The wing is dedicated to improving readiness through integrated training, tactics development and operational testing for command and control of air, space and cyberspace. It hosts the Air Force's only Air Operations Center Formal Training Unit at Hurlburt Field, Florida.
The unit was first activated in 1947 under Air Defense Command (ADC) as the 505th Aircraft Control and Warning Group. It controlled radar units in the northwest until inactivating in February 1952, during a general reorganization of ADC.
It was activated again during the Vietnam War in November 1965. It initially commanded both aircraft warning units and forward air control squadrons, but in December 1966, those units were transferred to the 505th Tactical Air Control Group. It continued to manage the airspace over South Vietnam until the American withdrawal in 1973.
== Subordinate units ==
Detachment 1 – Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
505th Combat Training Group at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada
505th Combat Training Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Florida
505th Communications Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Florida
705th Combat Training Squadron, also known as the Distributed Mission Operations Center (DMOC), home of VIRTUAL FLAG and Coalition VIRTUAL FLAG exercises at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico
805th Combat Training Squadron, also known as the Shadow Operations Center- Nellis (ShOC-N) at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada
505th Test and Training Group (TTG) at Hurlburt Field, Florida
84th Radar Evaluation Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah
505 TTG, Detachment 1 at Beale Air Force Base, California
505 TTG, Detachment 2 at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia
505th Training Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Florida
705th Training Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Florida
605th Test and Evaluation Squadron (TES) at Hurlburt Field, Florida
605 TES, Detachment 1 at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma
== History ==
=== Postwar era ===
On 21 May 1947, the wing was activated by Air Defense Command (ADC) as the 505th Aircraft Control and Warning Group, drawing on the personnel and assets of the former 412th Air Force Base Unit. Stationed at McChord Field it become the first of ADC's post-World War II aircraft control and warning units. For the remainder of 1947 the group supported two radar stations, one at Arlington, Washington, and one at Half Moon Bay near San Francisco. These stations worked with fighter squadrons to improve ground-control and interception techniques. The group included a fleet of B-25 Mitchells used extensively to perform radar calibration flights. The experience gained from operating the two sites proved invaluable to air defense planners who were in the process of designing a nationwide early warning radar network.
As tensions increased between the US and the Soviet Union, the group's mission grew in importance. In September 1949, the group no longer operated B-25s, yet it remained focused on early warning systems, supporting detachments along the Pacific Northwest coast. The group operated early warning operating radar systems, including the AN/TPS-1. On 15 March 1950, the reserve 564th ACWG was activated as a Corollary unit at Silver Lake, sharing the group's equipment and facilities. The 564th ACWG was called to active duty on 10 May 1951 and was inactivated, with its personnel used as fillers for the 505th. With a growing movement to assign homeland defense to reserve units, the 505 ACWG inactivated on 6 February 1952.
=== Vietnam War ===
On 2 November 1965, the 505 ACWG was re-activated as the 505th Tactical Control Group (TCG). Replacing the 6250th Tactical Air Support Group that activated three months earlier, 505 TCG called Tan Son Nhut Air Base in South Vietnam home. The 505th was responsible with providing Command and Control (C2), for the Tactical Control System in Southeast Asia (SEA). This mission included the operation of numerous radar sites throughout South Vietnam and Thailand from 1965 to 1973. In addition to the radar sites, the group managed O-1 Bird Dog observation aircraft assigned to five squadrons from late 1965 through 1966. These O-1 units included the 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd and 23d Tactical Air Support Squadrons, operating from various bases throughout SEA. Forward Air Controllers (FACs) flew the "Bird Dogs" to find and mark enemy activity, direct air strikes and perform battle damage assessment.
Units included:
The 619th Tactical Control Squadron activated at Tan Son Nhut Air Base on 8 April 1964: 278 It was responsible for operating and maintaining air traffic control and radar direction-finding equipment for the area from the Mekong Delta to Ban Me Thuot in the Central Highlands with detachments at various smaller airfields throughout its operational area. It remained operational until 15 March 1973.
The 620th Tactical Control Squadron with responsibility from Pleiku to the DMZ, was located at Monkey Mountain Facility.
505th Tactical Control Maintenance Squadron
The 621st Tactical Control Squadron which supported tactical air operations in Thailand, located at Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, and later at Udon Royal Thai Air Force Base.
The 19th TASS which operated mainly from the Central Highlands south, located at Bien Hoa Air Base.
The 20th TASS based at Da Nang Air Base.
The 21st TASS headquartered at Pleiku Air Base.
The 22nd TASS based at Binh Thuy Air Base.
The 23rd TASS based at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base.
Maintenance support was provided by the 505th Tactical Control Maintenance Squadron first based at Tan Son Nhut and later at Bien Hoa AB.
Initially assigned to the 2d Air Division in Vietnam, the 505th was reassigned to the Seventh Air Force on 1 April 1966. Soon afterward, the 505th received approval for its emblem and official motto – "Search and Direct". The group eventually lost its flying squadrons but the radar mission grew. The group was the only unit to furnish all of SEA an electronics ground environment system for aircraft control and warning and radar services. After eight years of service in Vietnam the group earned thirteen campaign streamers and five Air Force Outstanding Unit Awards with Combat "V" devices. With the American withdrawal in 1973 came the unit's inactivation.
=== Post-Vietnam era ===
The 505th's lineage continued with the activation of the 4442d Tactical Control Group on 1 March 1980. Functioning as the 4442d, the unit aligned under the USAF Tactical Air Warfare Center. The group established a headquarters at Hurlburt Field, Florida where it managed a command, control, communications (C3) and intelligence complex. Along with the C3 operations, the unit conducted operational tests and evaluated tactical air control elements. It also provided training on tactical air control and operated the USAF Air Ground Operations School until 1997. The 505th has remained at Hurlburt since 1980 but received several name changes to match the evolution of its mission.
With the elimination of MAJCOMs in 1991, the unit re-designated as the 505th Air Control Group. In April 1993, when the 505th began operating the new USAF Battlestaff Training School, the Air Force renamed the unit 505th Command and Control Evaluation Group. At the same time, the mission expanded to include a new detachment at Kirkland AFB, New Mexico. By 1998, with the ever-increasing importance of the Air Operations Center as a weapons system and the units expanding mission to train personnel in its use, the Air Force again changed the 505th's name, this time to the Air Force Command and Control Training and Innovation Center (AFC2TIC). The center continued to test new command and control systems and train personnel on their use in combat. Realizing that the center incorporated more than just a building with several detachments located around the US, the Air Force gave it group status on 15 April 1999.
=== Twenty-first century ===
The group became a wing on 12 March 2004. Now the 505th Command and Control Wing, it controls two groups: the 505th Test and Training Group at Hurlburt Field and the 505th Combat Training Group at Nellis Air Force Base.
== Lineage ==
505th Command and Control Wing
Constituted as the 505th Aircraft Control and Warning Group on 2 May 1947
Activated on 21 May 1947
Inactivated on 6 February 1952
Redesignated 505th Tactical Control Group and activated on 2 November 1965 (not organized)
Organized on 8 November 1965
Inactivated on 15 March 1973
Consolidated on 1 November 1991 with the 4442d Tactical Control Group
Redesignated 505th Air Control Group on 1 November 1991
Redesignated 505th Command and Control Evaluation Group on 15 April 1993
Redesignated Air Force Command and Control Training and Innovation Center on 15 September 1998
Redesignated Air Force Command and Control Training and Innovation Group on 15 April 1999
Redesignated 505th Command and Control Wing on 12 March 2004
4442d Tactical Control Group
Designated as the 4442d Tactical Control Group and activated on 1 March 1980
Consolidated with the 505th Tactical Control Group as the 505th Tactical Control Group on 1 November 1991
=== Assignments ===
Fourth Air Force, 21 May 1947
25th Air Division, 16 November 1949 – 6 February 1952
Pacific Air Forces, 2 November 1965 (not organized)
2d Air Division, 8 November 1965
Seventh Air Force, 1 April 1966 – 15 March 1973
USAF Tactical Air Warfare Center (later USAF Air Warfare Center, 53d Wing), 1 March 1980
Air and Space Command and Control Agency (later Aerospace Command and Control Agency, Aerospace Command and Control & Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Center), 1 October 1997
Air Warfare Center (later United States Air Force Air Warfare Center), 1 June 1992 – present
=== Components ===
==== Groups ====
505th Combat Training Group, 12 March 2004 – present
Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada
505th Test and Training Group, 12 March 2004 – present
Hurlburt Field, Florida
==== Squadrons ====
Air Defense Command
634th Aircraft Control Squadron (later 634th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron), 21 May 1947 – 6 February 1952
635th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, 21 May 1947 – 6 February 1952
636th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, 21 May 1947 – February 1949, December 1949 – 25 May 1951
Condon, Oregon after 27 June 1951
637th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, 21 May 1947 – 25 May 1951
Long Beach Municipal Airport until April 1948, Moses Lake Air Force Base, Washington, after January 1949, Saddle Mountain, Washington, 1 January 1951
638th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, 5 May 1950 – 25 May 1951
Mount Bonaparte, Washington,
757th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, 27 November 1950 – 6 February 1952
Birch Bay, Washington after 15 August 1951
758th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, 27 November 1950 – 6 February 1952
Bohokus Peak, Washington
759th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, 27 November 1950 – 6 February 1952
Naselle Air Force Station, Washington
760th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, 27 November 1950 – 25 May 1951
Colville Air Force Station, Washington
761st Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, Oregon, 1 February 1951 – 6 February 1952
Reedsport, Oregon
Vietnam War
19th Tactical Air Support Squadron, 8 November 1965 – 8 December 1966
20th Attack Squadron, 8 November 1965 – 8 December 1966
Da Nang Air Base, South Vietnam
Air Education and Training Command Studies and Analysis Squadron, 8 November 1965 – 8 December 1966
Pleiku Air Base, South Vietnam to September 1966 Nha Trang Air Base, South Vietnam
22nd Attack Squadron, 8 November 1965 – 8 December 1966
Binh Thuy Air Base, South Vietnam
23rd Flying Training Squadron, 15 April 1966 – 8 December 1966
Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base to 15 July 1966, Nakon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand
505th Tactical Control Maintenance Squadron, 8 November 1965 – 8 December 1966
506th Tactical Control Maintenance Squadron, 23 February 1966 – 8 December 1966
619th Tactical Control Squadron, 8 November 1965 – 15 March 1973
620th Tactical Control Squadron, 8 November 1965 – 15 March 1973
Da Nang Air Base, South Vietnam
621st Tactical Control Squadron, 23 February 1966 – 15 March 1973
Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand
Tactical Air and Air Combat Commands
84th Radar Evaluation Squadron, April 1993 – July 1998, 1 October 2005 – 17 March 2010
505th Systems Squadron (later 505th Communications Squadron), c. 15 April 1999 – 12 March 2004
505th Exercise Control Squadron, unknown – 12 March 2004
505th Operations Squadron, 15 November 1999 – 12 March 2004
505th Test Support Squadron, 15 April 1993 – unknown
605th Test Squadron (later 605th Test and Evaluation Squadron, 15 April 1993 – 12 March 2004
727th Air Control Squadron, 1 November 1991 – 1 October 1995
===== Detachments =====
11th Radar Calibration Detachment, 21 May 1947 – 11 November 1949
Detachment 1, Headquarters 505th Command and Control Wing, 23 June 2005 – present
=== Stations ===
McChord Field (later McChord Air Force Base), Washington 21 May 1947
Silver Lake Air Warning Station, Washington, 26 September 1949
McChord Air Force Base, Washington, 25 June 1951 – 6 February 1952
Tan Son Nhut Airport, South Vietnam, 8 November 1965 – 15 March 1973
Eglin Air Force Auxiliary Field No. 9 (Hurlburt Field), Florida, 1 March 1980 – present
=== Weapons Systems Operated ===
North American B-25 Mitchell (1947–1949)
Cessna O-1 Bird Dog (1965–1966)
AN/USQ-163 Falconer AOC (since 2000)
== See also ==
== References ==
=== Notes ===
=== Citations ===
10. Henley, Debora, “505 CCW supports largest U.S. Army Warfighter Exercise on record” https://www.505ccw.acc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2445686/505th-ccw-supports-largest-us-army-warfighter-exercise-on-record/
=== Bibliography ===
This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency
Cornett, Lloyd H; Johnson, Mildred W (1980). A Handbook of Aerospace Defense Organization, 1946–1980 (PDF). Peterson AFB, CO: Office of History, Aerospace Defense Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 February 2016. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
Maurer, Maurer, ed. (1983) [1961]. Air Force Combat Units of World War II (PDF) (reprint ed.). Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History. ISBN 0-912799-02-1. LCCN 61060979. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 January 2021.
505th Command and Control Wing Website | Wikipedia/505th_Command_and_Control_Wing |
Joint Interoperability of Tactical Command and Control Systems or JINTACCS is a program of the United States Department of Defense for the development and maintenance of tactical information exchange configuration items (CIs) and operational procedures. It was originated in 1977 to ensure that the command and control (C2 and C3) and weapons systems of all US military services and NATO forces would be compatible.
It is made up of standard Message Text Formats (MTF) for man-readable and machine-processable information, a core set of common warfighting symbols, and data link standards called Tactical Data Links (TDLs).
JINTACCS was initiated by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1977 as a successor to the Joint Interoperability of Tactical Command and Control Systems in Support of Ground and Amphibious Military Operations (1971-1977). As of 1982 the command was hosted at Fort Monmouth in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and employed 39 military people and 23 civilians.
== References == | Wikipedia/Joint_Interoperability_of_Tactical_Command_and_Control_Systems |
Strategic depth is a term in military literature that broadly refers to the distances between the front lines or battle sectors and the combatants' industrial core areas, capital cities, heartlands, and other key centers of population or military production.
== Concept ==
The key precepts any military commander must consider when dealing with strategic depth are how vulnerable these assets are to a quick, preemptive attack or to a methodical offensive and whether a country can withdraw into its own territory, absorb an initial thrust, and allow the subsequent offensive to culminate short of its goal and far from its source of power.
Commanders must be able to plan for both eventualities, and have measures and resources in place on both tactical and strategic levels to counter any and all stages of a minor or major enemy attack. The measures do not need to be limited to purely-military assets since the ability to reinforce civilian infrastructure or make it flexible enough to withstand or evade assault is very useful in times of war. The issue was the tradeoff between space and time as witnessed by Germany’s failure to defeat the Soviet Union in 1942. In the face of a German invasion, the Soviet military retreated from occupied Poland in June 1941 to the outskirts of Moscow in December 1941, which allowed the Soviet Union to move its industrial base to the east of the Ural Mountains. Thus, the industries that had been moved were able to produce the resources that were needed for the Soviet counterattack.
== In reference to Pakistan ==
In Pakistan, the idea of strategic depth was perceived in 1980s by the National Defence University, Pakistan, professor General Mirza Aslam Beg (later Chief of Army Staff working under Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1980s). Since then, the Pakistan military establishment has been repeatedly accused of forming a policy that seeks to control Afghanistan, a policy often referred to by the media as "strategic depth", which is used as the reason for Pakistan's support of certain factions of the Taliban in Afghanistan. In the years 2014–2015, with Pakistan's domestic operation against militants in full swing, Pakistani military leaders said that they adhered to no such policy.
=== Accusations against the Pakistan military ===
The term "strategic depth" has been used in reference to Pakistan's utilization and contact with Afghanistan following the neighboring country's Soviet intervention, to prevent encirclement from a hostile India and a USSR-supported Afghanistan. Some sources state that the policy to control Afghanistan was formulated by NDU professor, General Mirza Aslam Beg, and an Indian source claims this was continued as an active policy by the Pakistan Armed Forces until the policy was "de jure abolished in 1998 and de facto abolished in 2001", period when General Pervez Musharraf was the Chairman joint chiefs.
According to Richard Olson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Pakistan military's doctrine of "strategic depth" is a concept in which Pakistan uses Afghanistan as an instrument of strategic security in ongoing tensions with India by attempting to control Afghanistan as a pawn for its own political purposes.
It has been speculated that the Pakistan military's "strategic depth" policy is either military or non-military in nature. The military version would state that the Pakistan military wishes to use Afghan territory as a "strategic rallying point" where they can, in the event of a successful Indian attack, retreat to and re-group for a counter-attack. The non-military version would be based on the idea that Pakistan can improve relations with other Islamic countries and former Soviet states such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, developing improved economic and cultural ties with them and thus making them into strong allies against India.
=== View of the Pakistan military ===
The former chief of army staff General Ashfaq Kayani and previously the director-general of the ISI, has repeatedly stated to the media that the Pakistan armed force's "strategic depth" policy with regards to Afghanistan is not to "control" Afghanistan but to ensure a "peaceful, friendly and stable" relationship with Afghanistan. This policy therefore aims to ensure that Pakistan will not be threatened with long-term security problems on its Western border with Afghanistan. According to Kayani, a 'talibanised' Afghanistan is not in Pakistan's interests.
According to Ejaz Haider, a Pakistani military journalist, there is a confusion in the media regarding the policy on using Afghan territory to as a fallback area for Pakistan military assets. Haider blames General Mirza Aslam Beg for proposing this when he was the chief of army staff of the Pakistan Army under Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, stating that this concept "was unpopular even when he was the chief and it has never been entertained by serious military planners. No one thinks of placing military and other assets in Afghanistan and thus acquiring strategic depth." Haider states that such a concept has always been impossible "for a host of reasons" and strategic depth is better used to describe achieving security through improving relationships with the governments of neighbouring countries such as Afghanistan and India.
Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani of ISI, has rubbished claims in the media regarding Pakistan intending to use Afghan territory as "strategic depth". He also denies accusations that the Pakistan military has tried to "install a friendly government in Kabul" in order to "secure this depth". He gives the Soviet Union as an example, stating that "after the Saur Revolution, the Soviets executed an installed president every three months in pursuit of that objective" and these policies later resulted in the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan. He argues that the notion of Pakistan using Afghan territory for its own purposes is a "distortion of a concept or of history" and is being used to vilify Pakistan.
== In Israel ==
Israel is a narrow country, and its internationally recognized borders leave it just 85 miles (137 km) across at its widest point and 9 miles (14 km) at its narrowest (between Tulkarm and Tel Aviv). A number of Israeli leaders (originally Abba Eban) have referred to Israel's internationally recognized borders (those the country had from 1948 to 1967) as the "Auschwitz borders" because of the perceived danger of annihilation by regional foes. Since 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank, somewhat widening the area under the military's effective control.
To compensate for the lack of strategic depth, Israel puts a great importance on deterrence (partially by threat of nuclear weapons), superior firepower, and the use of pre-emptive war to prevent threats from encroaching on Israeli territory. Yitzhak Rabin said about the Six-Day War (considered a classic example of pre-emption):
The basic philosophy of Israel was not to initiate war, unless an active war was carried out against us. We then lived within the lines prior to the Six-Day War, lines that gave no depth to Israel—and therefore, Israel was in a need, whenever there would be a war, to go immediately on the offensive—to carry the war to the enemy's land.
Israeli leaders consider the issue of strategic depth to be important in negotiating its final borders as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Issues of contention include the West Bank settlements and potential Israeli control of the Jordan Valley after the creation of a Palestinian state.
== See also ==
Culminating point
Defence in depth
Loss of Strength Gradient
Military strategy
Soviet deep battle
Strategic defence
== References ==
== External links ==
article on Pakistan's perceived views on 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan. | Wikipedia/Strategic_depth |
The Joint Force Air Component Headquarters (JFACHQ) is the United Kingdom's deployable air command and control unit. The JFACHQ is run by the Royal Air Force with representation from the other services.
The JFACHQ has members from the operations and operations support branches of the RAF to both plan and execute the air war as well as support the deployed air components from A1 to A9.
The unit is based at RAF High Wycombe. It can deploy worldwide at short notice to run an air campaign.
The constituent parts of the JFAC are broken down according to the Continental staff system:
A1 – PANDA (Personnel and administration)
A2 – RAF Intelligence
A3 – Air operations (both plans and current operations)
A4 – Air logistics
A5 – Air strategy and contingency planning
A6 – Air CIS (Communication and Information Systems)
A7 – Air training
A8 – Finance and budgets
A9 – POLAD (Political advice) and LEGAD (Legal adviser)
== Further reading ==
https://web.archive.org/web/20080608071022/http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj04/win04/thompson.html
== External links ==
== References == | Wikipedia/Joint_Force_Air_Component_Headquarters |
The Holographic Versatile Card (HVC) was a proposed data storage format by Optware; the projected date for a Japanese launch had been the first half of 2007, pending finalization of the specification, however as of January 2025, nothing has yet surfaced.This issue may be related to the bankrupt of certain entities once responsible for the development and investigation for both HVD & HVC back in 2010(see HVD page). One of its main advantages compared with Holographic_Versatile_Disc and other sorts of disks was supposed to be the lack of moving parts when played. They claimed it would hold about 30~150GB of data, with a write speed 3 times faster than Blu-ray, and be approximately the size of a credit card. Optware once claimed that at release the media would cost about ¥100 (roughly $1.20 at that time) each, that reader devices would initially cost about ¥200,000(roughly $2400) while reader/writer devices would have cost ¥1 000,000 (roughly $12000, as per exchange rate of Apr 2011) each.
== See also ==
DVD
HD DVD
Holographic memory
Holographic Versatile Disc
Vaporware
== References ==
== External links ==
コリニア方式ホログラフィーの原理と応用展開 aka Collinear Holography/Principle and Applications The Original Japanese Essay that Mentioned the HVC Concept after introducing the Holographic_Versatile_Disc(HVD)
Optware Company that introduced HVC format to the public.
Engadget Old news report on the Holographic Versatile Card
Über Gizmo News report on the Holographic Versatile Card
An Image of HVC with its own Reading Device. | Wikipedia/Holographic_Versatile_Card |
The Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) is an optical disc technology that was expected to store up to several terabytes of data on an optical disc 10 cm or 12 cm in diameter. Its development commenced in April 2004. The technology was abandoned due to funding issues. One of the responsible companies went bankrupt in 2010.
The reduced radius was meant to reduce costs and materials used. It employs a technique known as Collinear Holography, whereby a blue-green and red laser beam are collimated in a single beam. The blue-green laser reads data encoded as laser interference fringes from a holographic layer near the top of the disc. A red laser is used as the reference beam to read servoinformation from a regular CD-style aluminium layer near the bottom. Servoinformation is used to monitor the position of the read head over the disc, similar to the head, track, and sector information on a conventional hard disk drive. On a CD or DVD this servoinformation is interspersed among the data. A dichroic mirror layer between the holographic data and the servo data reflects the blue-green laser while letting the red laser pass through. This prevents interference from refraction of the blue-green laser off the servo data pits and is an advance over past holographic storage media, which either experienced too much interference, or lacked the servo data entirely, making them incompatible with current CD and DVD drive technology.
Standards for 100 GB read-only holographic discs and 200 GB recordable cartridges were published by ECMA in 2007, but no further holographic disc product has ever appeared in the market. A number of release dates were announced, all since passed, likely due to actual high costs of the drives and discs itself, lack of compatibility with existing or new standards, and competition from more established optical disc Blu-ray and video streaming.
== Technology ==
Current optical storage saves one bit per pulse, and the HVD alliance hoped to improve this efficiency with capabilities of around 60,000 bits per pulse in an inverted, truncated cone shape that has a 200 μm diameter at the bottom and a 500 μm diameter at the top. High densities are possible by moving these closer on the tracks: 100 GB at 18 μm separation, 200 GB at 13 μm, 500 GB at 8 μm, and most demonstrated of 5 TB for 3 μm on a 10 cm disc.
The system used a green laser, with an output power of 1 watt which is high power for a consumer device laser. Possible solutions include improving the sensitivity of the polymer used, or developing and commoditizing a laser capable of higher power output while being suitable for a consumer unit.
== Competing technologies ==
HVD is not the only technology in high-capacity, holographic storage media. InPhase Technologies was developing a rival holographic format called Tapestry Media, which they claimed would eventually store 1.6 TB with a data transfer rate of 120 MB/s, and several companies are developing TB-level discs based on 3D optical data storage technology. Such large optical storage capacities compete favorably with the Blu-ray Disc format. However, in 2006, holographic drives were projected to initially cost around US$15,000, and a single disc around US$120–180, although prices were expected to fall steadily. Since InPhase Technologies was unable to deliver their promised product, they ran out of funds and went bankrupt in 2010.
== Holography System Development Forum ==
The Holography System Development Forum (HSD Forum; formerly the HVD Alliance and the HVD FORUM) is a coalition of corporations purposed to provide an industry forum for testing and technical discussion of all aspects of HVD design and manufacturing.
As of March 2012, the following companies are members of the forum:
CBCGroup
Daicel
FujiFilm
Konica Minolta Inc.
Kyoeisha
Pulstec
Shibaura Mechatronics Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Teijin Chemicals Ltd.
Tokiwa Optical Corporation
As of March 2012, the following companies are supporting companies of the forum:
Kodate Laboratory
== Standards ==
On December 9, 2004, at its 88th General Assembly, the standards body Ecma International created Technical Committee 44, dedicated to standardizing HVD formats based on Optware's technology.
On June 11, 2007, TC44 published the first two HVD standards: ECMA-377, defining a 200 GB HVD "recordable cartridge" and ECMA-378, defining a 100 GB HVD-ROM disc. Its next stated goals were 30 GB HVD cards and submission of these standards to the International Organization for Standardization for ISO approval.
== General Electric ==
General Electric Global Research Centers created a holographic disc that could hold many times the data of a Blu-Ray — up to 500 GB. As the technology is quite similar to CD, DVD, and Blu-ray technologies, the players were to be cross-compatible with these formats.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
コリニア方式ホログラフィーの原理と応用展開 aka Collinear Holography/Principle and Applications The Original Japanese Essay which get the technical details of (HVD) explained.
DaTARIUS signs agreement with InPhase Technologies to be their sole sales, service and support supplier of Tapestry Media hardware and media to ship starting in 2007 (300 GB WORM discs) with 600 GB discs and re-writable technology in 2008 as well as 1.6 TB media available in 2010.
Optware, Company that owned the creation of HVD format.
InPhase, a now bankrupt, company that developed a competing holographic storage format.
Video explaining holographic storage Archived December 1, 2008, at the Wayback Machine – PC Magazine, October 4, 2006
Holography system rides single beam EE Times, February 27, 2006 – interview with Hideyoshi Horimai and Yoshio Aoki of Optware Corp.
Holographic storage standards eyed EE Times, February 28, 2006 – article about the upcoming technical committee meeting to begin standardization of HVD.
How stuff works explains how HVD works.
Elusive Green Laser Is Missing Ingredient Wall Street Journal February 13, 2008
General Electric unveils 500GB optical disc storage | Wikipedia/Holographic_Versatile_Disc |
Holographic Data Storage System (HDSS) program was a US Federal government-funded consortium on holographic data storage by Teledyne Technologies, IBM and Stanford University, created in 1995. Work on the program began in 1994 and it was funded by DARPA.
== History ==
Proposed in the 1960s, holographic storage records data by capturing the interference patterns between a modulated optical field and a reference field within a storage medium. The data is retrieved by diffracting the reference field off the hologram, reconstructing the original optical field containing the data. The holographic data storage system was created with the initial goals of developing several key components for the system, including a high-capacity, high-bandwidth spatial light modulator used for data input, optimized sensor arrays for data output, and a high-power red semiconductor laser. At the same time, the HDSS researchers were to explore issues relating to the optical systems architecture (such as multiplexing schemes and access modes), data encoding and decoding methods, signal processing techniques, and the requirements of target applications. Into the program's final year, progress has been such that consortium member, IBM Research Division, believed that holograms could hold the key to high-capacity data storage in the next millennium.
== Mechanism ==
Large amounts of data can be stored holographically because lasers are able to store pages of electronic patterns. Holographic storage is sometimes referred to as 3D storage within special optical materials as opposed to just on the surface. In traditional holography, each viewing angle gives a different aspect of the same object. With holographic storage, however, a different 'page' of information is accessed.
Holographic storage uses two laser beams, a reference and a data beam, to create an interference pattern at a medium where the two beams intersect. This intersection causes a stable physical or chemical change which is stored in the medium.
During the reading sequence, the action of the reference beam and the stored interference pattern in the medium recreates this data beam which may be sensed by a detector array. The medium may be a rotating disk containing a polymeric material, or an optically sensitive single crystal. The key to making the holographic data storage system work is the second laser beam which is fired at the crystal to retrieve a page of data. It must exactly match the original reference beam angle. A difference of a thousandth of a millimeter will fail to retrieve the data. Holography is expected to be of value in archival or library storage applications where large quantities of data need to be retained at the lowest costs possible.
== Apparent benefits ==
Since it involves no moving parts, holographic data storage has the potential for higher reliability compared to traditional hard disk technologies. Research conducted by IBM has demonstrated the potential for storing up to 1 TB of data within a crystal approximately the size of a sugar cube, with data transfer rates reaching one trillion bits per second. A significant hurdle remains in the development of a rewritable form of holographic storage.
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 2006, a prototype holographic drive was demonstrated, which achieved a storage capacity of 300 GB, in contrast to the 100 GB capacity of Blu-ray discs at the time. It has been suggested that holographic disks could serve as a successor to Blu-ray.
== References == | Wikipedia/Holographic_Data_Storage_System |
Implementation theory is an area of research in game theory concerned with whether a class of mechanisms (or institutions) can be designed whose equilibrium outcomes implement a given set of normative goals or welfare criteria.
There are two general types of implementation problems: the economic problem of producing and allocating public and private goods and choosing over a finite set of alternatives. In the case of producing and allocating public/private goods, solution concepts are focused on finding dominant strategies.
In his paper "Counterspeculation, Auctions, and Competitive Sealed Tenders", William Vickrey showed that if preferences are restricted to the case of quasi-linear utility functions then the mechanism dominant strategy is dominant-strategy implementable. "A social choice rule is dominant strategy incentive compatible, or strategy-proof, if the associated revelation mechanism has the property that honestly reporting the truth is always a dominant strategy for each agent." However, the payments to agents become large, sacrificing budget neutrality to incentive compatibility.
In a game where multiple agents are to report their preferences (or their type), it may be in the best interest of some agents to lie about their preferences. This may improve their payoff, but it may not be seen as a fair outcome to other agents.
Although largely theoretical, implementation theory may have profound implications on policy creation because some social choice rules may be impossible to implement under specific game conditions.
== Implementability ==
In mechanism design, implementability is a property of a social choice function. It means that there is an incentive-compatible mechanism that attains ("implements") this function. There are several degrees of implementability, corresponding to the different degrees of incentive-compatibility, including:
A function is dominant-strategy implementable if it is attainable by a mechanism which is dominant-strategy-incentive-compatible (also called strategyproof).
A function is Bayesian-Nash implementable if it is attainable by a mechanism which is Bayesian-Nash-incentive-compatible.
See for a recent reference. In some textbooks, the entire field of mechanism design is called implementation theory.
== See also ==
Incentive Compatibility
== References == | Wikipedia/Implementability_(mechanism_design) |
Implementation theory is an area of research in game theory concerned with whether a class of mechanisms (or institutions) can be designed whose equilibrium outcomes implement a given set of normative goals or welfare criteria.
There are two general types of implementation problems: the economic problem of producing and allocating public and private goods and choosing over a finite set of alternatives. In the case of producing and allocating public/private goods, solution concepts are focused on finding dominant strategies.
In his paper "Counterspeculation, Auctions, and Competitive Sealed Tenders", William Vickrey showed that if preferences are restricted to the case of quasi-linear utility functions then the mechanism dominant strategy is dominant-strategy implementable. "A social choice rule is dominant strategy incentive compatible, or strategy-proof, if the associated revelation mechanism has the property that honestly reporting the truth is always a dominant strategy for each agent." However, the payments to agents become large, sacrificing budget neutrality to incentive compatibility.
In a game where multiple agents are to report their preferences (or their type), it may be in the best interest of some agents to lie about their preferences. This may improve their payoff, but it may not be seen as a fair outcome to other agents.
Although largely theoretical, implementation theory may have profound implications on policy creation because some social choice rules may be impossible to implement under specific game conditions.
== Implementability ==
In mechanism design, implementability is a property of a social choice function. It means that there is an incentive-compatible mechanism that attains ("implements") this function. There are several degrees of implementability, corresponding to the different degrees of incentive-compatibility, including:
A function is dominant-strategy implementable if it is attainable by a mechanism which is dominant-strategy-incentive-compatible (also called strategyproof).
A function is Bayesian-Nash implementable if it is attainable by a mechanism which is Bayesian-Nash-incentive-compatible.
See for a recent reference. In some textbooks, the entire field of mechanism design is called implementation theory.
== See also ==
Incentive Compatibility
== References == | Wikipedia/Implementation_theory |
The Journal of Economic Theory is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the field of economic theory. Karl Shell has served as editor-in-chief of the journal since it was established in 1968. Since 2000, he has shared the editorship with Jess Benhabib, Alessandro Lizzeri, Christian Hellwig, and more recently with Alessandro Pavan, Ricardo Lagos, Marciano Siniscalchi, and Xavier Vives. The journal is published by Elsevier. In 2020, Tilman Börgers was chief editor of the journal.
== Abstracting and indexing ==
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2020 impact factor of 1.458.
== See also ==
List of economics journals
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website | Wikipedia/Journal_of_Economic_Theory |
Designing Economic Mechanisms is a 2006 book by economists Leonid Hurwicz and Stanley Reiter. Hurwicz received the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson for their work on mechanism design. In this book, Hurwicz and Reiter presented systematic methods for designing decentralized economic mechanisms whose performance attains specified goals.
== Summary ==
The authors of this book, Leonid Hurwicz and Stanley Reiter, helped found the field of mechanism design. This book provides a guide for those who would design mechanisms.
A decentralized mechanism is a mathematical structure that models institutions for guiding and coordinating economic activity. Such institutions are usually created by administrators, lawmakers, and officers of private companies to achieve their desired goals. Their purpose is to achieve their desired goal in a way that economizes on the resources needed to operate the institutions, and that provides incentives that induce the required behaviors. In this book, systematic procedures for designing mechanisms that achieve specified performance goals, and economize on the resources required to operate the mechanism, i.e., informationally efficient mechanisms, are presented. Most of the book deals with the systematic design procedures which are algorithms for designing informationally efficient mechanisms. In the book, informationally efficient dominant strategy implementation is also studied.
== Bibliography ==
Hurwicz, Leonid and Stanley Reiter (2006). Designing Economic Mechanisms. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-83641-7.
== References ==
"Designing Economic Mechanisms". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 14 July 2008. | Wikipedia/Designing_Economic_Mechanisms |
Social choice theory is a branch of welfare economics that extends the theory of rational choice to collective decision-making. Social choice studies the behavior of different mathematical procedures (social welfare functions) used to combine individual preferences into a coherent whole. It contrasts with political science in that it is a normative field that studies how a society can make good decisions, whereas political science is a descriptive field that observes how societies actually do make decisions. While social choice began as a branch of economics and decision theory, it has since received substantial contributions from mathematics, philosophy, political science, and game theory.
Real-world examples of social choice rules include constitutions and parliamentary procedures for voting on laws, as well as electoral systems; as such, the field is occasionally called voting theory. It is closely related to mechanism design, which uses game theory to model social choice with imperfect information and self-interested citizens.
Social choice differs from decision theory in that the latter is concerned with how individuals, rather than societies, can make rational decisions.
== History ==
The earliest work on social choice theory comes from the writings of the Marquis de Condorcet, who formulated several key results including his jury theorem and his example showing the impossibility of majority rule. His work was prefigured by Ramon Llull's 1299 manuscript Ars Electionis (The Art of Elections), which discussed many of the same concepts, but was lost in the Late Middle Ages and only rediscovered in the early 21st century.
Kenneth Arrow's book Social Choice and Individual Values is often recognized as inaugurating the modern era of social choice theory. Later work has also considered approaches to legal compensation, fair division, variable populations, partial strategy-proofing of social-choice mechanisms, natural resources, capabilities and functionings approaches, and measures of welfare.
== Key results ==
=== Arrow's impossibility theorem ===
Arrow's impossibility theorem is a key result showing that social choice functions based only on ordinal comparisons, rather than cardinal utility, will behave incoherently (unless they are dictatorial). Such systems violate independence of irrelevant alternatives, meaning they suffer from spoiler effects—the system can behave erratically in response to changes in the quality or popularity of one of the options.
=== Condorcet cycles ===
Condorcet's example demonstrates that democracy cannot be thought of as being the same as simple majority rule or majoritarianism; otherwise, it will be self-contradictory when three or more options are available. Majority rule can create cycles that violate the transitive property: Attempting to use majority rule as a social choice function creates situations where we have A better than B and B better than C, but C is also better than A.
This contrasts with May's theorem, which shows that simple majority is the optimal voting mechanism when there are only two outcomes, and only ordinal preferences are allowed.
=== Harsanyi's theorem ===
Harsanyi's utilitarian theorem shows that if individuals have preferences that are well-behaved under uncertainty (i.e. coherent), the only coherent and Pareto efficient social choice function is the utilitarian rule. This lends some support to the viewpoint expressed of John Stuart Mill, who identified democracy with the ideal of maximizing the common good (or utility) of society as a whole, under an equal consideration of interests.
=== Manipulation theorems ===
Gibbard's theorem provides limitations on the ability of any voting rule to elicit honest preferences from voters, showing that no voting rule is strategyproof (i.e. does not depend on other voters' preferences) for elections with 3 or more outcomes.
The Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem proves a stronger result for ranked-choice voting systems, showing that no such voting rule can be sincere (i.e. free of reversed preferences).
=== Median voter theorem ===
=== Mechanism design ===
The field of mechanism design, a subset of social choice theory, deals with the identification of rules that preserve while incentivizing agents to honestly reveal their preferences. One particularly important result is the revelation principle, which is almost a reversal of Gibbard's theorem: for any given social choice function, there exists a mechanism that obtains the same results but incentivizes participants to be completely honest.
Because mechanism design places stronger assumptions on the behavior of participants, it is sometimes possible to design mechanisms for social choice that accomplish apparently-"impossible" tasks. For example, by allowing agents to compensate each other for losses with transfers, the Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) mechanism can achieve the "impossible" according to Gibbard's theorem: the mechanism ensures honest behavior from participants, while still achieving a Pareto efficient outcome. As a result, the VCG mechanism can be considered a "better" way to make decisions than voting (though only so long as monetary transfers are possible).
=== Others ===
If the domain of preferences is restricted to those that include a majority-strength Condorcet winner, then selecting that winner is the unique resolvable, neutral, anonymous, and non-manipulable voting rule.
== Interpersonal utility comparison ==
Social choice theory is the study of theoretical and practical methods to aggregate or combine individual preferences into a collective social welfare function. The field generally assumes that individuals have preferences, and it follows that they can be modeled using utility functions, by the VNM theorem. But much of the research in the field assumes that those utility functions are internal to humans, lack a meaningful unit of measure and cannot be compared across different individuals. Whether this type of interpersonal utility comparison is possible or not significantly alters the available mathematical structures for social welfare functions and social choice theory.
In one perspective, following Jeremy Bentham, utilitarians have argued that preferences and utility functions of individuals are interpersonally comparable and may therefore be added together to arrive at a measure of aggregate utility. Utilitarian ethics call for maximizing this aggregate.
In contrast many twentieth century economists, following Lionel Robbins, questioned whether such measures of utility could be measured, or even considered meaningful. Following arguments similar to those espoused by behaviorists in psychology, Robbins argued concepts of utility were unscientific and unfalsifiable. Consider for instance the law of diminishing marginal utility, according to which utility of an added quantity of a good decreases with the amount of the good that is already in possession of the individual. It has been used to defend transfers of wealth from the "rich" to the "poor" on the premise that the former do not derive as much utility as the latter from an extra unit of income. Robbins argued that this notion is beyond positive science; that is, one cannot measure changes in the utility of someone else, nor is it required by positive theory.
Apologists for the interpersonal comparison of utility have argued that Robbins claimed too much. John Harsanyi agreed that perfect comparisons of mental states are not practically possible, but people can still make some comparisons thanks to their similar backgrounds, cultural experiences, and psychologies. Amartya Sen argues that even if interpersonal comparisons of utility are imperfect, we can still say that (despite being positive for Nero) the Great Fire of Rome had a negative overall value. Harsanyi and Sen thus argue that at least partial comparability of utility is possible, and social choice theory should proceed under that assumption.
== Relationship to public choice theory ==
Despite the similar names, "public choice" and "social choice" are two distinct fields that are only weakly related. Public choice deals with the modeling of political systems as they actually exist in the real world, and is primarily limited to positive economics (predicting how politicians and other stakeholders will act). It is therefore often thought of as the application of microeconomic models to political science, in order to predict the behavior of political actors. By contrast, social choice has a much more normative bent, and deals with the abstract study of decision procedures and their properties.
The Journal of Economic Literature classification codes place Social Choice under Microeconomics at JEL D71 (with Clubs, Committees, and Associations) whereas Public Choice falls under JEL D72 (Economic Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior).
== Empirical research ==
Since Arrow, social choice theory has been characterized by being predominantly mathematical and theoretical, but some research has aimed at estimating the frequency of various voting paradoxes, such as the Condorcet paradox. A summary of 37 individual studies, covering a total of 265 real-world elections, large and small, found 25 instances of a Condorcet paradox for a total likelihood of 9.4%.: 325 While examples of the paradox seem to occur often in small settings like parliaments, very few examples have been found in larger groups (electorates), although some have been identified. However, the frequency of such paradoxes depends heavily on the number of options and other factors.
== Rules ==
Let
X
{\displaystyle X}
be a set of possible 'states of the world' or 'alternatives'. Society wishes to choose a single state from
X
{\displaystyle X}
. For example, in a single-winner election,
X
{\displaystyle X}
may represent the set of candidates; in a resource allocation setting,
X
{\displaystyle X}
may represent all possible allocations.
Let
I
{\displaystyle I}
be a finite set, representing a collection of individuals. For each
i
∈
I
{\displaystyle i\in I}
, let
u
i
:
X
⟶
R
{\displaystyle u_{i}:X\longrightarrow \mathbb {R} }
be a utility function, describing the amount of happiness an individual i derives from each possible state.
A social choice rule is a mechanism which uses the data
(
u
i
)
i
∈
I
{\displaystyle (u_{i})_{i\in I}}
to select some element(s) from
X
{\displaystyle X}
which are 'best' for society. The question of what 'best' means is a common question in social choice theory. The following rules are most common:
Utilitarian rule – sometimes called the max-sum rule or Benthamite welfare – aims to maximize the sum of utilities.
Egalitarian rule – sometimes called the max-min rule or Rawlsian welfare – aims to maximize the smallest utility.
== Social choice functions ==
A social choice function, sometimes called a voting system in the context of politics, is a rule that takes an individual's complete and transitive preferences over a set of outcomes and returns a single chosen outcome (or a set of tied outcomes). We can think of this subset as the winners of an election, and compare different social choice functions based on which axioms or mathematical properties they fulfill.
Arrow's impossibility theorem is what often comes to mind when one thinks about impossibility theorems in voting. There are several famous theorems concerning social choice functions. The Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem implies that the only rule satisfying non-imposition (every alternative can be chosen) and strategyproofness when there are more than two candidates is the dictatorship mechanism. That is, a voter may be able to cast a ballot that misrepresents their preferences to obtain a result that is more favorable to them under their sincere preferences. May's theorem shows that when there are only two candidates and only rankings of options are available, the simple majority vote is the unique neutral, anonymous, and positively-responsive voting rule.
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
Arrow, Kenneth J. (1951, 2nd ed., 1963). Social Choice and Individual Values, New York: Wiley. ISBN 0-300-01364-7
_____, (1972). "General Economic Equilibrium: Purpose, Analytic Techniques, Collective Choice", Nobel Prize Lecture, Link to text, with Section 8 on the theory and background.
_____, (1983). Collected Papers, v. 1, Social Choice and Justice, Oxford: Blackwell ISBN 0-674-13760-4
Arrow, Kenneth J., Amartya K. Sen, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds. (1997). Social Choice Re-Examined, 2 vol., London: Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 0-312-12739-1 & ISBN 0-312-12741-3
_____, eds. (2002). Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, v. 1. Chapter-preview links.
_____, ed. (2011). Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, v. 2, Amsterdam: Elsevier. Chapter-preview links.
Bossert, Walter and John A. Weymark (2008). "Social Choice (New Developments)," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition, London: Palgrave Macmillan Abstract.
Dryzek, John S. and Christian List (2003). "Social Choice Theory and Deliberative Democracy: A Reconciliation," British Journal of Political Science, 33(1), pp. 1–28, https://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4092266?uid=3739936&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102056001967, 2002 PDF link.
Feldman, Allan M. and Roberto Serrano (2006). Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory, 2nd ed., New York: Springer ISBN 0-387-29367-1, ISBN 978-0-387-29367-7 Arrow-searchable chapter previews.
Fleurbaey, Marc (1996). Théories économiques de la justice, Paris: Economica.
Gaertner, Wulf (2006). A primer in social choice theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929751-1.
Harsanyi, John C. (1987). "Interpersonal Utility Comparisons," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 2, London: Palgrave, pp. 955–58.
Moulin, Herve (1988). Axioms of cooperative decision making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-42458-5.
Myerson, Roger B. (June 2013). "Fundamentals of social choice theory". Quarterly Journal of Political Science. 8 (3): 305–337. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.297.6781. doi:10.1561/100.00013006.
Nitzan, Shmuel (2010). Collective Preference and Choice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-72213-1.
Robbins, Lionel (1935). An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 2nd ed., London: Macmillan, ch. VI
____, (1938). "Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility: A Comment," Economic Journal, 43(4), 635–41.
Sen, Amartya K. (1970 [1984]). Collective Choice and Social Welfare, New York: Elsevier ISBN 0-444-85127-5 Description.
_____, (1998). "The Possibility of Social Choice", Nobel Prize Lecture [1].
_____, (1987). "Social Choice," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 4, London: Palgrave, pp. 382–93.
_____, (2008). "Social Choice,". The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition, London: Palgrave Abstract.
Shoham, Yoav; Leyton-Brown, Kevin (2009). Multiagent Systems: Algorithmic, Game-Theoretic, and Logical Foundations. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-89943-7.. A comprehensive reference from a computational perspective; see Chapter 9. Downloadable free online.
Suzumura, Kotaro (1983). Rational Choice, Collective Decisions, and Social Welfare, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-23862-5
Taylor, Alan D. (2005). Social choice and the mathematics of manipulation. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00883-9.
== External links ==
List, Christian. "Social Choice Theory". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Social Choice Bibliography by J. S. Kelly Archived 2017-12-23 at the Wayback Machine
Electowiki, a wiki covering many subjects of social choice and voting theory | Wikipedia/Voting_theory |
In numerical analysis, a quasi-Newton method is an iterative numerical method used either to find zeroes or to find local maxima and minima of functions via an iterative recurrence formula much like the one for Newton's method, except using approximations of the derivatives of the functions in place of exact derivatives. Newton's method requires the Jacobian matrix of all partial derivatives of a multivariate function when used to search for zeros or the Hessian matrix when used for finding extrema. Quasi-Newton methods, on the other hand, can be used when the Jacobian matrices or Hessian matrices are unavailable or are impractical to compute at every iteration.
Some iterative methods that reduce to Newton's method, such as sequential quadratic programming, may also be considered quasi-Newton methods.
== Search for zeros: root finding ==
Newton's method to find zeroes of a function
g
{\displaystyle g}
of multiple variables is given by
x
n
+
1
=
x
n
−
[
J
g
(
x
n
)
]
−
1
g
(
x
n
)
{\displaystyle x_{n+1}=x_{n}-[J_{g}(x_{n})]^{-1}g(x_{n})}
, where
[
J
g
(
x
n
)
]
−
1
{\displaystyle [J_{g}(x_{n})]^{-1}}
is the left inverse of the Jacobian matrix
J
g
(
x
n
)
{\displaystyle J_{g}(x_{n})}
of
g
{\displaystyle g}
evaluated for
x
n
{\displaystyle x_{n}}
.
Strictly speaking, any method that replaces the exact Jacobian
J
g
(
x
n
)
{\displaystyle J_{g}(x_{n})}
with an approximation is a quasi-Newton method. For instance, the chord method (where
J
g
(
x
n
)
{\displaystyle J_{g}(x_{n})}
is replaced by
J
g
(
x
0
)
{\displaystyle J_{g}(x_{0})}
for all iterations) is a simple example. The methods given below for optimization refer to an important subclass of quasi-Newton methods, secant methods.
Using methods developed to find extrema in order to find zeroes is not always a good idea, as the majority of the methods used to find extrema require that the matrix that is used is symmetrical. While this holds in the context of the search for extrema, it rarely holds when searching for zeroes. Broyden's "good" and "bad" methods are two methods commonly used to find extrema that can also be applied to find zeroes. Other methods that can be used are the column-updating method, the inverse column-updating method, the quasi-Newton least squares method and the quasi-Newton inverse least squares method.
More recently quasi-Newton methods have been applied to find the solution of multiple coupled systems of equations (e.g. fluid–structure interaction problems or interaction problems in physics). They allow the solution to be found by solving each constituent system separately (which is simpler than the global system) in a cyclic, iterative fashion until the solution of the global system is found.
== Search for extrema: optimization ==
The search for a minimum or maximum of a scalar-valued function is closely related to the search for the zeroes of the gradient of that function. Therefore, quasi-Newton methods can be readily applied to find extrema of a function. In other words, if
g
{\displaystyle g}
is the gradient of
f
{\displaystyle f}
, then searching for the zeroes of the vector-valued function
g
{\displaystyle g}
corresponds to the search for the extrema of the scalar-valued function
f
{\displaystyle f}
; the Jacobian of
g
{\displaystyle g}
now becomes the Hessian of
f
{\displaystyle f}
. The main difference is that the Hessian matrix is a symmetric matrix, unlike the Jacobian when searching for zeroes. Most quasi-Newton methods used in optimization exploit this symmetry.
In optimization, quasi-Newton methods (a special case of variable-metric methods) are algorithms for finding local maxima and minima of functions. Quasi-Newton methods for optimization are based on Newton's method to find the stationary points of a function, points where the gradient is 0. Newton's method assumes that the function can be locally approximated as a quadratic in the region around the optimum, and uses the first and second derivatives to find the stationary point. In higher dimensions, Newton's method uses the gradient and the Hessian matrix of second derivatives of the function to be minimized.
In quasi-Newton methods the Hessian matrix does not need to be computed. The Hessian is updated by analyzing successive gradient vectors instead. Quasi-Newton methods are a generalization of the secant method to find the root of the first derivative for multidimensional problems. In multiple dimensions the secant equation is under-determined, and quasi-Newton methods differ in how they constrain the solution, typically by adding a simple low-rank update to the current estimate of the Hessian.
The first quasi-Newton algorithm was proposed by William C. Davidon, a physicist working at Argonne National Laboratory. He developed the first quasi-Newton algorithm in 1959: the DFP updating formula, which was later popularized by Fletcher and Powell in 1963, but is rarely used today. The most common quasi-Newton algorithms are currently the SR1 formula (for "symmetric rank-one"), the BHHH method, the widespread BFGS method (suggested independently by Broyden, Fletcher, Goldfarb, and Shanno, in 1970), and its low-memory extension L-BFGS. The Broyden's class is a linear combination of the DFP and BFGS methods.
The SR1 formula does not guarantee the update matrix to maintain positive-definiteness and can be used for indefinite problems. The Broyden's method does not require the update matrix to be symmetric and is used to find the root of a general system of equations (rather than the gradient) by updating the Jacobian (rather than the Hessian).
One of the chief advantages of quasi-Newton methods over Newton's method is that the Hessian matrix (or, in the case of quasi-Newton methods, its approximation)
B
{\displaystyle B}
does not need to be inverted. Newton's method, and its derivatives such as interior point methods, require the Hessian to be inverted, which is typically implemented by solving a system of linear equations and is often quite costly. In contrast, quasi-Newton methods usually generate an estimate of
B
−
1
{\displaystyle B^{-1}}
directly.
As in Newton's method, one uses a second-order approximation to find the minimum of a function
f
(
x
)
{\displaystyle f(x)}
. The Taylor series of
f
(
x
)
{\displaystyle f(x)}
around an iterate is
f
(
x
k
+
Δ
x
)
≈
f
(
x
k
)
+
∇
f
(
x
k
)
T
Δ
x
+
1
2
Δ
x
T
B
Δ
x
,
{\displaystyle f(x_{k}+\Delta x)\approx f(x_{k})+\nabla f(x_{k})^{\mathrm {T} }\,\Delta x+{\frac {1}{2}}\Delta x^{\mathrm {T} }B\,\Delta x,}
where (
∇
f
{\displaystyle \nabla f}
) is the gradient, and
B
{\displaystyle B}
an approximation to the Hessian matrix. The gradient of this approximation (with respect to
Δ
x
{\displaystyle \Delta x}
) is
∇
f
(
x
k
+
Δ
x
)
≈
∇
f
(
x
k
)
+
B
Δ
x
,
{\displaystyle \nabla f(x_{k}+\Delta x)\approx \nabla f(x_{k})+B\,\Delta x,}
and setting this gradient to zero (which is the goal of optimization) provides the Newton step:
Δ
x
=
−
B
−
1
∇
f
(
x
k
)
.
{\displaystyle \Delta x=-B^{-1}\nabla f(x_{k}).}
The Hessian approximation
B
{\displaystyle B}
is chosen to satisfy
∇
f
(
x
k
+
Δ
x
)
=
∇
f
(
x
k
)
+
B
Δ
x
,
{\displaystyle \nabla f(x_{k}+\Delta x)=\nabla f(x_{k})+B\,\Delta x,}
which is called the secant equation (the Taylor series of the gradient itself). In more than one dimension
B
{\displaystyle B}
is underdetermined. In one dimension, solving for
B
{\displaystyle B}
and applying the Newton's step with the updated value is equivalent to the secant method. The various quasi-Newton methods differ in their choice of the solution to the secant equation (in one dimension, all the variants are equivalent). Most methods (but with exceptions, such as Broyden's method) seek a symmetric solution (
B
T
=
B
{\displaystyle B^{T}=B}
); furthermore, the variants listed below can be motivated by finding an update
B
k
+
1
{\displaystyle B_{k+1}}
that is as close as possible to
B
k
{\displaystyle B_{k}}
in some norm; that is,
B
k
+
1
=
argmin
B
‖
B
−
B
k
‖
V
{\displaystyle B_{k+1}=\operatorname {argmin} _{B}\|B-B_{k}\|_{V}}
, where
V
{\displaystyle V}
is some positive-definite matrix that defines the norm. An approximate initial value
B
0
=
β
I
{\displaystyle B_{0}=\beta I}
is often sufficient to achieve rapid convergence, although there is no general strategy to choose
β
{\displaystyle \beta }
. Note that
B
0
{\displaystyle B_{0}}
should be positive-definite. The unknown
x
k
{\displaystyle x_{k}}
is updated applying the Newton's step calculated using the current approximate Hessian matrix
B
k
{\displaystyle B_{k}}
:
Δ
x
k
=
−
α
k
B
k
−
1
∇
f
(
x
k
)
{\displaystyle \Delta x_{k}=-\alpha _{k}B_{k}^{-1}\nabla f(x_{k})}
, with
α
{\displaystyle \alpha }
chosen to satisfy the Wolfe conditions;
x
k
+
1
=
x
k
+
Δ
x
k
{\displaystyle x_{k+1}=x_{k}+\Delta x_{k}}
;
The gradient computed at the new point
∇
f
(
x
k
+
1
)
{\displaystyle \nabla f(x_{k+1})}
, and
y
k
=
∇
f
(
x
k
+
1
)
−
∇
f
(
x
k
)
{\displaystyle y_{k}=\nabla f(x_{k+1})-\nabla f(x_{k})}
is used to update the approximate Hessian
B
k
+
1
{\displaystyle B_{k+1}}
, or directly its inverse
H
k
+
1
=
B
k
+
1
−
1
{\displaystyle H_{k+1}=B_{k+1}^{-1}}
using the Sherman–Morrison formula.
A key property of the BFGS and DFP updates is that if
B
k
{\displaystyle B_{k}}
is positive-definite, and
α
k
{\displaystyle \alpha _{k}}
is chosen to satisfy the Wolfe conditions, then
B
k
+
1
{\displaystyle B_{k+1}}
is also positive-definite.
The most popular update formulas are:
Other methods are Pearson's method, McCormick's method, the Powell symmetric Broyden (PSB) method and Greenstadt's method. These recursive low-rank matrix updates can also represented as an initial matrix plus a low-rank correction. This is the Compact quasi-Newton representation, which is particularly effective for
constrained and/or large problems.
== Relationship to matrix inversion ==
When
f
{\displaystyle f}
is a convex quadratic function with positive-definite Hessian
B
{\displaystyle B}
, one would expect the matrices
H
k
{\displaystyle H_{k}}
generated by a quasi-Newton method to converge to the inverse Hessian
H
=
B
−
1
{\displaystyle H=B^{-1}}
. This is indeed the case for the class of quasi-Newton methods based on least-change updates.
== Notable implementations ==
Implementations of quasi-Newton methods are available in many programming languages.
Notable open source implementations include:
GNU Octave uses a form of BFGS in its fsolve function, with trust region extensions.
GNU Scientific Library implements the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) algorithm.
ALGLIB implements (L)BFGS in C++ and C#
R's optim general-purpose optimizer routine uses the BFGS method by using method="BFGS".
Scipy.optimize has fmin_bfgs. In the SciPy extension to Python, the scipy.optimize.minimize function includes, among other methods, a BFGS implementation.
Notable proprietary implementations include:
Mathematica includes quasi-Newton solvers.
The NAG Library contains several routines for minimizing or maximizing a function which use quasi-Newton algorithms.
In MATLAB's Optimization Toolbox, the fminunc function uses (among other methods) the BFGS quasi-Newton method. Many of the constrained methods of the Optimization toolbox use BFGS and the variant L-BFGS.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Bonnans, J. F.; Gilbert, J. Ch.; Lemaréchal, C.; Sagastizábal, C. A. (2006). Numerical Optimization : Theoretical and Numerical Aspects (Second ed.). Springer. ISBN 3-540-35445-X.
Fletcher, Roger (1987), Practical methods of optimization (2nd ed.), New York: John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-0-471-91547-8.
Nocedal, Jorge; Wright, Stephen J. (1999). "Quasi-Newton Methods". Numerical Optimization. New York: Springer. pp. 192–221. ISBN 0-387-98793-2.
Press, W. H.; Teukolsky, S. A.; Vetterling, W. T.; Flannery, B. P. (2007). "Section 10.9. Quasi-Newton or Variable Metric Methods in Multidimensions". Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing (3rd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-88068-8.
Scales, L. E. (1985). Introduction to Non-Linear Optimization. New York: MacMillan. pp. 84–106. ISBN 0-333-32552-4. | Wikipedia/Quasi-newton_methods |
In mathematical optimization, the Ackley function is a non-convex function used as a performance test problem for optimization algorithms. It was proposed by David Ackley in his 1987 PhD dissertation. The function is commonly used as a minimization function with global minimum value 0 at 0,.., 0 in the form due to Thomas Bäck. While Ackley gives the function as an example of "fine-textured broadly unimodal space" his thesis does not actually use the function as a test.
For
d
{\displaystyle d}
dimensions, is defined as
f
(
x
)
=
−
a
exp
(
−
b
1
d
∑
i
=
1
d
x
i
2
)
−
exp
(
1
d
∑
i
=
1
d
cos
(
c
x
i
)
)
+
a
+
exp
(
1
)
{\displaystyle f(x)=-a\exp \left(-b{\sqrt {{\frac {1}{d}}\sum _{i=1}^{d}x_{i}^{2}}}\right)-\exp \left({\frac {1}{d}}\sum _{i=1}^{d}\cos(cx_{i})\right)+a+\exp(1)}
Recommended variable values are
a
=
20
{\displaystyle a=20}
,
b
=
0.2
{\displaystyle b=0.2}
, and
c
=
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== See also ==
Test functions for optimization
== Notes == | Wikipedia/Ackley_function |
Hungarian science fiction comprises books and films in the fiction genre produced all across Hungary.
Péter Zsoldos was a science fiction author who largely wrote about themes common in US/UK science fiction like space travel and robots. His best known work is probably Ellenpont, which translates as Counterpoint. The book explores the attempts of artificial intelligences abandoned by Man to uncover their origins and, ultimately, to rediscover mankind.
== Authors ==
Mihály Babits
Júlia Goldman
Ilona Hegedűs
Péter Hédervári
Frigyes Karinthy
Péter Kuczka
György Kulin
László L. Lőrincz
István Nemere
Jenő Rejtő
Sándor Szathmári
Dezső Kemény
Péter Lengyel
Hernády Gyula
Mesterházi Lajos
Darázs Endre
Balázs Arpád
Bogati Péter
Bárány Tamás
Örkény István
Cserna József
Moldova György
Péter Zsoldos
== Films ==
Alraune (1918 film)
The Adventures of Pirx (1973)
A feladat (1975)
A halhatatlanság halála directed by András Rajnai in 1976 based on The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
The Fortress (1979 film)
6:3 Play It Again Tutti (1999)
1 (2009 film)
Thelomeris (2011)
=== Animation ===
Les Maîtres du temps (lit. The Masters of Time, a.k.a. Time Masters, Az idő urai in Hungarian) is a 1982 Franco-Hungarian animated science fiction feature film directed by René Laloux and designed by Mœbius. It is based on the 1958 science fiction novel L'Orphelin de Perdide (The Orphan of Perdide) by Stefan Wul.
The Tragedy of Man (2011 film)
== Magazines ==
Galaktika (1972-1995)
Galaktika was a science fiction magazine of Hungary, published between 1972 and 1995. The peak of 94,000 copies was very high (compared to the population of Hungary [pop. 10 million] while Analog magazine was printed in 120,000 copies in the United States [pop. well over 200 million]), when reached its peak period, it was one of the largest science-fiction magazines of the world, and the quality of individual volumes was high.
A newer publication with the same name has been published since 2004 that is known for its practice of translating and publishing works without obtaining the permission of the authors and without paying them.
== Video games ==
Crysis Warhead (2008)
== Notes ==
== External links ==
(in English) A short history of Hungarian science fiction from the beginning to the 1980s, sfmag.hu
(in Hungarian) Rinyu Zsolt - A tudományos-fantasztikus irodalom helyzete Magyarországon (The situation of science-fiction literature in Hungary), epa.oszk.hu | Wikipedia/Hungarian_science_fiction |
"Message from space" is a type of "first contact" theme in science fiction. Stories of this type involve receiving an interstellar message which reveals the existence of other intelligent life in the universe.
== History ==
An early short story, A Message from Space (Joseph Schlossel, Weird Tales, March 1926) tells of an amateur who builds a ham TV set and suddenly sees an alien on the screen. The alien realises it is being watched and tells its soap opera story. The verdict of Everett Franklin Bleiler: "original ideas, but clumsy handling".
While the use of this trope does predate the scientific Search for extraterrestrial intelligence ("SETI"), initiated with Project Ozma in 1960, the use of this as a plot element in science fiction greatly increased with the publicity given by various SETI projects. Classic examples of this trope include the 1961 television script and a novel A for Andromeda by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot, the 1968 novel His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem, The Listeners by James E. Gunn, and Carl Sagan's novel and subsequent film Contact.
== See also ==
Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence
== References == | Wikipedia/Message_from_space_(science_fiction) |
First contact is a common theme in science fiction about the first meeting between humans and extraterrestrial life, or of any sentient species' first encounter with another one, given they are from different planets or natural satellites. It is closely related to the anthropological idea of first contact.
Popularized by the 1897 book The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, the concept was commonly used throughout the 1950s and 60s, often as an allegory for Soviet infiltration and invasion. The 1960s American television series Star Trek introduced the concept of the "Prime Directive", a regulation intended to limit the negative consequences of first contact.
Although there are a variety of circumstances under which first contact can occur, including indirect detection of alien technology, it is often portrayed as the discovery of the physical presence of an extraterrestrial intelligence. As a plot device, first contact is frequently used to explore a variety of themes.
== History ==
Murray Leinster's 1945 novelette "First Contact" is the best known science fiction story which is specifically devoted to the "first contact" per se, although Leinster used the term in this sense earlier, in his 1935 story "Proxima Centauri".
The idea of humans encountering an extraterrestrial intelligence for the first time dates back to the second century AD, where it is presented in the novel A True Story by Lucian of Samosata. The 1752 novel Le Micromégas by Voltaire depicts a visit of an alien from a planet circling Sirius to the Solar System. Micromegas, being 120,000 royal feet (38.9 km) tall, first arrives at Saturn, where he befriends a Saturnian. They both eventually reach the Earth, where using a magnifying glass, they discern humans, and eventually engage in philosophical disputes with them. While superficially it may be classified as an early example of science fiction, the aliens are used only as a technique to involve outsiders to comment on Western civilization, a trope popular at the times.
Traditionally the origin of the trope of conflict of humans with an alien intelligent species is attributed to The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, in which Martians mount a global invasion of Earth. Still, there are earlier examples, such as the 1888 novel Les Xipéhuz, a classic of French science fiction. It depicts the struggle of prehistoric humans with an apparently intelligent but profoundly alien inorganic life form. However in the latter novel it is unclear whether the Xipéhuz arrived from the outer space or originated on the Earth.
Throughout the 1950s, stories involving first contact were common in the United States, and typically involved conflict. Professor of Communication Victoria O'Donnell writes that these films "presented indirect expressions of anxiety about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust or a Communist invasion of America. These fears were expressed in various guises, such as aliens using mind control, monstrous mutants unleashed by radioactive fallout, radiation's terrible effects on human life, and scientists obsessed with dangerous experiments." Most films of this kind have an optimistic ending. She reviewed four major topics in these films: (1) Extraterrestrial travel, (2) alien invasion and infiltration, (3) mutants, metamorphosis, and resurrection of extinct species, and (4) near annihilation or the end of the Earth.
The 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still was one of the first works to portray first contact as an overall beneficial event. While the character of Klaatu is primarily concerned with preventing conflicts spreading from Earth, the film warns of the dangers of nuclear war. Based on the 1954 serialized novel, the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers depicts an alien infiltration, with the titular Body Snatchers overtaking the fiction town of Santa Mira. Similarly to The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers reflects contemporary fears in the United States, particularly the fear of communist infiltration and takeover.
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke depicts a combination of positive and negative effects from first contact: while utopia is achieved across the planet, humanity becomes stagnant, with Earth under the constant oversight of the Overlords. Stanisław Lem's 1961 novel Solaris depicts communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence as a futile endeavor, a common theme in Lem's works.
The 21st episode of Star Trek, "The Return of the Archons", introduced the Prime Directive, created by producer and screenwriter Gene L. Coon. Since its creation, the Prime Directive has become a staple of the Star Trek franchise, and the concept of a non-interference directive has become common throughout science fiction.
The 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind depicts first contact as a long and laborious process, with communication only being achieved at the end of the film. In Rendezvous with Rama, communication is never achieved.
In 1985, Carl Sagan published the novel Contact. The book deals primarily with the challenges inherent to determining first contact, as well as the potential responses to the discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence. In 1997, the book was made into a movie.
The 1996 novel The Sparrow starts with the discovery of an artificial radio signal, though it deals mainly with the issue of faith. The Arrival (1996), Independence Day, and Star Trek: First Contact were released in 1996. The Arrival portrays both an indirect first contact through the discovery of a radio signal, as well as an alien infiltration similar to that of Invasion of the Body Snatchers; Independence Day portrays an alien invasion similar in theme and tone to The War of the Worlds; and Star Trek: First Contact portrays first contact as a beneficial and peaceful event that ultimately led to the creation of the United Federation of Planets.
The 1994 video game XCOM: UFO Defense is a strategy game that depicts an alien invasion, although first contact technically occurs prior to the game's start. The Halo and Mass Effect franchises both have novels that detail first contact events. Mass Effect: Andromeda has multiple first contacts, as it takes place in the Andromeda Galaxy.
The Chinese novel The Three-Body Problem, first published in 2006 and translated into English in 2014, presents first contact as being achieved through the reception of a radio signal. The Dark Forest, published in 2008, introduced the dark forest hypothesis based on Thomas Hobbes' description of the "natural condition of mankind", although the underlying concept dates back to "First Contact".
The 2016 film Arrival, based on the 1998 short story "Story of Your Life", depicts a global first contact, with 12 "pods" establishing themselves at various locations on Earth. With regard to first contact, the film focuses primarily on the linguistic challenges inherent in first contact, and the film's plot is driven by the concept of linguistic relativity and the various responses of the governments.
The 2021 novel Project Hail Mary depicts an unintended first contact scenario when the protagonist, Ryland Grace, encounters an alien starship while on a scientific mission to Tau Ceti.
== Types and themes ==
Due to the broad definition of first contact, there are a number of variations of the methods that result in first contact and the nature of the subsequent interaction. Variations include: positive vs. negative outcome of the first contact, actual meetings vs. interception of alien messages, etc.
=== Alien invasion ===
The idea of an alien invasion is one of the earliest and most common portrayals of a first contact scenario, being popular since The War of the Worlds. During the Cold War, films depicting alien invasions were common. The depiction of the aliens tended to reflect the American conception of the Soviet Union at the time, with infiltration stories being a variation of the theme.
=== Alien artifacts ===
A Bracewell probe is any form of probe of extraterrestrial origin, and such technology appears in first contact fiction. Initially hypothesized in 1960 by Ronald N. Bracewell, a Bracewell probe is a form of alien artifact that would permit real–time communication. A Big Dumb Object is a common variation of the Bracewell probe, primarily referring to megastructures such as ringworlds, but also relatively smaller objects that are either located on the surface of planets or natural satellites, or transiting through the solar system (such as Rama in Rendezvous with Ramaby Arthur Clarke (1973)). A famous example is the 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey, where mysterious black "Monoliths" enhance the technological progress of humanoids and other civilizations.
A number of stories involve finding an alien spacecraft, either in the space or on a surface of the planet, with various consequences, Rendezvous with Rama being a classic example.
=== Communication with alien intelligence ===
Many science fiction stories deal with the issues of communications.
First contact is a recurring theme in the works of Polish writer Stanisław Lem. The majority of his "first contact" stories, including his first published science fiction story, The Man from Mars (1946) and his last work of fiction, Fiasco (1986), portray the mutual understanding of a human and alien intelligences as ultimately impossible. These works criticize "the myth of cognitive universality".
==== Message from space ====
The "first contact" may originate from the detection of an extraterrestrial signal ("message from space"). In broader terms, the presence of an alien civilization may be deduced from a technosignature, which is any of a variety of detectable spectral signatures that indicate the presence or effects of technology. The occasional search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) began with the advent of radio, which was addressed in science fiction as well. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction mentions an 1864 French story "Qu'est-ce qu'ils peuvent bien nous dire?", where humans detect a signal from Mars. Stories of this type became numerous by the 1950s. The systematic search for technosignatures began in 1960 with Project Ozma.
==== Alien languages ====
Apart from telepathy, languages are the most common form of interpersonal communication with aliens, and many science fiction stories deal with language issues. While various nonlinguistic forms of communication are described as well, such as communication via mathematics, pheromones, etc., the distinction of linguistic vs. non-linguistic, is rather semantic: in the majority of cases all boils down to some form of decoding/encoding of information.
While space operas bypass the issue by either making aliens speak English perfectly, or resorting to a "universal translator", in most hard science fiction humans usually have difficulties in talking to aliens, which may lead to misunderstanding of various level of graveness, even leading to a war.
Jonathan Vos Post analyzed various issues related to understanding alien languages.
=== Ethics of first contact ===
Many notable writers have considered how humans are supposed to treat the aliens when we meet them. One idea is that the humans should avoid the interference in the development of alien civilizations. A notable example of this is the Prime Directive of Star Trek, a major part of its considerable cultural influence. However, the Directive often proves to be unworkable. Over time, the Directive has developed from its clear and straightforward formulation to a loosely defined, aspirational principle. Evolving from a series of bad experiences coming from the "interventionist" approach in early episodes, the Prime Directive was initially presented as an imperative. However, it is often portrayed as neither the primary concern, nor imperative.
In Soviet science fiction there was a popular concept of "progressors", Earth agents working clandestinely in less advanced civilizations for their betterment, following the ideas of Communism (portrayed as already victorious on Earth). The term was introduced in the Noon Universe of the Strugatsky brothers. The Strugatskis' biographer, writing under the pen name Ant Skalandis, considered the concept as a major novelty in social science fiction. In the Strugatskis' later works the powerful organization КОМКОН (COMCON, Commission for Contacts), in charge of progressorship, was tasked with counteracting the work of suspected alien progressors on the Earth. Strugatski's novels related to the subject reject the idea of the "export of revolution". In his report "On serious shortcomings in the publication of science fiction literature", Alexander Yakovlev, a Soviet Communist Party functionary in charge of propaganda, complained that Strugatskis had alleged the futility of the Communist intervention into fascism on an alien planet.
== Notable examples ==
=== The Day the Earth Stood Still ===
Based on the 1940 short story "Farewell to the Master", The Day the Earth Stood Still depicts the arrival of a single alien, Klaatu, and a robot, Gort, in a flying saucer, which lands in Washington, D.C. In the film, humanity's response to first contact is hostility, demonstrated both at the beginning when Klaatu is wounded, and when he is killed near the end.
First contact is used as an example of a global issue that is ignored in favor of continuing international competition, with the decision by the United States government to treat Klaatu as a security threat and eventually enact martial law in Washington, D.C. being allegorical for the Second Red Scare.
=== Close Encounters of the Third Kind ===
=== Contact ===
Initially conceived of as a film, the 1985 novel Contact, written by American astronomer Carl Sagan, depicts the reception of a radio signal from the star Vega. Two-way communication is achieved with the construction of a Machine, the specifications of which are included in the message. In 1997, a film adaptation was released.
=== Star Trek ===
Within the Star Trek franchise, first contact is a central part of the operations of Starfleet. While primarily depicted in the television shows, it has also been in a majority of the movies. The Prime Directive is one of the foundational regulations regarding first contact in Star Trek, and has been portrayed in every television series. Despite its importance, it is frequently violated.
==== Star Trek: The Original Series ====
In the original pilot episode for Star Trek, the crew of the USS Enterprise encounters the Talosians, subterranean humanoids with telepathic abilities, when attempting to rescue the survivors of a crash. While the episode wasn't broadcast in its entirety until 1988, it was incorporated into the first-season two-part episode "The Menagerie".
The Prime Directive, also known as Starfleet General Order 1, was introduced in the 21st episode "The Return of the Archons". In–universe, it is intended to prevent unintended negative consequences from first contact with technologically inferior societies, particularly those that lack faster-than-light travel.
==== Star Trek: The Next Generation ====
"Encounter at Farpoint", the pilot episode for Star Trek: The Next Generation, depicts Federation first contact with the Q Continuum, although this encounter was only included later in production.
The Prime Directive is the center of multiple episodes in the series, including "Who Watches the Watchers" and "First Contact". In both episodes, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is forced to break the Prime Directive.
==== Star Trek: First Contact ====
Released in 1996, Star Trek: First Contact portrays first contact between Humans and Vulcans at the end of the film. This event leads to the formation of the United Federation of Planets.
=== The War of the Worlds ===
== See also ==
Ancient astronauts – Pseudoscientific claims of past alien contact
First contact (anthropology) – The first meeting of two cultures previously unaware of one another
Potential cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact – Topic in futurism
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence – Effort to find civilizations not from Earth
Extraterrestrials in fiction
== References ==
== Sources ==
Parrinder, Patrick (2000). Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-8532-3574-0. OL 22421185M.
== External links ==
First Contact, a list maintained by Goodreads
First Contact at TV Tropes
First Contact cartoons and comics
Science Fiction with Good Astronomy List by Andrew Fraknoi; see the section on SETI
== Further reading ==
Bly, Robert W. (2005). "First Contact". The Science in Science Fiction: 83 SF Predictions That Became Scientific Reality. Consulting Editor: James Gunn. BenBella Books. pp. 127–136. ISBN 978-1-932100-48-8.
Stableford, Brian (1983). "First contact". In Nicholls, Peter (ed.). The Science in Science Fiction. New York: Knopf. p. 51. ISBN 0-394-53010-1. OCLC 8689657.
"Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters" by Ronald Story (2001) ISBN 0-451-20424-7. It was the result of a collaborative Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia Project (ETEP)) | Wikipedia/First_contact_(science_fiction) |
Science fiction studies is the common name for the academic discipline that studies and researches the history, culture, and works of science fiction and, more broadly, speculative fiction.
The modern field of science fiction studies is closely related to popular culture studies, a subdiscipline of cultural studies, and film and literature studies. Because of the ties with futurism and utopian works, there is often overlap with these fields as well. The field also has spawned subfields, such as feminist science fiction studies.
== History ==
As the pulp era progressed, shifting science fiction ever further into popular culture, groups of writers, editors, publishers, and fans (often scientists, academics, and scholars of other fields) systematically organized publishing enterprises, conferences, and other insignia of an academic discipline. Much discussion about science fiction took place in the letter columns of early SF magazines and fanzines, and the first book of commentary on science fiction in the US was Clyde F. Beck's Hammer and Tongs, a chapbook of essays originally published in a fanzine.
The 1940s saw the appearance of three full-scale scholarly works that treated science fiction and its literary ancestors: Philip Babcock Gove's The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction (1941), J. O. Bailey's Pilgrims Through Space and Time (1948), and Marjorie Hope Nicolson's Voyages to the Moon (1949).
Peter Nicholls credits Sam Moskowitz with teaching "what was almost certainly the first sf course in the USA to be given through a college": a non-credit course in "Science Fiction Writing" at City College of New York in 1953. The first regular, for-credit courses were taught by Mark Hillegas (at Colgate) and H. Bruce Franklin (at Stanford) in 1961. During the 1960s, more science fiction scholars began to move into the academy, founding academic journals devoted to the exploration of the literature and works of science fiction. The explosion of film studies and cultural studies more broadly granted the nascent discipline additional credibility, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mainstream scholars such as Susan Sontag turned their critical attention to science fiction.
In 1982, James Gunn established his original Center for the Study of Science Fiction as a Kansas Board of Regents Center as an umbrella for the SF programs he offered beginning in 1969. Along with Jack Williamson's in Arizona, his were the first SF courses offered at a major university.
The 1990s saw the first academic programs and degree-granting programs established, and the field shows continued steady growth.
== Degree-granting programs ==
Florida Atlantic University, MA in Literature & Theory with a concentration in Science Fiction and Fantasy
University of California, Riverside PhD Designated Emphasis in Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies.
University of Liverpool, M.A. in Science Fiction Studies (course) (program explores genre of science fiction and its relationship to literature, science, and technology)
Beijing Normal University, M.A. in Science Fiction Studies
=== Discontinued ===
University of Dundee, MLitt in Science Fiction
University of Kansas, MA, MFA, PhD in English with Emphasis in Science Fiction Studies
== Notable scholars ==
== Principal journals, conferences, societies, awards ==
Societies:
Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA)
Society for Utopian Studies
International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA)
Utopian Studies Society
London Science Fiction Research Community (LSFRC), London-based organisation of SF scholars and fans
General journals:
Extrapolation
Science Fiction Studies
Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction
MOSF Journal of Science Fiction
The Eaton Journal of Archival Research in Science Fiction
Journal for the Fantastic in the Arts (JFA)
Vector (magazine), critical magazine of the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA)
Review journals:
The Internet Review of Science Fiction (IROSF)
New York Review of Science Fiction (NYRSF)
Conferences:
Science Fiction Research Association annual convention
International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) annual convention
Wiscon (hybrid academic science fiction conference/science fiction convention, with an extensive academic programming track concentrating on issues of gender, sexuality and class)
Mythcon (Mythopoeic Society annual convention)
Eaton Science Fiction Conference, biennial conference at University of California, Riverside
Stage the Future conference on science fiction theatre
Significant scholarship awards:
"Pilgrim Award", Science Fiction Research Association
Pioneer Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Science Fiction Research Association
"Distinguished Scholar Award", International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts
J. Lloyd Eaton Memorial Award for the best critical book of the year focusing on science fiction
Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service to the field
Museums:
Maison d'Ailleurs, in Yverdon-les-Bains (Switzerland)
== Significant works ==
Kingsley Amis. New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction. New York: Harcourt, 1960.
Brian Attebery. Decoding Gender in Science Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Marleen Barr, Alien to Femininity. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1987. (Definitive first book-length work of feminist science fiction scholarship.)
Marleen S. Barr and Carl Freedman, eds. PMLA: Special Topic: Science Fiction and Literary Studies: The Next Millennium. Vol. 119, No. 3, May 2004.
Neil Barron, ed. Anatomy of Wonder: Science Fiction. New York: Bowker, 1976 (first ed.); numerous editions since.
Mark Bould and China Miéville, eds. Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2009.
Algis Budrys, "Paradise Charted" (1980); "Nonliterary Influences on Science Fiction"; and "Literatures of Milieux"
Seo-Young Chu. Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Samuel Gerald Collins. All Tomorrow's Cultures: Anthropological Engagements with the Future. New York: Berghahn, 2008.
John Clute and Peter Nicholls, eds. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
Robert Crossley. Imagining Mars: A Literary History. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2011.
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Wesleyan, 2008.
Samuel R. Delany. The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction. Elizabethtown, New York: Dragon, 1977.
Lester del Rey. The World of Science Fiction, 1926-1976: The History of a Subculture. New York: Garland, 1976. Rpt. New York: Ballantine, 1979.
Carl Freedman. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press, 2000.
Hugo Gernsback. Evolution of Modern Science Fiction. New York, 1952.
Hugo Gernsback. "The Rise of Scientifiction." Amazing Stories Quarterly 1 (Spring 1928): 147.
James Gunn. Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction. NY: Oxford UP, 1982. Rev. Ed. 1996.
Donna Haraway. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." 1985. (Established cyborg feminism.)
N. Katherine Hayles. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. University Of Chicago Press, 1999.
Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.
Fredric Jameson. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London: Verso, 2005.
Brooks Landon. Science Fiction After 1900: From the Steam Man to the Stars. Studies in Literary Themes and Genres No. 12. New York: Twayne, 1997.
Rob Latham. Consuming Youth: Vampires, Cyborgs, and the Culture of Consumption. Chicago: U Chicago Press, 2002.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. New York: Perigee, 1980.
Roger Luckhurst. Science Fiction. Polity, 2005.
Carl Malmgren. Worlds Apart: Narratology of Science Fiction. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1991.
Brian McHale. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen, 1987.
Farah Mendlesohn. Rhetorics of Fantasy. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 2008.
Andrew Milner. Locating Science Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012.
Sam Moskowitz. The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom. Atlanta: Atlanta Science Fiction Organization, 1954; reprinted Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1974.
Tom Moylan. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. London: Methuen, 1986.
Tom Moylan. Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia. Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 2000.
Peter Y. Paik. From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010.
Alexei Panshin. Heinlein in Dimension. Advent Publishers, 1972.
Alexei Panshin and Cory Panshin, The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence. New York: TARCHER, 1990.
Eric S. Rabkin. The Fantastic in Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1976.
Adam Roberts. Science Fiction (The New Critical Idiom). Routledge, 2000, 2006.
Adam Roberts. The History of Science Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Joanna Russ. To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction. Indiana University Press, 1995.
Robert Scholes. Structural Fabulation: An Essay on Fiction of the Future. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.
Alan N. Shapiro. Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance. Berlin: Avinus Press, 2004.
Norman Spinrad. Science Fiction in the Real World. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990.
Bruce Sterling, "Preface," in Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology New York: Arbor, 1986. (Defined the term cyberpunk).
Bruce Sterling. "Slipstream." Science Fiction Eye 1.5 (July 1989): 77–80.
Darko Suvin. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979. (Introduced the concept of cognitive estrangement.)
Darko Suvin. Defined by a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction and Political Epistemology. Frankfurt am Main, Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2010.
Sherryl Vint. Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2010.
Gary Westfahl. Cosmic Engineers: A Study of Hard Science Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996.
Raymond Williams. Tenses of Imagination: Raymond Williams on Science Fiction, Utopia and Dystopia. Ed. Andrew Milner. Frankfurt am Main, Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2010.
Gary K. Wolfe. Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Glossary and Guide to Scholarship. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986. (work in librarianship establishing a thesaurus)
Gary K. Wolfe. Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2011.
== Significant research resources, databases, and archives ==
A number of significant research collections and archives in SF studies have been developed in the past three to four decades. These include academic collections at the University of Liverpool, the University of Kansas, the Toronto Public Library, and the University of California, Riverside (the Eaton collection).
See Science fiction libraries and museums for a comprehensive list and description of relevant collections and research institutes.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Chronological Bibliography of Science Fiction History, Theory, and Criticism | Wikipedia/Science_fiction_studies |
Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science, the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William Clayton, and edited by Harry Bates. Clayton went bankrupt in 1933 and the magazine was sold to Street & Smith. The new editor was F. Orlin Tremaine, who soon made Astounding the leading magazine in the nascent pulp science fiction field, publishing well-regarded stories such as Jack Williamson's Legion of Space and John W. Campbell's "Twilight". At the end of 1937, Campbell took over editorial duties under Tremaine's supervision, and the following year Tremaine was let go, giving Campbell more independence. Over the next few years Campbell published many stories that became classics in the field, including Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, A. E. van Vogt's Slan, and several novels and stories by Robert A. Heinlein. The period beginning with Campbell's editorship is often referred to as the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
By 1950, new competition had appeared from Galaxy Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Campbell's interest in some pseudo-science topics, such as Dianetics (an early non-religious version of Scientology), alienated some of his regular writers, and Astounding was no longer regarded as the leader of the field, though it did continue to publish popular and influential stories: Hal Clement's novel Mission of Gravity appeared in 1953, and Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" appeared the following year. In 1960, Campbell changed the title of the magazine to Analog Science Fact & Fiction; he had long wanted to get rid of the word "Astounding" in the title, which he felt was too sensational. At about the same time Street & Smith sold the magazine to Condé Nast, and the name changed again to its current form by 1965. Campbell remained as editor until his death in 1971.
Ben Bova took over from 1972 to 1978, and the character of the magazine changed noticeably, since Bova was willing to publish fiction that included sexual content and profanity. Bova published stories such as Frederik Pohl's "The Gold at the Starbow's End", which was nominated for both a Hugo and Nebula Award, and Joe Haldeman's "Hero", the first story in the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning "Forever War" sequence; Pohl had been unable to sell to Campbell, and "Hero" had been rejected by Campbell as unsuitable for the magazine. Bova won five consecutive Hugo Awards for his editing of Analog.
Bova was followed by Stanley Schmidt, who continued to publish many of the same authors who had been contributing for years; the result was some criticism of the magazine as stagnant and dull, though Schmidt was initially successful in maintaining circulation. The title was sold to Davis Publications in 1980, then to Dell Magazines in 1992. Crosstown Publications acquired Dell in 1996 and remains the publisher. Schmidt continued to edit the magazine until 2012, when he was replaced by Trevor Quachri.
== Publishing history ==
=== Clayton ===
In 1926, Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories, the first science fiction (sf) magazine. Gernsback had been printing scientific fiction stories for some time in his hobbyist magazines, such as Modern Electrics and Electrical Experimenter, but decided that interest in the genre was sufficient to justify a monthly magazine. Amazing was very successful, quickly reaching a circulation over 100,000. William Clayton, a successful and well-respected publisher of several pulp magazines, considered starting a competitive title in 1928; according to Harold Hersey, one of his editors at the time, Hersey had "discussed plans with Clayton to launch a pseudo-science fantasy sheet". Clayton was unconvinced, but the following year decided to launch a new magazine, mainly because the sheet on which the color covers of his magazines were printed had a space for one more cover. He suggested to Harry Bates, a newly hired editor, that they start a magazine of historical adventure stories. Bates proposed instead a science fiction pulp, to be titled Astounding Stories of Super Science, and Clayton agreed.
Astounding was initially published by Publisher's Fiscal Corporation, a subsidiary of Clayton Magazines. The first issue appeared in January 1930, with Bates as editor. Bates aimed for straightforward action-adventure stories, with scientific elements only present to provide minimal plausibility. Clayton paid much better rates than Amazing and Wonder Stories—two cents a word on acceptance, rather than half a cent a word, on publication (or sometimes later)—and consequently Astounding attracted some of the better-known pulp writers, such as Murray Leinster, Victor Rousseau, and Jack Williamson. In February 1931, the original name Astounding Stories of Super-Science was shortened to Astounding Stories.
The magazine was profitable, but the Great Depression caused Clayton problems. Normally a publisher would pay a printer three months in arrears, but when a credit squeeze began in May 1931, it led to pressure to reduce this delay. The financial difficulties led Clayton to start alternating the publication of his magazines, and he switched Astounding to a bimonthly schedule with the June 1932 issue. Some printers bought the magazines which were indebted to them: Clayton decided to buy his printer to prevent this from happening. This proved a disastrous move. Clayton did not have the money to complete the transaction, and in October 1932, Clayton decided to cease publication of Astounding, with the expectation that the January 1933 issue would be the last one. As it turned out, enough stories were in inventory, and enough paper was available, to publish one further issue, so the last Clayton Astounding was dated March 1933. In April, Clayton went bankrupt, and sold his magazine titles to T.R. Foley for $100; Foley resold them in August to Street & Smith, a well-established publisher.
=== Street and Smith ===
Science fiction was not entirely a departure for Street & Smith. They already had two pulp titles that occasionally ventured into the field: The Shadow, which had begun in 1931 and was tremendously successful, with a circulation over 300,000; and Doc Savage, which had been launched in March 1933. They gave the post of editor of Astounding to F. Orlin Tremaine, an experienced editor who had been working for Clayton as the editor of Clues, and who had come to Street & Smith as part of the transfer of titles after Clayton's bankruptcy. Desmond Hall, who had also come from Clayton, was made assistant editor; because Tremaine was editor of Clues and Top-Notch, as well as Astounding, Hall did much of the editorial work, though Tremaine retained final control over the contents.
The first Street & Smith issue was dated October 1933; until the third issue, in December 1933, the editorial team was not named on the masthead. Street & Smith had an excellent distribution network, and they were able to get Astounding's circulation up to an estimated 50,000 by the middle of 1934. The two main rival science fiction magazines of the day, Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories, each had a circulation about half that. Astounding was the leading science fiction magazine by the end of 1934, and it was also the largest, at 160 pages, and the cheapest, at 20 cents. Street & Smith's rates of one cent per word (sometimes more) on acceptance were not as high as the rates paid by Bates for the Clayton Astounding, but they were still better than those of the other magazines.
Hall left Astounding in 1934 to become editor of Street & Smith's new slick magazine, Mademoiselle, and was replaced by R.V. Happel. Tremaine remained in control of story selection. Writer Frank Gruber described Tremaine's editorial selection process in his book, The Pulp Jungle:
As the stories came in Tremaine piled them up on a stack. All the stories intended for Clues in this pile, all those for Astounding in that stack. Two days before press time of each magazine, Tremaine would start reading. He would start at the top of the pile and read stories until he had found enough to fill the issue. Now, to be perfectly fair, Tremaine would take the stack of remaining stories and turn it upside down, so next month he would start with the stories that had been on the bottom this month.
Gruber pointed out that stories in the middle might go many months before Tremaine read them; the result was erratic response times that sometimes stretched to over 18 months.
In 1936 the magazine switched from untrimmed to trimmed edges; Brian Stableford comments that this was "an important symbolic" step, as the other sf pulps were still untrimmed, making Astounding smarter-looking than its competitors. Tremaine was promoted to assistant editorial director in 1937. His replacement as editor of Astounding was 27-year-old John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell had made his name in the early 1930s as a writer, publishing space opera under his own name, and more thoughtful stories under the pseudonym "Don A. Stuart". He started working for Street & Smith in October 1937, so his initial editorial influence appeared in the issue dated December 1937. The March 1938 issue was the first that was fully his responsibility. In early 1938, Street & Smith abandoned its policy of having editors-in-chief, with the result that Tremaine was made redundant. His departure, on May 1, 1938, gave Campbell a freer rein with the magazine.
One of Campbell's first acts was to change the title from Astounding Stories to Astounding Science-Fiction, starting with the March 1938 issue. Campbell's editorial policy was targeted at the more mature readers of science fiction, and he felt that "Astounding Stories" did not convey the right image. He intended to subsequently drop the "Astounding" part of the title, as well, leaving the magazine titled Science Fiction, but in 1939 a new magazine with that title appeared. Although "Astounding" was retained in the title, thereafter it was often printed in a color that made it much less visible than "Science-Fiction". At the start of 1942 the price was increased, for the first time, to 25 cents; the magazine simultaneously switched to the larger bedsheet format, but this did not last. Astounding returned to pulp-size in mid-1943 for six issues, and then became the first science fiction magazine to switch to digest size in November 1943, increasing the number of pages to maintain the same total word count. The price remained at 25 cents through these changes in format. The hyphen was dropped from the title with the November 1946 issue.
The price increased again, to 35 cents, in August 1951. In the late 1950s, it became apparent to Street & Smith that they were going to have to raise prices again. During 1959, Astounding was priced at 50 cents in some areas to find out what the impact would be on circulation. The results were apparently satisfactory, and the price was raised with the November 1959 issue. The following year, Campbell finally achieved his goal of getting rid of the word "Astounding" in the magazine's title, changing it to Analog Science Fact/Science Fiction. The "/" in the title was often replaced by a symbol of Campbell's devising, resembling an inverted U pierced by a horizontal arrow and meaning "analogous to". The change began with the February 1960 issue, and was complete by October; for several issues both "Analog" and "Astounding" could be seen on the cover, with "Analog" becoming bolder and "Astounding" fading with each issue.
=== Condé Nast ===
Street & Smith was acquired by Samuel Newhouse, the owner of Condé Nast, in August 1959, though Street & Smith was not merged into Condé Nast until the end of 1961. Analog was the only digest-sized magazine in Condé Nast's inventory—all the others were slicks, such as Vogue. All the advertisers in these magazines had plates made up to take advantage of this size, and Condé Nast changed Analog to the larger size from the March 1963 issue to conform. The front and back signatures were changed to glossy paper, to carry both advertisements and scientific features. The change did not attract advertising support, however, and from the April 1965 issue Analog reverted to digest size once again. Circulation, which had been increasing before the change, was not harmed, and continued to increase while Analog was in slick format. From the April 1965 issue the title switched the "fiction" and "fact" elements, so that it became Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact.
Campbell died suddenly in July 1971, but there was enough material in Analog's inventory to allow the remaining staff to put together issues for the rest of the year. Condé Nast had given the magazine very little attention, since it was both profitable and cheap to produce, but they were proud that it was the leading science fiction magazine. They asked Kay Tarrant, who had been Campbell's assistant, to help them find a replacement: she contacted regular contributors to ask for suggestions. Several well-known writers turned down the job; Poul Anderson did not want to leave California, and neither did Jerry Pournelle, who also felt the salary was too small. Before he died, Campbell had talked to Harry Harrison about taking over as editor, but Harrison did not want to live in New York. Lester del Rey and Clifford D. Simak were also rumored to have been offered the job, though Simak denied it; Frederik Pohl was interested, but suspected his desire to change the direction of the magazine lessened his chances with Condé Nast. The Condé Nast vice president in charge of selecting the new editor decided to read both fiction and nonfiction writing samples from the applicants, since Analog's title included both "science fiction" and "science fact". He chose Ben Bova, afterwards telling Bova that his stories and articles "were the only ones I could understand". January 1972 was the first issue to credit Bova on the masthead.
Bova planned to stay for five years, to ensure a smooth transition after Campbell's sudden death; the salary was too low for him to consider remaining indefinitely. In 1975, he proposed a new magazine to Condé Nast management, to be titled Tomorrow Magazine; he wanted to publish articles about science and technology, leavened with some science fiction stories. Condé Nast was not interested, and refused to assist Analog with marketing or promotions. Bova resigned in June 1978, having stayed for a little longer than he had planned, and recommended Stanley Schmidt to succeed him. Schmidt's first issue was December 1978, though material purchased by Bova continued to appear for several months.
=== Davis Publications, Dell Magazines, and Penny Publications ===
In 1977, Davis Publications launched Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and after Bova's departure, Joel Davis, the owner of Davis Publications, contacted Condé Nast with a view to acquiring Analog. Analog had always been something of a misfit in Condé Nast's line up, which included Mademoiselle and Vogue, and by February 1980 the deal was agreed. The first issue published by Davis was dated September 1980. Davis was willing to put some effort into marketing Analog, so Schmidt regarded the change as likely to be beneficial, and in fact circulation quickly grew, reversing a gradual decline over the Bova years, from just over 92,000 in 1981 to almost 110,000 two years later. Starting with the first 1981 issue, Davis switched Analog to a four-weekly schedule, rather than monthly, to align the production schedule with a weekly calendar. Instead of being dated "January 1981", the first issue under the new regime was dated "January 5, 1981", but this approach led to newsstands removing the magazine much more quickly, since the date gave the impression that it was a weekly magazine. The cover date was changed back to the current month starting with the April 1982 issue, but the new schedule remained in place, with a "Mid-September" issue in 1982 and 1983, and "Mid-December" issues for more than a decade thereafter. Circulation trended slowly down over the 1980s, to 83,000 for the year ending in 1990; by this time the great majority of readers were subscribers, as newsstand sales declined to only 15,000.
In 1992 Analog was sold to Dell Magazines, and Dell was in turn acquired by Crosstown Publications in 1996. That year the Mid-December issues stopped appearing, and the following year the July and August issues were combined into a single bimonthly issue. An ebook edition became available in 2000 and has become increasingly popular, with the ebook numbers not reflected in the published annual circulation numbers, which by 2011 were down to under 27,000. In 2004 the January and February issues were combined, so that only ten issues a year appeared. Having just surpassed John W. Campbell's tenure of 34 years, Schmidt retired in August 2012. His place was taken by Trevor Quachri, who continues to edit Analog as of 2023. From January 2017, the publication frequency became bimonthly (six issues per year).
In February 2025, the magazine was purchased by a group of investors led by Steven Salpeter, president of literary and IP development at Assemble Media.
== Contents and reception ==
=== Bates ===
The first incarnation of Astounding was an adventure-oriented magazine: unlike Gernsback, Bates had no interest in educating his readership through science. The covers were all painted by Wesso and similarly action-filled; the first issue showed a giant beetle attacking a man. Bates would not accept any experimental stories, relying mostly on formulaic plots. In the eyes of Mike Ashley, a science fiction historian, Bates was "destroying the ideals of science fiction". One historically important story that almost appeared in Astounding was E.E. Smith's Triplanetary, which Bates would have published had Astounding not folded in early 1933. The cover Wesso had painted for the story appeared on the March 1933 issue, the last to be published by Clayton.
=== Tremaine ===
When Street & Smith acquired Astounding, they also planned to relaunch another Clayton pulp, Strange Tales, and acquired material for it before deciding not to proceed. These stories appeared in the first Street & Smith Astounding, dated October 1933. This issue and the next were unremarkable in quality, but with the December issue, Tremaine published a statement of editorial policy, calling for "thought variant" stories containing original ideas and not simply reproducing adventure themes in a science fiction context. The policy was probably worked out between Tremaine and Desmond Hall, his assistant editor, in an attempt to give Astounding a clear identity in the market that would distinguish it from both the existing science fiction magazines and the hero pulps, such as The Shadow, that frequently used sf ideas.
The "thought variant" policy may have been introduced for publicity, rather than as a real attempt to define the sort of fiction Tremaine was looking for; the early "thought variant" stories were not always very original or well executed. Ashley describes the first, Nat Schachner's "Ancestral Voices", as "not amongst Schachner's best"; the second, "Colossus", by Donald Wandrei, was not a new idea, but was energetically written. Over the succeeding issues, it became apparent that Tremaine was genuinely willing to publish material that would have fallen foul of editorial taboos elsewhere. He serialized Charles Fort's Lo!, a nonfiction work about strange and inexplicable phenomena, in eight parts between April and November 1934, in an attempt to stimulate new ideas for stories. The best-remembered story of 1934 is probably Jack Williamson's "The Legion of Space", which began serialization in April, but other notable stories include Murray Leinster's "Sidewise in Time", which was the first genre science fiction story to use the idea of alternate history; "The Bright Illusion", by C.L. Moore, and "Twilight", by John W. Campbell, writing as Don A. Stuart. "Twilight", which was written in a more literary and poetic style than Campbell's earlier space opera stories, was particularly influential, and Tremaine encouraged other writers to produce similar stories. One such was Raymond Z. Gallun's "Old Faithful", which appeared in the December 1934 issue and was sufficiently popular that Gallun wrote a sequel, "Son of Old Faithful", published the following July. Space opera continued to be popular, though, and two overlapping space opera novels were running in Astounding late in the year: The Skylark of Valeron by E.E. Smith, and The Mightiest Machine, by Campbell. By the end of the year, Astounding was the clear leader of the small field of sf magazines.
Astounding's readership was more knowledgeable and more mature than the readers of the other magazines, and this was reflected in the cover artwork, almost entirely by Howard V. Brown, which was less garish than at Wonder Stories or Amazing Stories. Ashley describes the interior artwork as "entrancing, giving hints of higher technology without ignoring the human element", and singles out the work of Elliot Dold as particularly impressive.
Tremaine's policy of printing material that he liked without staying too strictly within the bounds of the genre led him to serialize H.P. Lovecraft's novel At the Mountains of Madness in early 1936. He followed this with Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time" in June 1936, though protests from science fiction purists occurred. Generally, however, Tremaine was unable to maintain the high standard he had set in the first few years, perhaps because his workload was high. Tremaine's slow responses to submissions discouraged new authors, although he could rely on regular contributors such as Jack Williamson, Murray Leinster, Raymond Gallun, Nat Schachner, and Frank Belknap Long. New writers who did appear during the latter half of Tremaine's tenure included Ross Rocklynne, Nelson S. Bond, and L. Sprague de Camp, whose first appearance was in September 1937 with "The Isolinguals". Tremaine printed some nonfiction articles during his tenure, with Campbell providing an 18-part series on the Solar System between June 1936 and December 1937.
=== Campbell ===
Street & Smith hired Campbell in October 1937. Although he did not gain full editorial control of Astounding until the March 1938 issue, Campbell was able to introduce some new features before then. In January 1938, he began to include a short description of stories in the next issue, titled "In Times To Come"; and in March, he began "The Analytical Laboratory", which compiled votes from readers and ranked the stories in order. The payment rate at the time was one cent a word, and Street & Smith agreed to let Campbell pay a bonus of an extra quarter-cent a word to the writer whose story was voted top of the list. Unlike other editors Campbell paid authors when he accepted—not published—their work; publication usually occurred several months after acceptance.
Campbell wanted his writers to provide action and excitement, but he also wanted the stories to appeal to a readership that had matured over the first decade of the science fiction genre. He asked his writers to write stories that felt as though they could have been published as non-science fiction stories in a magazine of the future; a reader of the future would not need long explanations for the gadgets in their lives, so Campbell asked his writers to find ways of naturally introducing technology to their stories. He also instituted regular nonfiction pieces, with the goal of stimulating story ideas. The main contributors of these were R.S. Richardson, L. Sprague de Camp, and Willy Ley.
Campbell changed the approach to the magazine's cover art, hoping that more mature artwork would attract more adult readers and enable them to carry the magazine without embarrassment. Howard V. Brown had done almost every cover for the Street & Smith version of Astounding, and Campbell asked him to do an astronomically accurate picture of the Sun as seen from Mercury for the February 1938 issue. He also introduced Charles Schneeman as a cover artist, starting with the May 1938 issue, and Hubert Rogers in February 1939; Rogers quickly became a regular, painting all but four of the covers between September 1939 and August 1942. They differentiated the magazine from rivals. Algis Budrys recalled that "Astounding was the last magazine I picked up" as a child because, without covers showing men with ray guns and women with large breasts, "it didn't look like an SF magazine".
==== Golden Age ====
The period beginning with Campbell's editorship of Astounding is usually referred to as the Golden Age of Science Fiction, because of the immense influence he had on the genre. Within two years of becoming editor, he had published stories by many of the writers who would become central figures in science fiction. The list of names included established authors like L. Ron Hubbard, Clifford Simak, Jack Williamson, L. Sprague de Camp, Henry Kuttner, and C.L. Moore, who became regulars in either Astounding or its sister magazine, Unknown, and new writers who published some of their first stories in Astounding, such as Lester del Rey, Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt, and Robert Heinlein.
The April 1938 issue included the first story by del Rey, "The Faithful", and de Camp's second sale, "Hyperpilosity". Jack Williamson's "Legion of Time", described by author and editor Lin Carter as "possibly the greatest single adventure story in science fiction history", began serialization in the following issue. De Camp contributed a nonfiction article, "Language for Time Travelers", in the July issue, which also contained Hubbard's first science fiction sale, "The Dangerous Dimension". Hubbard had been selling genre fiction to the pulps for several years by that time. The same issue contained Clifford Simak's "Rule 18"; Simak had more-or-less abandoned science fiction within a year after breaking into the field in 1931, but he was drawn back by Campbell's editorial approach. The next issue featured one of Campbell's best-known stories, "Who Goes There?", and included Kuttner's "The Disinherited"; Kuttner had been selling successfully to the other pulps for a few years, but this was his first story in Astounding. In October, de Camp began a popular series about an intelligent bear named Johnny Black with "The Command."
The market for science fiction expanded dramatically the following year; several new magazines were launched, including Startling Stories in January 1939, Unknown in March (a fantasy companion to Astounding, also edited by Campbell), Fantastic Adventures in May, and Planet Stories in December. All of the competing magazines, including the two main extant titles, Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories, were publishing space opera, stories of interplanetary adventure, or other well-worn ideas from the early days of the genre. Campbell's attempts to make science fiction more mature led to a natural division of the writers: those who were unable to write to his standards continued to sell to other magazines; and those who could sell to Campbell quickly focused their attention on Astounding and sold relatively little to the other magazines. The expansion of the market also benefited Campbell because writers knew that if he rejected their submissions, they could resubmit those stories elsewhere; this freed them to try to write to his standards.
In July 1939, the lead story was "Black Destroyer", the first sale by van Vogt; the issue also included "Trends", Asimov's first sale to Campbell and his second story to see print. Later fans identified the issue as the start of the Golden Age. Other first sales that year included Heinlein's "Lifeline" in August and Sturgeon's "Ether Breather" the following month. One of the most popular authors of space opera, E.E. Smith, reappeared in October, with the first installment of Gray Lensman. This was a sequel to Galactic Patrol, which had appeared in Astounding two years before.
Heinlein rapidly became one of the most prolific contributors to Astounding, publishing three novels in the next two years: If This Goes On—, Sixth Column, and Methuselah's Children; and half a dozen short stories. In September 1940, van Vogt's first novel, Slan, began serialization; the book was partly inspired by a challenge Campbell laid down to van Vogt that it was impossible to tell a superman story from the point of view of the superman. It proved to be one of the most popular stories Campbell published, and is an example of the way Campbell worked with his writers to feed them ideas and generate the material he wanted to buy. Isaac Asimov's "Robot" series began to take shape in 1941, with "Reason" and "Liar!" appearing in the April and May issues; as with "Slan", these stories were partly inspired by conversations with Campbell. Van Vogt's "The Seesaw", in the July 1941 issue, was the first story in his "Weapon Shop" series, described by critic John Clute as the most compelling of all van Vogt's work. The September 1941 issue included Asimov's short story "Nightfall" and in November, Second Stage Lensman, the next novel in Smith's Lensman series, began serialization.
The following year brought the first installment of Asimov's "Foundation" stories; "Foundation" appeared in May and "Bridle and Saddle" in June. The March 1942 issue included Van Vogt's novella "Recruiting Station", an early version of a Changewar. Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore began to appear regularly in Astounding, often under the pseudonym "Lewis Padgett", and more new writers appeared: Hal Clement, Raymond F. Jones, and George O. Smith, all of whom became regular contributors. The September 1942 issue contained del Rey's "Nerves", which was one of the few stories to be ranked top by every single reader who voted in the monthly Analytical Laboratory poll; it dealt with the aftermath of an explosion at a nuclear plant.
Campbell emphasized scientific accuracy over literary style. Asimov, Heinlein, and de Camp were trained scientists and engineers. After 1942, several of the regular contributors such as Heinlein, Asimov, and Hubbard, who had joined the war effort, appeared less frequently. Among those who remained, the key figures were van Vogt, Simak, Kuttner, Moore, and Fritz Leiber, all of whom were less oriented towards technology in their fiction than writers like Asimov or Heinlein. This led to the appearance of more psychologically oriented fiction, such as van Vogt's World of Null-A, which was serialized in 1945. Kuttner and Moore contributed a humorous series about an inventor, Galloway Gallegher, who could only invent while drunk, but they were also capable of serious fiction. Campbell had asked them to write science fiction with the same freedom from constraints that he had allowed them in the fantasy works they were writing for Unknown, Street & Smith's fantasy title; the result was "Mimsy Were the Borogoves", which appeared in February 1943 and is now regarded as a classic. Leiber's Gather, Darkness!, serialized in 1943, was set in a world where scientific knowledge is hidden from the masses and presented as magic; as with Kuttner and Moore, he was simultaneously publishing fantasies in Unknown.
Campbell continued to publish technological sf alongside the soft science fiction. One example was Cleve Cartmill's "Deadline", a story about the development of the atomic bomb. It appeared in 1944, when the Manhattan Project was still not known to the public; Cartmill used his background in atomic physics to assemble a plausible story that had strong similarities to the real-world secret research program. Military Intelligence agents called on Campbell to investigate, and were satisfied when he explained how Cartmill had been able to make so many accurate guesses. In the words of science fiction critic John Clute, "Cartmill's prediction made sf fans enormously proud", as some considered the story proof that science fiction could be predictive of the future.
==== Post-war years ====
In the late 1940s, both Thrilling Wonder and Startling Stories began to publish much more mature fiction than they had during the war, and although Astounding was still the leading magazine in the field, it was no longer the only market for the writers who had been regularly selling to Campbell. Many of the best new writers still broke into print in Astounding rather than elsewhere. Arthur C. Clarke's first story, "Loophole", appeared in the April 1946 Astounding, and another British writer, Christopher Youd, began his career with "Christmas Tree" in February 1949. Youd would become much better known under his pseudonym "John Christopher". William Tenn's first sale, "Alexander the Bait", appeared in May 1946, and H. Beam Piper's "Time and Time Again" in the April 1947 issue was his first story. Along with these newer writers, Campbell was still publishing strong material by authors who had become established during the war. Among the better-known stories of this era are "Vintage Season", by C.L. Moore (under the pseudonym Lawrence O'Donnell); Jack Williamson's story "With Folded Hands"; The Players of Null-A, van Vogt's sequel to The World of Null-A; and the final book in E.E. Smith's Lensman series, Children of the Lens.
In the November 1948 issue, Campbell published a letter to the editor by a reader named Richard A. Hoen that contained a detailed ranking of the contents of an issue "one year in the future". Campbell went along with the joke and contracted stories from most of the authors mentioned in the letter that would follow the Hoen's imaginary story titles. One of the best-known stories from that issue is "Gulf", by Heinlein. Other stories and articles were written by some of the most famous authors of the time: Asimov, Sturgeon, del Rey, van Vogt, de Camp, and the astronomer R. S. Richardson.
==== 1950s and 1960s ====
By 1950, Campbell's strong personality had led him into conflict with some of his leading writers, some of whom abandoned Astounding as a result. The launch of both The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Galaxy Science Fiction in 1949 and 1950, respectively, marked the end of Astounding's dominance of science fiction, with many now regarding Galaxy as the leading magazine. Campbell's growing interest in pseudoscience also damaged his reputation in the field. Campbell was deeply involved with the launch of Dianetics, publishing Hubbard's first article on it in Astounding in May 1950, and promoting it heavily in the months beforehand; later in the decade he championed psionics and antigravity devices.
Although these enthusiasms diminished Campbell's reputation, Astounding continued to publish some popular and influential science fiction. In 1953, Campbell serialized Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, described by John Clute and David Langford as "one of the best-loved novels in sf", and in 1954 Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" appeared. The story, about a girl who stows away on a spaceship, generated much reader debate, and has been described as capturing the ethos of Campbell's Astounding. The spaceship is carrying urgently needed medical supplies to a planet in distress, and has a single pilot; the ship does not have enough fuel to reach the planet if the girl stays on the ship, so the "cold equations" of physics force the pilot to jettison the girl, killing her.
Later in the 1950s and early 1960s writers like Gordon R. Dickson, Poul Anderson, and Harry Harrison appeared regularly in the magazine. Frank Herbert's Dune was serialized in Analog in two separate sequences, in 1963 and 1965, and soon became "one of the most famous of all sf novels", according to Malcolm Edwards and John Clute. 1965 marked the year Campbell received his eighth Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine; this was the last one he would win.
=== Bova ===
Bova, like Campbell, was a technophile with a scientific background, and he declared early in his tenure that he wanted Analog to continue to focus on stories with a scientific foundation, though he also made it clear that change was inevitable. Over his first few months some long-time readers sent in letters of complaint when they judged that Bova was not living up to Campbell's standards, particularly when sex scenes began to appear. On one occasion—Jack Wodhams' story "Foundling Fathers", and its accompanying illustration by Kelly Freas—it turned out that Campbell had bought the story in question. As the 1970s went on, Bova continued to publish authors such as Anderson, Dickson, and Christopher Anvil, who had appeared regularly during Campbell's tenure, but he also attracted authors who had not been able to sell to Campbell, such as Gene Wolfe, Roger Zelazny, and Harlan Ellison. Frederik Pohl, who later commented in his autobiography about his difficulties in selling to Campbell, appeared in the March 1972 issue with "The Gold at the Starbow's End", which was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and that summer Joe Haldeman's "Hero" appeared. This was the first story in Haldeman's "Forever War" sequence; Campbell had rejected it, listing multiple reasons including the frequent use of profanity and the implausibility of men and women serving in combat together. Bova asked to see it again and ran it without asking for changes. Other new writers included Spider Robinson, whose first sale was "The Guy With the Eyes" in the February 1973 issue; George R.R. Martin, with "A Song for Lya", in June 1974; and Orson Scott Card, with "Ender's Game", in the August 1977 issue.
Two of the cover artists who had been regular contributors under Campbell, Kelly Freas and John Schoenherr, continued to appear after Bova took over, and Bova also began to regularly feature covers by Rick Sternbach and Vincent Di Fate. Jack Gaughan, who had had a poor relationship with Campbell, sold several covers to Bova. Bova won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor for five consecutive years, 1973 through 1977.
=== Schmidt ===
Stanley Schmidt was an assistant professor of physics when he became editor of Analog, and his scientific background was well-suited to the magazine's readership. He avoided making drastic changes, and continued the long-standing tradition of writing provocative editorials, though he rarely discussed science fiction. In 1979 he resurrected "Probability Zero", a feature that Campbell had run in the early 1940s that published tall tales—humorous stories with ludicrous or impossible scientific premises. Also in 1979 Schmidt began a series of columns titled "The Alternate View", an opinion column that was written in alternate issues by G. Harry Stine and Jerry Pournelle, and which is still a feature of the magazine as of 2016, though now with different contributors. The stable of fiction contributors remained largely unchanged from Bova's day, and included many names, such as Poul Anderson, Gordon R. Dickson, and George O. Smith, familiar to readers from the Campbell era. This continuity led to criticisms within the field, Bruce Sterling writing in 1984 that the magazine "has become old, dull, and drivelling... It is a situation screaming for reform. Analog no longer permits itself to be read." The magazine thrived nevertheless, and though part of the increase in circulation during the early 1980s may have been due to Davis Publications' energetic efforts to increase subscriptions, Schmidt knew what his readership wanted and made sure they got it, commenting in 1985: "I reserve Analog for the kind of science fiction I've described here: good stories about people with problems in which some piece of plausible (or at least not demonstrably implausible) speculative science plays an indispensable role".
Over the decades of Schmidt's editorship, many writers became regular contributors, including Arlan Andrews, Catherine Asaro, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Michael Flynn, Geoffrey A. Landis, Paul Levinson, Robert J. Sawyer, Charles Sheffield and Harry Turtledove. Schmidt never won an editing Hugo while in charge of the magazine, but after he resigned he won the 2013 Hugo for Editor Short Form.
=== Quachri ===
Schmidt retired in August 2012, and his place was taken by Trevor Quachri, who mostly continued the editorial policies of Schmidt. Starting in January 2017, the publication became bimonthly. In 2025, the magazine introduced "Unknowns," a puzzle column edited by Alec Nevala-Lee, that featured "science-fictional puzzles from notable constructors."
== Bibliographic details ==
Editorial history at Astounding and Analog:
Harry Bates, January 1930 – March 1933
F. Orlin Tremaine, October 1933 – October 1937
John W. Campbell, Jr., October 1937 – December 1971
Ben Bova, January 1972 – November 1978
Stanley Schmidt, December 1978 – August 2012
Trevor Quachri, September 2012 – present
Astounding was published in pulp format until the January 1942 issue, when it switched to bedsheet. It reverted to pulp for six issues, starting in May 1943, and then became the first of the genre sf magazines to be published in digest format, beginning with the November 1943 issue. The format remained unchanged until Condé Nast produced 25 bedsheet issues of Analog between March 1963 and March 1965, after which it returned to digest format. In May 1998, and again in December 2008, the format was changed to be slightly larger than the usual digest size: first to 8.25 x 5.25 in (210 x 135 mm), and then to 8.5 x 5.75 in (217 x 148 mm).
The magazine was originally titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science; this was shortened to Astounding Stories from February 1931 to November 1932, and the longer title returned for the three Clayton issues at the start of 1933. The Street & Smith issues began as Astounding Stories, and changed to Astounding Science-Fiction in March 1938. The hyphen disappeared in November 1946, and the title then remained unchanged until 1960, when the title Analog Science Fact & Fiction was phased in between February and October (i.e., the words "Astounding" and "Analog" both appeared on the cover, with "Analog" gradually increasing in prominence over the months, culminating in the name "Astounding" being completely dropped.) In April 1965 the subtitle was reversed, so that the magazine became Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and it has remained unchanged since then, though it has undergone several stylistic and orthographic variations.
As of 2016, the sequence of prices over the magazine's history is as follows:
=== Circulation figures ===
=== Overseas editions ===
A British edition published by Atlas Publishing and Distributing Company ran from August 1939 until August 1963, initially in pulp format, switching to digest from November 1953. The pulp issues began at 96 pages, then dropped to 80 pages with the March 1940 issue, and to 64 pages in December that year. All the digest issues were 128 pages long. The price was 9d until October 1953; thereafter it was 1/6 until February 1961, and 2/6 until the end of the run. The material in the British editions was selected from the U.S. issues, most stories coming from a single U.S. number, and other stories picked from earlier or later issues to fill the magazine. The covers were usually repainted from the American originals.
An Italian magazine, Scienza Fantastica, published seven issues from April 1952 to March 1953, the contents drawn mostly from Astounding, along with some original stories. The editor was Lionello Torossi, and the publisher was Editrice Krator. Another Italian edition, called Analog Fantascienza, was published by Phoenix Enterprise in 1994/1995, for a total of five issues. Danish publisher Skrifola produced six issues of Planetmagazinet in 1958; it carried reprints, mostly from Astounding, and was edited by Knud Erik Andersen.
A German anthology series of recent 1980s stories from Analog was published in eight volumes by Pabel-Moewig Verlag from October 1981 up to June 1984.
=== Anthologies ===
Anthologies of stories from Astounding or Analog include:
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Sources ==
Aldiss, Brian W.; Wingrove, David (1986). Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. ISBN 0-575-03943-4.
Ashley, Mike (1985). "Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact: IV: The Post-Campbell Years". In Tymn, Marshall B.; Ashley, Mike (eds.). Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 88–96. ISBN 0-313-21221-X.
Ashley, Mike (2000). The Time Machines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazines from the Beginning to 1950. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-865-0.
Ashley, Mike (2004). "The Gernsback Days". In Ashley, Mike; Lowndes, Robert A.W. (eds.). The Gernsback Days: A Study of the Evolution of Modern Science Fiction from 1911 to 1936. Holicong, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press. pp. 16–254. ISBN 0-8095-1055-3.
Ashley, Mike (2005). Transformations: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-779-4.
Ashley, Mike (2007). Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-84631-003-4.
Ashley, Mike (2016). Science Fiction Rebels: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1981 to 1990. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-78138-260-8.
Berger, Albert I. (1985). "Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact: Parts I–III". In Tymn, Marshall B.; Ashley, Mike (eds.). Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 60–88. ISBN 0-313-21221-X.
Berger, Albert I.; Ashley, Mike (1985). "Information Sources & Publication History". In Tymn, Marshall B.; Ashley, Mike (eds.). Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 99–103. ISBN 0-313-21221-X.
Hersey, Harold (1937). Pulpwood Editor. New York: F.A. Stokes. OCLC 2770489.
Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E.; Derleth, August; Lovecraft, H.P. (2008). Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. New York: Hippocampus Press. ISBN 978-0-9793806-4-8.
Rogers, Alva (1970). A Requiem for Astounding. Chicago: Advent. ISBN 0911682082.
Remar, Frits; Schiøler, Carsten (1985). "Denmark". In Tymn, Marshall B.; Ashley, Mike (eds.). Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 855–856. ISBN 0-313-21221-X.
Montanari, Gianni; de Turres, Gianfranco (1985). "Italy". In Tymn, Marshall B.; Ashley, Mike (eds.). Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 872–884. ISBN 0-313-21221-X.
Williamson, Jack (1977). The Legion of Time. London: Sphere. ISBN 0-7221-9175-8.
== External links ==
Analog Science Fiction and Fact official web site
Astounding/Analog bibliography at ISFDB
"Collection: Astounding Stories / Analog | Georgia Tech Archives Finding Aids". finding-aids.library.gatech.edu.
=== Public domain texts ===
First year (1930) of Astounding at the Internet Archive
Second year (1931) of Astounding at the Internet Archive
Third year (1932) of Astounding at the Internet Archive
First two issues of 1933 of Astounding at the Internet Archive
Astounding Stories Bookshelf at Project Gutenberg
Astounding Stories public domain audiobook at LibriVox
The Pulp Magazines Project | Wikipedia/Astounding_Science_Fiction |
Science fiction films
This is a list of science fiction films organized chronologically. These films have been released to a cinema audience by the commercial film industry and are widely distributed with reviews by reputable
critics. (The exception are the films on the made-for-TV list, which are normally not released to a cinema audience.) This includes silent film–era releases, serial films, and feature-length films. All of the films include core elements of science fiction, but can cross into other genres such as drama, mystery, action, horror, fantasy, and comedy.
Among the listed movies are films that have won motion-picture and science fiction awards as well as films that have been listed among the worst movies ever made, or have won one or more Golden Raspberry Awards. Critically distinguished films are indicated by footnotes in the listings.
== Lists by decade ==
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
"Movie Listings by Genre: Sci-Fi", Films and TV, archived from the original on 2013-01-22, retrieved 2011-08-19 Note: select a decade.
"Science Fiction", Cult Film Site, Scorched Earth Productions, retrieved 2011-08-18
Best Movies, retrieved 2011-12-19
Science Fiction Movies, retrieved 2019-11-18 | Wikipedia/Lists_of_science_fiction_films |
Christian science fiction is a subgenre of both Christian literature and science fiction, in which there are strong Christian themes, or which are written from a Christian point of view. These themes may be subtle, expressed by way of analogy, or more explicit. Major influences include early science fiction authors such as C. S. Lewis, while more recent figures include Stephen Lawhead.
The term is not usually applied to works simply because most or all of the characters are Christian, or simply because the author is Christian.
== Influences ==
While earlier works such as Victor Rousseau's The Messiah of the Cylinder (1917) are regarded as part of the Christian science fiction subgenre, John Mort argues that the most influential Christian science fiction author was C. S. Lewis, a "prolific writer who wrote works of Christian science fiction and theology for the average person." In When World Views Collide: A Study in Imagination and Evolution, John J. Pierce presents the argument that Lewis was partially writing in response to what Lewis saw as "Wellsianity" - an "anthropocentric evolutionary mythology" - which he came to view as both false and blasphemous, condemning H. G. Wells' world view through works such as Out of the Silent Planet. While the extent to which Lewis' influence varies, Mort points in particular to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time as a Christian science fiction work which, as he puts it, cannot be read "without being reminded of Lewis' Narnia stories." (Of course, Narnia was fantasy rather than science fiction, but Mort is noting the similarities in style and execution of the story.) Other early authors identified by Mort as being influences upon the development of Christian science fiction include J. R. R. Tolkien, George MacDonald and Charles Williams. (Although, again, these writers worked in fantasy, their influence on Christian science fiction is clear, Mort argues.)
== Notable authors ==
C. S. Lewis, whose The Space Trilogy is regarded as one of the most influential works in the subgenre.
Stephen Lawhead, although he is better known for his fantasy novels than his science fiction works.
Madeleine L'Engle, especially in regard to her novel A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels, first published in 1962.
Walker Percy with his Christian science fiction work Love in the Ruins.
Kathy Tyers, author of the Firebird series.
Gene Wolfe, author of e.g. The Book of the New Sun, who is noted for the strong influence of his Catholic faith, to which he converted after marrying a Catholic.
Chris Walley and his "Lamb Among the Stars" trilogy.
Walter M. Miller Jr., the author of A Canticle for Leibowitz
Robert Hugh Benson, the author of Lord of the World
Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins with their Left Behind series.
Connie Willis, who explores free will and predestination especially in her time travel novels.
Zenna Henderson and her stories about "The People."
== Criticism ==
Mort argues that one of the difficulties facing Christian science fiction authors who endorse Creationism - especially those writing "hard" science fiction - is reconciling the limits placed on the author in exploring science within a Creationist framework. This is made even more problematic when one considers that the notion of "the future as divinely ordered" limits the author's ability to speculate on what that future may be. For example, the first of these difficulties has been identified by Pierce as a problem with some of R. A. Lafferty's work, who "is uncomfortable with the idea of even biological evolution"; while Tom Doyle notes the predictability of the Christian apocalyptic novel, due, he argues, to the genre following "a particular interpretation of biblical prophecy".
These difficulties raise concerns regarding genre boundaries: while Christian science fiction has been identified as a specific market into which stories can be sold, Doyle has questioned whether or not books that are, at times, classified in this subgenre truly fit. In examining Christian apocalyptic fiction, Doyle notes that it is often classified as Christian science fiction, but argues that this classification is inappropriate. While both may employ scientific themes, Christian apocalyptic fiction is not, as he describes it, "scientifically minded", arguing that the authors tend to respond to scientific problems "with biblical authority, prophetic interpretation, and fundamentalist ideas of human identity instead of rational argument, scientific method, and humanistic thought". Doyle sees Brian Caldwell's We All Fall Down as an exception to his argument, suggesting that (despite being a work of Christian apocalyptic fiction) it is the sort of work that he would like to see classified as science fiction.
It should however be noted that not all Christian science fiction authors have the same theology.
== See also ==
List of Catholic Science Fiction and Fantasy authors
List of Protestant Science Fiction and Fantasy authors
List of science fiction literature with Messiah figures
Theological fiction
Biblical speculative fiction
== Footnotes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Christian Fandom Home Page—Nondenominational (albeit fundamentalist in tendency) fellowship of fans interested in fair, accurate representation of orthodox Christian viewpoints with an emphasis on science fiction and fantasy (includes horror and western genres as well).
Where the Map Ends— site for all genres of Christian speculative fiction; includes booklist, interviews, and writer's helps. | Wikipedia/Christian_science_fiction |
Science fiction in Spanish-language literature has its roots in authors such as Antonio de Guevara with The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius (1527), Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote (1605/1615), Anastasio Pantaleón de Ribera's Vejamen de la luna (Satirical tract on the Moon, 1626/1634), Luis Vélez de Guevara's El Diablo Cojuelo (The Limping Devil, 1641) and Antonio Enríquez Gómez's La torre de Babilonia (The Tower of Babylon, 1647).
In the 20th century, magazines such as Nueva Dimensión and Narraciones Terroríficas (the Spanish-language version of Weird Tales) popularized science fiction among Spanish speakers worldwide.
== History ==
Spanish science fiction starts mid 19th century; depending on how it is defined, Lunigrafía (1855) from M. Krotse or Una temporada en el más bello de los planetas from Tirso Aguimana de Veca — a trip to Saturn published in 1870-1871, but written in the 1840s — is the first science fiction novel. As such, science fiction was very popular in the second half of the 19th century, but mainly produced alternate history and post-apocalyptic futures, written by some of the most important authors of the generations of '98 and '14. The influence of Verne also produced some singular works, like Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau's El anacronópete (1887), a
story about time travel that predates the publication of The Chronic Argonauts by H. G. Wells; Rafael Zamora y Pérez de Urría's Crímenes literarios (1906), that describes robots and a "brain machine" very similar to our modern laptops; or Frederich Pujulà i Vallès' Homes artificials (1912), the first Science Fiction book in Catalan, and the first in Spain about "artificial people". But the most prolific were Coronel Ignotus, and Coronel Sirius, who published their adventures in the magazine Biblioteca Novelesco-Científica. The 19th century literature up to the Spanish Civil War saw no less than four fictional trips to the Moon, one to Venus, five to Mars, one to Jupiter, and one to Saturn.
The Spanish Civil War devastated this rich literary landscape. With few exceptions, only the arrival of pulp science fiction in the 1950s would reintroduce the genre in Spanish literature. The space opera series La Saga de los Aznar (1953-1958 and 1973-1978) by Pascual Enguídanos received the European SF Award for Best Cycle of Novels at the Eurocon in Brussels in 1978. Also in the 1950s started the radio serial for children Diego Valor; inspired by Dan Dare, the serial produced 1200 episodes of 15 min., and spun a comic (1954-1964), three theater plays (1956-1959) and the first Spanish Science Fiction TV series (1958), that has been lost.
Modern, prospective, self-aware science fiction crystallized in the 1970s around the magazine Nueva Dimensión (1968-1983), and its editor Domingo Santos, one of the most important Spanish Science Fiction authors of the time. Other important authors of the 70s and 80s are Manuel de Pedrolo (Mecanoscrit del segon origen, 1974), Carlos Saiz Cidoncha (La caída del Imperio galáctico, 1978), Gabriel Bermúdez Castillo (El Señor de la Rueda, 1978), Rafael Marín (Lágrimas de luz, 1984), Andreu Martín (Ahogos y Palpitaciones, 1987), and Juan Miguel Aguilera (the Akasa-Puspa saga, 1988-2005). In the 1990s the genre exploded with the creation many small dedicated fanzines, important Science Fiction prizes, and the convention HispaCon; Elia Barceló (El mundo de Yarek, 1992), became the most prolific, and possibly the best Science Fiction author from Spain. Other recent authors are Eduardo Vaquerizo (Danza de tinieblas, 2005), Félix J. Palma (The Victorian trilogy, 2008-2014), and Carlos Sisí (Panteón, 2013).
Spain has been continuously producing Science Fiction films since the 1960s, at a rate of 5 to 10 per decade. The 1970s was specially prolific; the director, and screenwriter Juan Piquer Simón is the most important figure of fantaterror, producing a few low budget Science Fiction films. La cabina (1972) is the most awarded Spanish TV production in history. In the 90s Acción mutante (1992) by Álex de la Iglesia, and Abre los ojos (1997) by Alejandro Amenábar, represent a watershed in Spanish Science Fiction filming, with a quality that would not be reached again until Los cronocrímenes (2007) by Nacho Vigalondo. The most important Science Fiction TV series produced in Spain is El ministerio del tiempo (2015-2020), even though Mañana puede ser verdad (1964-1964) by Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, and Plutón BRB Nero (2008-2009), should also be mentioned.
== See also ==
Ciencia ficción española Spanish Wikipedia page for Spanish science fiction in Spain.
== References ==
== External links ==
20minutos Newspaper List: Science Fiction Books in Spanish
Sci-Fi Books in Spanish
Spain in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Pulp SciFi List about Latin and Spanish Science Fiction
Novelas de ciencia ficción en español at the National Library of Spain. | Wikipedia/Spanish_science_fiction |
Science fiction theatre includes live dramatic works, but generally not cinema or television programmes. It has long been overshadowed by its literary and broadcast counterparts, but has an extensive history, and via the play R.U.R. introduced the word robot into global usage.
== Background ==
Ralph Willingham in his 1993 study Science Fiction and the Theatre catalogued 328 plays with sf elements, several of which were adaptations. Christos Callow Jr created the Internet Science Fiction Theatre Database in 2018 including mainly 21st century plays that feature elements of science fiction, fantasy and horror. In addition to productions of individual plays, the science fiction theatre festival Sci-Fest LA was launched in Los Angeles in 2014, and the festivals of Otherworld and Talos: Science Fiction Theatre Festival of London were both launched in 2015 in Chicago and in London, UK respectively.
Posle milijon godina (After Million of Years), written by Dragutin Ilić in 1889, is considered the first science fiction theatrical play in the history of the world literature.
== Chronological selection of science fiction plays ==
Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein adapted from Mary Shelley's novel of the same name by Richard Brinsley Peake, 1823
Journey Through the Impossible by Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery, 1882
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson's novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Thomas Russell Sullivan, 1887
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde an unauthorised adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by John McKinney, 1888
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Or a Mis-Spent Life adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson's novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Luella Forepaugh and George F. Fish, 1897
R.U.R. by Karel Čapek, 1920
The Blue Flame by George V. Hobart and John Willard, 1920
Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw, 1922
The Makropulos Affair by Karel Čapek, 1922
The Bedbug by Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1929
The Bathhouse by Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1930
Night of the Auk by Arch Oboler, 1956
Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco, 1959
The Bedsitting Room by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus, 1962
The Curse of the Daleks by David Whitaker and Terry Nation, 1965
Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday by Terrence Dicks, 1974
Starstruck by Elaine Lee, 1980
Henceforward... by Alan Ayckbourn, 1987
A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music by Anthony Burgess adapted from his novel of the same name, 1987
Greenland by Howard Brenton, 1988
Doctor Who – The Ultimate Adventure by Terrence Dicks, 1989
They're Made Out of Meat by Terry Bisson, 1991 short story later adapted by author as a play
Communicating Doors by Alan Ayckbourn, 1994
Comic Potential by Alan Ayckbourn, 1998
Whenever by Alan Ayckbourn, 2000
Far Away by Caryl Churchill, 2000
A Number by Caryl Churchill, 2004
My Sister Sadie by Alan Ayckbourn, 2003
The Cut by Mark Ravenhill, 2004
Mercury Fur by Philip Ridley, 2005
Klingon Christmas Carol by Christopher Kidder-Mostrom and Sasha Warren, 2007
Really Old, Like Forty Five by Tamsin Oglesby, 2010
A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky by David Eldridge, Robert Holman and Simon Stephens, 2010
Earthquakes in London by Mike Bartlett, 2010
Doctor Who Live by Will Brenton and Gareth Roberts, 2010
Frankenstein adapted from Mary Shelley's novel of the same name by Nick Dear, 2011
Future Shock by Richard Stockwell, 2011
The Nether by Jennifer Haley, 2011
The Crash of the Elysium by Tom MacRae, 2011
Constellations by Nick Payne, 2012
Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn, 2012
Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth adapted by Richard Schenkman from Jerome Bixby's film of the same name
1984 adapted from George Orwell's novel of the same name by Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan, 2013
King Charles III by Mike Bartlett, 2014
Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison, 2014
The Future Boys Trilogy by Stephen Jordan, 2012-2015
Game by Mike Bartlett, 2015
Elegy by Nick Payne, 2016
Solaris adapted from Stanisław Lem's novel of the same name by David Greig, 2019
== Research ==
There is generally little research on science fiction theatre, but a notable exception is "Science Fiction and the Theatre" by Ralph Willingham and the international conference series on science fiction theatre, "Stage the Future." Contemporary dramatic science fiction scholar Dr. Ian Farnell, examines how science fiction narratives, themes and images have emerged as an evolving dramatic strategy for engaging twenty-first century critical discourse. His work discussing portrayals of A.I. and robotics in caregiving and medical settings, highlights the importance of continued inquiry into the challenges presented by science fiction works, and the unique possibilities for staging and intervening upon these issues through the medium of theatre. Other research projects include the Robot Theatre project by Louise LePage.
== See also ==
Science fiction opera
== References ==
== Sources ==
Willingham, Ralph. Science Fiction and the Theatre. London: Greenwood Press, 1993 | Wikipedia/Science_fiction_theatre |
With the growth of science fiction studies as an academic discipline as well as a popular media genre, a number of libraries, museums, archives, and special collections have been established to collect and organize works of scholarly and historical value in the field.
== Key collections ==
The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculation is a leading collection of science fiction. It was founded in Toronto in 1970 by Judith Merril. This public library collection contains over 63,000 items, including books, magazines, audiovisual works, original manuscripts, and other items of interest to both casual users and academic researchers.
Paul Allen and Jody Patton founded the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in 2004, located at the base of Space Needle in Seattle. Prominent authors such as Greg Bear serve as advisers to the museum.
An important museum of the genre is Maison d’Ailleurs ("House of Elsewhere") in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, housing a large collection of literature relating to science fiction, utopias, and extraordinary journeys. It was founded by the French encyclopedist Pierre Versins in 1976 and now owns over 70,000 books, as well as many other items (60,000) related to science fiction and its imagery.
== List of archives, libraries, museums, and collections ==
=== Research collections ===
Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library lending library of over 20,000 volumes of speculative fiction at Eastern New Mexico University. Includes archival materials from authors.
J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Utopian Literature (University of California, Riverside) (Collection description)
The Science Fiction Foundation Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool
M. Horvat Collection of Science Fiction Fanzines, University of Iowa Libraries, Special Collections Dept.
H.G Wells Literary Papers at The Rare Book & Manuscript Library (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
The Judith Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, Toronto Public Library (founded 1970)
Michigan State University Libraries, Science Fiction Collection; includes collection of Tiptree Award, Clarion archives, and Science Fiction Writers of America depository
MIT Science Fiction Society ("the world's largest open-shelf collection of science fiction"); local index
Caltech S.P.E.C.T.R.E. lending library of over 12,000 volumes of speculative fiction at the California Institute of Technology
Paskow Science Fiction Collection, Temple University Libraries (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), including a significant collection of fanzines
University of Maryland Baltimore County, ca. 10,000 book volumes and serials, and the Coslet Collection of 15,000 SF fanzines
Maison d’Ailleurs ("House of Elsewhere"), Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland (founded 1976 and holding more than 40,000 books and other items)
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Collection Northern Illinois University. Science Fiction Writers of America depository, pulps, and collects the papers of current SF authors.
University of Delaware's Special Collections, including the "Roland Bounds Science Fiction Collection" (30,000 volumes)
Georgia Tech's "Bud Foote Science Fiction Collection" (established 1999; 8,000+ volumes)
Texas A&M University's "Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection" (More than 20,000 titles and "over ninety percent of the American science fiction pulp magazines published prior to 1980")
San Diego State University's "Elizabeth Chater Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy"
Seoul Science Fiction & Fantasy Library
Science Fiction Collections at the University of South Florida
Science Fiction Collections at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas
Phantastische Bibliothek Wetzlar, Germany (270,000 volumes of speculative fiction, mainly in German, including a significant collection of pulp magazines and fanzines)
Villa Fantastica, Vienna, Austria public library founded 2010 by de:Helmuth W. Mommers, holding 50,000 volumes mainly in German, including a broad collection of German "Dime Novels"
University of Oslo Science Library (8,000 volumes of science fiction as of 2017)
Murdoch University Science Fiction Collection (including over 13,000 book titles and a significant number of fanzines)
J. Francis McComas Science Fiction Collection, San Francisco Public Library
The University of Alabama in Huntsville Special Collections and Archives collects science fiction in English and German and has archival collections from Willy Ley and Robert Forward.
City Tech Science Fiction Collection, Ursula C. Schwerin Library, New York City College of Technology
The University of Calgary Bob Gibson Collection of Speculative Fiction is a collection of 28,000 hardcover books, paperbacks, pulp magazines and other materials collected by the late Bob (William Robert) Gibson and donated by his son Andrew. These items can be viewed in the archive and portions of the collection have been digitized.
Popular culture collections with strong SF
Bowling Green State University Popular Culture Collection
Dime Novel and Story Paper Collection, Stanford University Library ("Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls")
=== Museums ===
Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, Seattle, Washington, founded in 2004.
Maison d’Ailleurs ("House of Elsewhere"), Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland (founded 1976 and holding more than 70,000 books and 60,000 other items)
Museum of Science Fiction, Washington, DC, founded in 2013 with a goal of becoming the world's first comprehensive science fiction museum.
=== Important databases and portals ===
SF Hub, the University of Liverpool Library's "Science Fiction Foundation" collection
Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Database, Texas A&M University, College Station; A freely available online resource (more than 145,000 items) designed to help students and researchers locate secondary sources for the study of the science fiction and fantasy and associated genres; these include: historical material; books; articles; news reports; interviews; film reviews; commentary; and fan writing.
Center for the Study of Science Fiction, University of Kansas
ISFDB, the Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase
Locus Index to Science Fiction (1984-1999)
Map of major SF Archival Collections maintained by The Eaton Journal of Archival Research in Science Fiction
SF Archival Collections Wiki, a growing wiki of the locations of SF writers' papers, crowd-sourced by librarians.
== References == | Wikipedia/Science_fiction_libraries_and_museums |
Science Fiction Studies (SFS) is an academic journal founded in 1973 by R. D. Mullen. The journal is published three times per year at DePauw University. As the name implies, the journal publishes articles and book reviews on science fiction, but also occasionally on fantasy and horror when the topic also covers some aspect of science fiction as well. Known as one of the major academic publications of its type, Science Fiction Studies is considered the most "theoretical" of the academic journals that publish on science fiction.
== History ==
SFS has had three different institutional homes during its lifetime. It was founded in 1973 at Indiana State University by the late English professor Dr. R. D. Mullen, where it remained for approximately five years. In 1978, it moved to McGill University and then to Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where it was supported by a Canadian government grant until 1991. SFS was brought back to Indiana to DePauw University in 1992 where it has remained ever since. The parent company of SFS is SF-TH Inc., a not-for-profit corporation established under the laws of the State of Indiana. Dr. Arthur B. Evans (DePauw University) serves as president of SF-TH Inc. and managing editor of SFS. The other senior editors of SFS are Dr. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay (DePauw University), Dr. Joan Gordon (Nassau Community College), Dr. Veronica Hollinger (Trent University), Dr. Carol McGuirk (Florida Atlantic University), Dr. Lisa Swanstrom (University of Utah), and Dr. Sherryl Vint (University of California at Riverside).
== Peer review ==
SFS is refereed, selective (its acceptance rate averages around 37%), and its 900+ subscription base includes institutions and individuals in the US and Canada and more than 30 foreign countries. SFS has been called the world's most respected journal for the critical study of science fiction. Recognized as having brought a rigorous theoretical focus to the study of this popular genre, SFS has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, where Jim Zook noted that "Since its founding... Science Fiction Studies has charted the course for the most hard-core science fiction critics and comparatists. That focus has earned the journal its reputation as the most theoretical scholarly publication in the field, as well as the most daring". SFS has also been reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement, where Paul Kincaid compared the world's three principal learned journals that focus on science fiction: Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation (published at the University of Texas, Brownsville), and Foundation (published at the University of Liverpool, UK). He concluded that "Science Fiction Studies ... has always been resolutely academic, the articles always peer-reviewed ..., and with an uncompromising approach to the complexities of critical theory". On top of being the most theoretically sophisticated journal in the field, SFS also has the broadest coverage of science fiction outside the English language, with special issues on Science Fiction in France, Post-Soviet SF, Japanese SF, and Latin American SF.
== Format ==
SFS appears three times per year (March, July, and November) and averages 200 pages in length. A representative issue contains 5–8 articles ranging in length from 5,000 to 15,000 words, 2–3 review-essays, two dozen book reviews covering scholarly works, plus a substantial Notes and Correspondence section. Special issues follow the same format but are usually guest-edited. Recent special issue topics include Technoculture and Science Fiction, Afrofuturism, Latin American Science Fiction, Animal Studies and Science Fiction, Science Fiction and Sexuality, Italian Science Fiction, Digital Science Fiction, and Spanish Science Fiction, among others. A regular rotation of open and special issues has characterized the journal's publication schedule from the outset: roughly one-third of its 130+ issues have been special issues. These special issues often have a major impact on the field, setting critical agendas and initiating debates. Guest editors are drawn from the consulting board of 35 scholars, representing in their expertise the international scope of the field.
SFS offers both print and electronic subscriptions via the SFS Store on its website. A subscription is also included with membership in the Science Fiction Research Association.
== See also ==
Extrapolation
Femspec
Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction
== References ==
== External links ==
Official site | Wikipedia/Science_Fiction_Studies |
The anthropologist Leon E. Stover says of science fiction's relationship to anthropology: "Anthropological science fiction enjoys the philosophical luxury of providing answers to the question "What is man?" while anthropology the science is still learning how to frame it".: 472 The editors of a collection of anthropological SF stories observed that fiction writers are more free to speculate than scientists:
Anthropology is the science of man. It tells the story from ape-man to spaceman, attempting to describe in detail all the epochs of this continuing history. Writers of fiction, and in particular science fiction, peer over the anthropologists' shoulders as the discoveries are made, then utilize the material in fictional works. Where the scientist must speculate reservedly from known fact and make a small leap into the unknown, the writer is free to soar high on the wings of fancy.: 12
Charles F. Urbanowicz, Professor of Anthropology, California State University, Chico has said of anthropology and SF:
Anthropology and science fiction often present data and ideas so bizarre and unusual that readers, in their first confrontation with both, often fail to appreciate either science fiction or anthropology. Intelligence does not merely consist of fact, but in the integration of ideas -- and ideas can come from anywhere, especially good science fiction!
The difficulty in describing category boundaries for "anthropological SF" is illustrated by a reviewer of an anthology of anthropological SF, written for the journal American Anthropologist, which warned against too broad a definition of the subgenre, saying: "Just because a story has anthropologists as protagonists or makes vague references to 'culture' does not qualify it as anthropological science fiction, although it may be 'pop' anthropology." The writer concluded the book review with the opinion that only "twelve of the twenty-six selections can be considered as examples of anthropological science fiction.": 798
This difficulty of categorization explains the exclusions necessary when seeking the origins of the subgenre. Thus:
Nineteenth-century utopian writings and lost-race sagas notwithstanding, anthropological science fiction is generally considered a late-twentieth-century phenomenon, best exemplified by the work of writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Bishop, Joanna Russ, Ian Watson, and Chad Oliver.: 243
Again, questions of description are not simple as Gary Westfahl observes:
... others present hard science fiction as the most rigorous and intellectually demanding form of science fiction, implying that those who do not produce it are somehow failing to realize the true potential of science fiction. This is objectionable ...; writers like Chad Oliver and Ursula K. Le Guin, for example, bring to their writing a background in anthropology that makes their extrapolated aliens and future societies every bit as fascinating and intellectually involving as the technological marvels and strange planets of hard science fiction. Because anthropology is a social science, not a natural science, it is hard to classify their works as hard science fiction, but one cannot justly construe this observation as a criticism.: 189
Despite being described as a "late-twentieth-century phenomenon" (above) anthropological SF's roots can be traced further back in history. H. G. Wells (1866–1946) has been called "the Shakespeare of SF": 133 and his first anthropological story has been identified by anthropologist Leon E. Stover as "The Grisly Folk". Stover notes that this story is about Neanderthal Man, and writing in 1973,: 472 continues: "[the story] opens with the line 'Can these bones live?' Writers are still trying to make them live, the latest being Golding. Some others in between have been de Camp, Del Rey, Farmer, and Klass."
A more contemporary example of the Neanderthal as subject is Robert J. Sawyer's trilogy "The Neanderthal Parallax" – here "scientists from an alternative earth in which Neanderthals superseded homo sapiens cross over to our world. The series as a whole allows Sawyer to explore questions of evolution and humanity's relationship to the environment.": 317
== Authors and works ==
=== Chad Oliver ===
Anthropological science fiction is best exemplified by the work of writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Bishop, Joanna Russ, Ian Watson, and Chad Oliver. Of this pantheon, Oliver is alone in being also a professional anthropologist, author of academic tomes such as Ecology and Cultural Continuity as Contributing Factors in the Social Organization of the Plains Indians (1962) and The Discovery of Anthropology (1981) in addition to his anthropologically inflected science fiction. Although he tried, in a superficial way, to separate these two aspects of his career, signing his anthropology texts with his given name "Symmes C. Oliver", he nonetheless saw them as productively interrelated. "I like to think," he commented in a 1984 interview, "that there's a kind of feedback ... that the kind of open-minded perspective in science fiction conceivably has made me a better anthropologist. And on the other side of the coin, the kind of rigor that anthropology has, conceivably has made me a better science fiction writer.": 243
Thus "Oliver's Unearthly Neighbors (1960) highlights the methods of ethnographic fieldwork by imagining their application to a nonhuman race on another world. His Blood's a Rover (1955 [1952]) spells out the problems of applied anthropology by sending a technical-assistance team to an underdeveloped planet. His Rite of Passage (1966 [1954]) is a lesson in the patterning of culture, how humans everywhere unconsciously work out a blueprint for living. Anthropological wisdom is applied to the conscious design of a new blueprint for American society in his Mother of Necessity (1972 [1955])". Oliver's The Winds of Time is a "science fiction novel giving an excellent introduction to the field methods of descriptive linguistics".: 96
In 1993, a journal of SF criticism requested from writers and critics of SF a list of their 'most neglected' writers, and Chad Oliver was listed in three replies. Among the works chosen were: Shadows in the Sun, Unearthly Neighbors, and The Shores of Another Sea. One respondent declared that "Oliver's anthropological SF is the precursor of more recent novels by Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Bishop, and others"; another that "Chad Oliver was developing quiet, superbly crafted anthropological fictions long before anyone had heard of Le Guin; maybe his slight output and unassuming plots (and being out of print) have caused people to overlook the carefully thought-out ideas behind his fiction".
In the novel Shadows in the Sun the protagonist, Paul Ellery, is an anthropologist doing field work in the town of Jefferson Springs, Texas—a place where he discovers extraterrestrial aliens. It has been remarked that:
Not only are these aliens comprehensible in anthropological terms, but it is anthropology, rather than the physical sciences, that promises a solution to the problem of alien colonization. According to the science of anthropology, every society, regardless of its level of development, has to functionally meet certain human needs. The aliens of Jefferson Springs "had learned, long ago, that it was the cultural core that counted-the deep and underlying spirit and belief and knowledge, the tone and essence of living. Once you had that, the rest was window dressing. Not only that, but the rest, the cultural superstructure, was relatively equal in all societies (115; emphasis in original). For Ellery, the aliens are not "supermen" (a favorite Campbellian conceit): despite their fantastic technologies, they are ultimately ordinary people with the expected array of weaknesses – laziness, factionalism, arrogance – whose cultural life is as predictable as any Earth society's. Since they are not superior, they are susceptible to defeat, but the key lies not in the procurement of advanced technologies, but in the creative cultural work of Earth people themselves.: 248
A reviewer of The Shores of Another Sea finds the book "curiously flat despite its exploration of an almost mythical, and often horrific, theme".: 202 The reviewer's reaction is not surprising because, as Samuel Gerald Collins points out in the 'New Wave Anthropology' section of his comprehensive review of Chad Oliver's work: "In many ways, the novel is very much unlike Oliver's previous work; there is little moral resolution, nor is anthropology of much help in determining what motivates the aliens. In striking contrast to the familiar chumminess of the aliens in Shadows in the Sun and The Winds of Time, humans and aliens in Shores of Another Sea systematically misunderstand one another.": 253 Collins continues:
In fact, the intervening decade between Oliver's field research and the publication of Shores [1971] had been one of critical self-reflection in the field of anthropology. In the United States, qualms about the Vietnam war, together with evidence that anthropologists had been employed as spies and propagandists by the US government, prompted critiques of anthropology's role in systems of national and global power. Various strains of what came to be known as dependency theory disrupted the self-congratulatory evolutionism of modernization models, evoking and critiquing a world system whose political economy structurally mandated unequal development. Less narrowly academic works such as Vine Deloria, Jr.'s, Custer Died for Your Sins (1969), combined with the efforts of civil-rights groups like the American Indian Movement, skewered anthropology's paternalist pretensions. Two major collections of essays -- Dell Hymes's Reinventing Anthropology (1972) and Talal Asad's Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (1973) -- explored anthropology's colonial legacy and precipitated a critical engagement with the ethics and politics of ethnographic representation.: 253
At the conclusion of his essay, discussing Chad Oliver's legacy Collins says:
The lesson of Chad Oliver for sf is that his Campbell-era commitments to the power of technology, rational thinking, and the evolutionary destiny of "humanity" came to seem an enshrinement of a Western imperialist vision that needed to be transcended, through a rethinking of otherness driven by anthropological theory and practice. Above all, Oliver's career speaks to many of the shared impulses and assumptions of anthropology and sf, connections that have only grown more multifarious and complex since his death in 1993.: 257
=== Ursula K. Le Guin ===
It has often been observed that Ursula K. Le Guin's interest in anthropology and its influence on her fiction derives from the influence of both her mother Theodora Kroeber, and of her father, Alfred L. Kroeber.: 410 : 61 : 1
Warren G. Rochelle in his essay on Le Guin notes that from her parents she:
acquired the "anthropological attitude" necessary for the observation of another culture – or for her, the invention of another culture: the recognition and appreciation of cultural diversity, the necessity to be a "close and impartial observer", who is objective, yet recognizes the inescapable subjectivity that comes with participation in an alien culture.: 410
Another critic has observed that Le Guin's "concern with cultural biases is evident throughout her literary career", and continues,
In The Word for World is Forest (1972), for example, she explicitly demonstrates the failure of colonialists to comprehend other cultures, and shows how the desire to dominate and control interferes with the ability to perceive the other. Always Coming Home (1985) is an attempt to allow another culture to speak for itself through songs and music (available in cassette form), writings, and various unclassifiable fragments. Like a documentary, the text presents the audience with pieces of information that they can sift through and examine. But unlike a traditional anthropological documentary, there is no "voice-over" to interpret that information and frame it for them. The absence of "voice-over" commentary in the novel forces the reader to draw conclusions rather than rely on a scientific analysis which would be tainted with cultural blind spots. The novel, consequently, preserves the difference of the alien culture and removes the observing neutral eye from the scene until the very end.
Le Guin's novel The Left Hand of Darkness has been called "the most sophisticated and technically plausible work of anthropological science fiction, insofar as the relationship of culture and biology is concerned",: 472 and also rated as "perhaps her most notable book".: 244 This novel forms part of Le Guin's Hainish Cycle (so termed because it develops as a whole "a vast story about diverse planets seeded with life by the ancient inhabitants of Hain").: 46–47
The series is "a densely textured anthropology, unfolding through a cycle of novels and stories and actually populated by several anthropologists and ethnologists".": 183 Le Guin employs the SF trope of inter-stellar travel which allows for fictional human colonies on other worlds developing widely differing social systems. For example, in The Left Hand of Darkness "a human envoy to the snowbound planet of Gethan struggles to understand its sexually ambivalent inhabitants".: 180 Published in 1969, this Le Guin novel:
is only one of many subsequent novels that have dealt with androgyny and multiple gender/sex identities through a variety of approaches, from Samuel R. Delany's Triton (1976), Joanna Russ's Female Man (1975), Marge Piercy's Woman at the Edge of Time (1976), Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series (1962–1996) and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy (1987-89). Though innovative in its time, it is not its construction of androgyny itself that is remarkable about Le Guin's text. Rather, it is her focus on the way that the androgynes are perceived and how they are constructed within a particular discourse, that of scientific observation. This discourse is manifested specifically in the language of anthropology, the social sciences as a whole, and diplomacy. This focus, in turn, places Le Guin's novel within a body of later works – such as Mary Gentle's Golden Witchbreed novels (1984-87) and C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner series (1994-96) – that deal with an outside observer's arrival on an alien planet, all of which indicate the difficulty of translating the life-style of an alien species into a language and cultural experience that is comprehensible. As such, these texts provide critiques of anthropological discourse that are similar to Trinh Minh-ha's attempts to problematize the colonialist beginnings and imperialistic undertones of anthropology as a science.
Geoffery Samuel has pointed out some specific anthropological aspect to Le Guin's fiction, noting that:
the culture of the people of Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness clearly owes a lot to North-West Coast Indian and Eskimo culture; the role of dreams of Athshe (in The Word for World is Forest) is very reminiscent of that described for the Temiar people of Malaysia; and the idea of a special vocabulary of terms of address correlated with a hierarchy of knowledge, in City of Illusions, recalls the honorific terminologies of many Far Eastern cultures (such as Java or Tibet).
However, Fredric Jameson says of The Left Hand of Darkness that the novel is "constructed from a heterogeneous group of narratives modes ...", and that:
... we find here intermingled: the travel narrative (with anthropological data), the pastiche myth, the political novel (in the restricted sense of the drama of court intrigue), straight SF (the Hainish colonization, the spaceship in orbit around Gethen's sun), Orwellian dystopia ..., adventure story ..., and finally even, something like a multiracial love story (the drama of communication between the two cultures and species).: 267
Similarly Adam Roberts warns against a too narrow an interpretation of Le Guin's fiction, pointing out that her writing is always balanced and that "balance as such forms one of her major concerns. Both Left Hand and The Dispossed (1974) balance form to theme, of symbol to narration, flawlessly".: 244–245 Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the novel The Left Hand of Darkness is steeped in anthropological thought, with one academic critic noting that "the theories of [French anthropologist] Claude Lévi-Strauss provide an access to understanding the workings of the myths" in the novel. Later in the essay the author explains:
Unlike the openended corpus of actual myths that anthropologists examine, the corpus of myths in The Left Hand of Darkness is closed and complete. Therefore, it is possible to analyze the entire set of Gethenian myths and establish the ways in which they are connected. Kinship exchange, in the Lévi-Straussian sense, comprises their dominant theme. In them, Le Guin articulates the theme of exchange by employing contrary images – heat and cold, dark and light, home and exile, name and namelessness, life and death, murder and sex – so as finally to reconcile their contrariety. The myths present wholeness, or unity, as an ideal; but that wholeness is never merely the integrity of an individual who stands apart from society. Instead, it consists of the tenuous and temporary integration of individuals into social units.: 181
== Notes ==
== References == | Wikipedia/Anthropological_science_fiction |
Tech noir is a hybrid genre of fiction, particularly film, combining film noir and science fiction, epitomized by Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and James Cameron's The Terminator (1984). The tech-noir presents "technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality".
== Terminology ==
It is also known as cyber noir, future noir, neo-noir science fiction and science fiction noir.
== Origins ==
Cameron coined the term in The Terminator, using it as the name of an underground nightclub, but also to invoke associations with both the film noir genre and with futuristic sci-fi.
== Precursors ==
The word noir, from film noir, is the French term (literally "black film" or "dark film") for American black-and-white films of the 1940s and 1950s, which always seemed to be set at night in an urban landscape, with a suitably dark subject-matter, although the treatment is often sexy and glamorous as well as stylized and violent. The genre was informed by a slew of crime novels, with Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely being notable examples. Being often typified by crime thrillers with a private detective hero and a succession of attractive, deadly heroines, the classic noir style may also be called "detective noir".
From this derive various related and subverted terms, such as neo-noir (resurgence of the form in 1960s and 1970s America); the Cold War noir (exploiting the tension and paranoia of the nuclear age); blaxploitation films, which some called black noir; Nordic noir, set in the stark landscape and apparently bland social environment of the Scandinavian countries, yet revealing a dark legacy of cruel misogyny, brutal sexual repression, and murder. From the same source comes cyber noir, also called tech noir, which may deal with intrigues and criminal enterprises in either the real world of computers and high technology, or in the virtual landscapes of a techno-generated underworld – and sometimes both.
=== Science fiction noir ===
Beginning in the 1960s, the most significant trend in film noir crossovers or hybrids has involved science fiction. In Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965), Lemmy Caution is the name of the old-school private eye in the city of tomorrow. The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) centers on another implacable investigator and an amnesiac named Welles. Soylent Green (1973), the first major American example, portrays a dystopian, near-future world via a self-evidently noir detection plot; starring Charlton Heston (the lead in Touch of Evil), it also features classic noir standbys Joseph Cotten, Edward G. Robinson, and Whit Bissell. The movie was directed by Richard Fleischer, who two decades before had directed several strong B noirs, including Armored Car Robbery (1950) and The Narrow Margin (1952).
=== Cyber noir ===
Cyber noir, also called tech noir, deals either with dark shenanigans in the world of computers and hi-tech supernerds; or the virtual landscapes of a techno-generated underworld; or both. The term is a portmanteau that describes the conjunction of technology and science fiction: cyber- as in cyberpunk and -noir as film noir.
The related cyberpunk genre itself is another portmanteau: cyber- being the prefix used in cybernetics, the study of communication and control in living organisms, machines and organisations, although usually understood as the interface of man and machine; from Greek κυβερνήτης kubernétes, a helmsman. This, combined with punk, originally African-American slang for a young male prostitute, latterly an outsider in society, then the target and subject of punk music and subculture, where the keyword is alienation.
== Development of tech-noir ==
The cynical and stylish perspective of classic film noir had a formative effect on the cyberpunk genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1980s. The movie most directly influential on cyberpunk was Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, which pays clear and evocative homage to the classic noir mode throughout the film. (Scott would subsequently direct the 1987 neo-noir crime melodrama Someone to Watch Over Me.)
Strong elements of tech-noir also feature in Terry Gilliam's "dystopian satire" Brazil (1985) and The City of Lost Children (1995), one of two "Gilliamesque" films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro that were influenced by Gilliam's work in general and by Brazil in particular (the other one being Delicatessen). Scholar Jamaluddin Bin Aziz has observed how "the shadow of Philip Marlowe lingers on" in such other "future noir" films as 12 Monkeys (Gilliam, 1995), Dark City (1998), and Minority Report (2002). The hero is subject to investigation in Gattaca (1997), which fuses film noir motifs with a scenario indebted to Brave New World. The Thirteenth Floor (1999), like Blade Runner, is an explicit homage to classic noir, in this case involving speculations about virtual reality. Science fiction, noir, and animation are brought together in the Japanese films Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), both directed by Mamoru Oshii, and in films such as France's Renaissance (2006) and the Disney sequel Tron: Legacy (2010) from America.
== See also ==
Arthouse action film
New Hollywood
Dystopian fiction
Synthwave
Art film
Minimalist and maximalist cinema
Postmodernist film
Neo-noir
Pulp noir
== References ==
== Further reading ==
"Tech Noir". Artists Using Science & Technology. 23 (2). January–February 2003.
Auger, Emily E. (2011): Tech-Noir Film. A Theory of the Development of Popular Genres. Portland: Intellect, ISBN 9781841504247 | Wikipedia/Gothic_science_fiction |
A strong element in Canadian culture is rich, diverse, thoughtful and witty science fiction.
== History of Canadian science fiction ==
The first recorded Canadian works of science fiction or proto-science fiction include Napoléon Aubin's unfinished serial, Mon Voyage à la Lune, a satirical Moon voyage published in 1839, and James De Mille's novel, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, published posthumously in 1888.
Another early instance is the 1896 work Tisab Ting, or, The Electrical Kiss, a pseudonymous first novel by an Ida May Ferguson of New Brunswick under the pseudonym "Dyjan Fergus". Set in late 20th century Montreal, it features an "electrical genius": a "learned Chinaman" who woos and wins a Canadian wife through his superior scientific knowledge as embodied in "the Electrical Kiss". It is of interest mainly because of its early publication date and female authorship; a microfiche reprint was issued in 1980.
In 1948, the 6th World Science Fiction Convention, also called Torcon, was held in Toronto. Although it was organized by members of a local science fiction fandom group called "The Derelicts" and chaired by local fan Edward "Ned" McKeown, the Guests of Honor, Robert Bloch (pro) and Bob Tucker (fan), were both Americans. Among those in attendance were Forrest J Ackerman, Bloch, Leslie A. Croutch, E. Everett Evans, James "Rusty" Hevelin, David H. Keller, Judith Merril, Sam Moskowitz, Chad Oliver, George O. Smith, Will Sykora, Tucker, and Donald Wollheim.
Like many aspects of Canadian culture, Canadian science fiction emerged from a variety of isolated sources, including A. E. van Vogt, the fantasy works of John Buchan, the poetry of Phyllis Gotlieb, and a handful of other writers. In the late 20th century, political upheaval in the United States brought such talents as Spider Robinson and Judith Merril to Canada.
In 1973, the World Science Fiction Convention was held again in Toronto, bringing a new generation of interest to writers like Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. This led to a range of activities and interest in the genre. Merril began hosting quarterly gatherings of authors in a loose group called "Toronto Hydra", a tradition she had brought from the New York SF community. In 1977, the Ottawa Science Fiction Society was founded, providing a venue for writers such as Charles R. Saunders and Charles de Lint through their club fanzine Stardock, as well as sponsoring Maplecon in its early years.
In the early 1980s, the Ontario Science Fiction Club was set up by Robert J. Sawyer, while the Bunch of Seven became the first known science fiction writing circle in Canada, helping the success of authors like S. M. Stirling and Tanya Huff, which later led to the Cecil Street Irregulars which included writers like Cory Doctorow. De Lint, Huff and Guy Gavriel Kay became notable for using Canadian settings in science fiction and fantasy, and William Gibson pioneered the cyberpunk subgenre with his novel Neuromancer.
In Quebec, Élisabeth Vonarburg and other authors developed a related tradition of French-Canadian SF. The Prix Boreal was established in 1979 to honour Canadian science fiction works in French. The Prix Aurora Awards (briefly preceded by the Casper Award) were founded in 1980 to recognize and promote the best works of Canadian science fiction in both French and English.
Regular annual science fiction conventions, notably Ad Astra, brought fans and writers together to further broaden awareness and appreciation of science fiction literature in Canada.
By the 1990s, Canadian science fiction was well established and internationally recognized; mainstream authors such as Margaret Atwood began including SF in their repertoire.
SF Canada, Canada's National Association of Speculative Fiction Professionals, was established in 1992.
== Canadian science fiction authors ==
Some of the most famous Canadian writers of science fiction include Margaret Atwood, John Clute, Charles de Lint, Cory Doctorow, James Alan Gardner, William Gibson, Ed Greenwood, Tanya Huff, H. L. Gold, Nalo Hopkinson, Guy Gavriel Kay, Judith Merril, Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, Karl Schroeder, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, A. E. van Vogt, and Robert Charles Wilson.
== Canadian science fiction in film and television ==
The Canadian Broadcasting Company began producing science fiction as early as the 1950s. CTV produced The Starlost at the CFTO studios in Scarborough. In the early 1990s, Toronto and Vancouver became prominent centres of television and film production, with shows like Forever Knight and RoboCop, then The X-Files raised the profile of Canadian science fiction television much higher, although only Forever Knight was itself set in Canada. By the late 1990s, a significant fraction of science fiction and fantasy on television was produced in Canada. In the early 2000s, due to changes in tax laws, production companies shifted much of their operations from Toronto to Vancouver.
Some of the most popular science fiction movies and TV shows seen around the world are made primarily or entirely in Vancouver & Toronto which are both often called Hollywood North, or elsewhere in Canada. Quebec produces shows in French. Canadian studios also produced a large volume of animation, notably specializing in 3D animation.
Canadian science fiction films of note include:
eXistenZ
Cube
Nothing
Johnny Mnemonic
Scanners
Screamers (1995)
Last Night
== Awards ==
Aurora Awards—Canadian science fiction novels (English and French), administered by the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association
Prix Boréal - Canadian science fiction awards for works in French
Sunburst Awards - annual juried award for Canadian speculative fiction novel in two categories: adult and young adult
Constellation Awards - given to actors, writers, and technical artists for excellence in science fiction film and television, as selected by the Canadian viewing public
== References ==
== External links ==
SF Canada, Canada's national association of SF professionals
Made in Canada comprehensive website about Canadian science fiction (No longer updated)
Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy at the Library and Archives of Canada site
SF Site - world-renowned resource on science fiction literature (based in Ottawa)
The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculation - major science fiction library collection, part of the Toronto Public Library system | Wikipedia/Canadian_science_fiction |
The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA), founded in 1970, is the oldest, non-profit professional organization committed to encouraging, facilitating, and rewarding the study of science fiction and fantasy literature, film, and other media. The organization’s international membership includes academically affiliated scholars, librarians, and archivists, as well as authors, editors, publishers, and readers. In addition to its facilitating the exchange of ideas within a network of science fiction and fantasy experts, SFRA holds an annual conference for the critical discussion of science fiction and fantasy where it confers a number of awards, and it produces the quarterly publication, SFRA Review, which features reviews, review essays, articles, interviews, and professional announcements.
== Conferences ==
The SFRA hosts an annual scholarly conference, which meets in a different location each year. Meetings have been held predominantly in the United States in such places as New York, New York (1970), Lawrence, Kansas (1982, 2008), Las Vegas, Nevada (2005), and Atlanta, Georgia (2009). However, its meetings have been held elsewhere when possible including the cities of St. Anne de Bellevue, Province of Quebec (1992), New Lanark, Scotland (2002), Guelph, Ontario (2003), Lublin, Poland (2011), and Detroit, Michigan (2012).
The 2012 SFRA Conference's theme was "Urban Apocalypse, Urban Renaissance: Science Fiction and Fantasy Landscapes". Its Guest of Honor was Eric Rabkin, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the guest speakers included Professor Steven Shaviro of Wayne State University and writers Saladin Ahmed, Sarah Zettel (aka C.L. Anderson), and Minister Faust.
== Awards ==
The SFRA presents the following awards at its annual conference:
Pilgrim Award – The Pilgrim Award, created in 1970 and named for J. O. Bailey's pioneering book, Pilgrims through Space and Time, honors lifetime contributions to SF and fantasy scholarship.
Pioneer Award – The Pioneer Award, first given in 1990, recognizes the writer or writers of the best critical essay-length work of the year.
Clareson Award – The Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service, first given in 1996, recognizes an individual for outstanding service activities, which may include promotion of SF teaching and study, editing, reviewing, editorial writing, publishing, organizing meetings, mentoring, and leadership in SF/fantasy organizations.
Mary Kay Bray Award – The Mary Kay Bray Award, first given in 2002 and established in honor of the late scholar for whom it is named, recognizes the best essay, interview, or extended review to appear in the SFRA Review in a given year.
Graduate Student Paper Award – The Graduate Student Paper Award, first given in 1999, recognizes the most outstanding scholarly essay read by a graduate student at the SFRA's annual conference.
== Publications ==
SFRA members receive the association's quarterly publication SFRA Review (ISSN 1068-395X). The contents include extensive book reviews of both nonfiction and fiction, review articles, listings of new and forthcoming books, letters, SFRA internal affairs, calls for papers, works in progress, and an annual index. Individual issues are not for sale; however, starting with issue #256 (Jan–Feb 2002) all issues are published to SFRA's website.
SFRA book publications include the 1988 anthology, Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology, edited by Patricia S. Warrick, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greenberg, the 1996 collection, Visions of Wonder: The Science Fiction Research Association Reading Anthology, edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf, the 1999 work, Pilgrims & Pioneers: The History and Speeches of the Science Fiction Research Association Award Winners by Hal W. Hall and Daryl F. Mallett with substantial contributions by Fiona Kelleghan, and the 2010 anthology, Practicing Science Fiction: Critical Essays on Writing, Reading and Teaching the Genre, edited by Karen Hellekson, Craig B. Jacobsen, Patrick B. Sharp, and Lisa Yaszek.
== Presidents ==
Past presidents of the SFRA include the following:
Hugh O'Connell (2023–2024)
Gerry Canavan (2020–2022)
Keren Omry (2017–2019)
Craig Jacobsen (2015–2016)
Pawel Frelik (2013–2014)
Ritch Calvin (2011–2012)
Lisa Yaszek (2009–2010)
Adam Frisch (2007–2008)
David G. Mead (2005–2006)
Peter Brigg (2003–2004)
Mike Levy (2001–2002)
Joe Sanders (1995–1996)
Patricia S. Warrick (1983–1984)
== References ==
Spangler, Bill (September 18, 1973). "Science fiction conference ends". Daily Collegian. Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved February 8, 2010.
Pace, Eric (September 20, 1973). "'Weirdo' Writers Of Sci-Fi Okay Now". Daytona Beach Sunday News-Journal. Retrieved February 8, 2010.
== External links ==
Official website
Official 2011 SFRA Conference web site
SFRA Review at the University of South Florida | Wikipedia/Science_Fiction_Research_Association |
Space warfare is a main theme and central setting of science fiction that can trace its roots back to classical times, and to the "future war" novels of the 19th century. With the modern age, directly with franchises as Star Wars and Star Trek, it is considered one of the most popular general sub-genres and themes of science fiction. An interplanetary, or more often an interstellar or intergalactic war, has become a staple plot device. Space warfare has a predominant role, it is a central theme and at the same time it is considered parent, overlapping genre of space opera and space Western.
== Technology ==
=== Weapons ===
Usually, lasers and other directed-energy weapons are used rather than bullets. Science writer and spaceflight popularizer Willy Ley claimed in 1939 that bullets would be a more effective weapon in a real space battle. Other weapons include torpedoes and other ordnance that is described as employing particles or radiation known to current sub-atomic physics, such as the proton torpedo and photon torpedo from the Star Wars and Star Trek universes, respectively. Conversely, weapons in science fiction often employ fictional materials and kinds of radiation. Often, the radiation or material is specific to the fictional universe in question. For example, the space warships in the Stargate television series do battle with directed-energy weapons that are described as being powered by a fictional metal, called naquadah.
=== Destruction of planets and stars ===
Destruction of planets and stars has been a frequently used aspect of interstellar warfare since the Lensman series. It has been calculated that a force on the order of 1032 joules of energy, or roughly the total output of the sun in a week, would be required to overcome the gravity that holds together an Earth-sized planet. The destruction of Alderaan in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope is estimated to require 1.0 × 1038 joules of energy, millions of times more than would be necessary to break the planet apart at a slower rate.
=== Naval influences ===
Fictional space warfare tends to borrow elements from naval warfare, often calling space forces as space navies or simply navies. David Weber's Honorverse series of novels portrays several of such space navies such as the Royal Manticoran Navy, which imitate themes from Napoleonic-era naval warfare.
The Federation Starfleet (Star Trek), Imperial Navy (Star Wars), Systems Alliance Navy (Mass Effect), UNSC ("Halo") and Earthforce (Babylon 5) also use a naval-style rank-structure and hierarchy. The former is based on the United States Navy and the Royal Navy. The United Nations Space Command in Halo fully echoes all ranks of the United States Armed Forces, even the pay-grade system.
Some fictional universes have different implementations. The Colonial Fleet in Battlestar Galactica uses a mixture of army and navy ranks, and the Stargate universe has military spacecraft under the control of modern air forces, and uses air-force ranks. In the Halo universe, many of the ranks of the current-day United States Armed Forces are used in lieu of fictional ranks. In the Andromeda universe, officers of Systems Commonwealth ships follow naval ranking, but Lancers (soldiers analogous to Marines) use army ranks.
=== Ship types ===
Though the details do differ between various science fiction intellectual properties (IPs for short), classes of ships are most commonly based on those of World War II. Battleships, dreadnoughts and battlecruisers are generally among the largest types of ships, though the three terms are often used interchangeably. Dedicated carriers are rare in science fiction, though not non-existent, featuring prominently in few IPs, such as Wing Commander. Instead, battlecarriers, ships which combine elements of battleships and carriers, are very common, with prominent examples including the Star Destroyer from Star Wars and the titular starship from Battlestar Galactica. Cruisers also make appearances, with some IPs featuring them as the largest and most powerful ships. Prominent example is the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, occasionally referred to as a heavy cruiser. Destroyers and frigates are often seen as among the smaller ships of the fleet, though in many IPs, both classifications are not used. Corvettes are often the smallest ships in science fiction navies, though some do feature even smaller fast attack craft.
Many science-fiction series prominently feature starfighters operating together with larger ships. Prominent examples include the X-wing from Star Wars, the Colonial Viper from Battlestar Galactica and the Starfury from Babylon 5. While most fighters, like the aforementioned ones, tend to be multirole fighters, more specialized fighters do exist as well. The term interceptor, which in reality refers to fast fighters optimized to attack approaching long range heavy bombers, is instead primarily used to refer to fighters designed first and foremost to attack other fighters, generally at the expense of a capability to attack larger warships. Bombers are the opposite of interceptors and are primarily meant to attack enemy warships.
Some IPs also feature super-battleship vessels, which are massive warships several kilometers in length, dwarfing even battleships.
== Development of the genre ==
In his second-century satire True History, Lucian of Samosata depicts an imperial war between the king of the Sun and the king of the Moon over the right to colonise the Morning Star. It is the earliest known work of fiction to address the concept.
The first "future war" story was George T. Chesney's "The Battle of Dorking," a story about a British defeat after a German invasion of Britain, published in 1871 in Blackwood's Magazine. Many such stories were written prior to the outbreak of World War I. George Griffith's The Angel of the Revolution (1893) featured self-styled "Terrorists" armed with then-nonexistent arms and armour such as airships, submarines, and high explosives. The inclusion of yet-nonexistent technology became a standard part of the genre. Griffith's last "future war" story was The Lord of Labour, written in 1906 and published in 1911, which included such technology as disintegrator rays and missiles.
H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds inspired many other writers to write stories of alien incursions and wars between Earth and other planets, and encouraged writers of "future war" fiction to employ wider settings than had been available for "naturalistic" fiction. Wells' several other "future war" stories included the atomic war novel The World Set Free (1914) and "The Land Ironclads," which featured a prophetic description of the tank, albeit of an unfeasibly large scale.
More recent depictions of space warfare departed from the jingoism of the pulp science fiction of the 1930s and 1940s. Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, was partly a response to or a rebuttal of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, wherein space warfare involved the effects of time dilation and resulted in the alienation of the protagonists from the human civilization on whose behalf they were fighting. Both novels have in the past been required reading at the United States Military Academy.
Science fiction writers from the end of World War II onwards have examined the morality and consequences of space warfare. With Heinlein's Starship Troopers are A. E. van Vogt's "War against the Rull" (1959) and Fredric Brown's "Arena" (1944). Opposing them are Murray Leinster's "First Contact" (1945), Barry Longyear's "Enemy Mine," Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Lucky Strike," Connie Willis' "Schwarzchild Radius," and John Kessel's "Invaders." In Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, the protagonist wages war remotely, with no realization that he is doing so.
Several writers in the 1980s were accused of writing fiction as part of a propaganda campaign in favour of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Ben Bova's 1985 novel Privateers has been given as an example.
== Definitions by contrast ==
=== Space opera ===
The modern form of space warfare in science fiction, in which mobile spaceships battle both planets and one another with destructive superweapons, appeared with the advent of space opera. Garrett P. Serviss' 1898 newspaper serial "Edison's Conquest of Mars" was inspired by Wells and intended as a sequel to "Fighters from Mars," an un-authorized and heavily altered Edisonade version of The War of the Worlds in which the human race, led by Thomas Edison, pursues the invading Martians back to their home planet. David Pringle considers Serviss' story to be the first space opera, although the work most widely regarded as the first space opera is E. E. "Doc" Smith's The Skylark of Space. It and its three successor novels exemplify the present form of space warfare in science fiction, as giant spaceships employ great ray guns that send bolts of energy across space to shatter planets in a war between humans and alien species.
David Weber's Honorverse novels present a view of space warfare that simply transplants the naval warfare of Horatio Nelson and Horatio Hornblower into space. The space navy battle tactics in the Honorverse are much like those of Nelson, with the simple addition of a third dimension.
=== Military science fiction ===
Several subsets of military science fiction overlap with space opera, concentrating on large-scale space battles with futuristic weapons. At one extreme, the genre is used to speculate about future wars involving space travel, or the effects of such a war on humans; at the other, it consists of the use of military fiction plots with some superficial science-fiction trappings. The term "military space opera" is occasionally used to denote this subgenre, as used for example by critic Sylvia Kelso when describing Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga. Other examples of military space opera are the Battlestar Galactica franchise and Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel Starship Troopers.
The key distinction of military science fiction from space opera is that the principal characters in a space opera are not military personnel, but civilians or paramilitary. Military science fiction also does not necessarily always include an outer space or multi-planetary setting like space opera.
=== Space Western ===
Westerns influenced early science-fiction pulp magazines. Writers would submit stories in both genres, and science-fiction magazines sometimes mimicked Western cover art to showcase parallels. In the 1930s, C. L. Moore created one of the first space Western heroes, Northwest Smith. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were also early influences. After superhero comics declined in popularity in 1940s United States, Western comics and horror comics replaced them. When horror comics became untenable with the Comics Code Authority in the mid-1950s, science-fiction themes and space Westerns grew more popular.: 10 By the mid-1960s, classic Western films fell out of favor and Revisionist Westerns supplanted them. Science-fiction series such as Lost in Space and Star Trek presented a new frontier to be explored, and films like Westworld rejuvenated Westerns by updating them with science-fiction themes. Peter Hyams, director of Outland, said that studio heads in the 1980s were unwilling to finance a Western, so he made a space Western instead. Space operas such as the Star Wars film series also took strong cues from Westerns; Boba Fett, Han Solo and the Mos Eisley cantina, in particular, were based on Western themes. These science fiction-films and television series offered the themes and morals that Westerns previously did.
== See also ==
Military science fiction
Space Western
Weapons in science fiction
Space colonization
Space opera
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Robert W. Bly (2005). "Atomic warfare". The Science In Science Fiction: 83 SF Predictions That Became Scientific Reality. BenBella Books, Inc. ISBN 1-932100-48-2.
George Edgar Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin (1993). Fights of fancy: armed conflict in science fiction and fantasy. University of Georgia. ISBN 0-8203-1533-8.
Martha Bartter (1999). "Young Adults, Science Fiction, and War". In Charles Wm. Sullivan (ed.). Young Adult Science Fiction. Greenwood Press. pp. 119–130. ISBN 0-313-28940-9.
Paul Lucas (2005). "Hunters in the Great Dark, Part 1: A Hard-Science Look at Deep-Space Warfare". Strange Horizons. Archived from the original on 2006-11-14. Retrieved 2007-01-31.
Paul Lucas (2005). "Hunters in the Great Dark, Part 2: The Weapons of Deep-Space Warfare". Strange Horizons. Archived from the original on 2006-11-14. Retrieved 2007-01-31. | Wikipedia/Space_warfare_in_science_fiction |
Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, mutants, interstellar travel, time travel, or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition.
The genre has existed since the early years of silent cinema, when Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (1902) employed trick photography effects. The next major example (first in feature-length in the genre) was the film Metropolis (1927). From the 1930s to the 1950s, the genre consisted mainly of low-budget B movies. After Stanley Kubrick's landmark 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the science fiction film genre was taken more seriously. In the late 1970s, big-budget science fiction films filled with special effects became popular with audiences after the success of Star Wars (1977) and paved the way for the blockbuster hits of subsequent decades.
Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies science fiction films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters’ taxonomy, stating that all feature-length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres. The other ten super-genres are action, crime, fantasy, horror, romance, slice of life, sports, thriller, war, and western.
== Characteristics of the genre ==
According to Vivian Sobchack, a British cinema and media theorist and cultural critic:
Science fiction film is a film genre which emphasizes actual, extrapolative, or 2.0 speculative science and the empirical method, interacting in a social context with the lesser emphasized, but still present, transcendentalism of magic and religion, in an attempt to reconcile man with the unknown.
— Vivian Carol Sobchack, p. 63
This definition suggests a continuum between (real-world) empiricism and (supernatural) transcendentalism, with science fiction films on the side of empiricism, and happy films and sad films on the side of transcendentalism. However, there are numerous well-known examples of science fiction horror films, epitomized by such pictures as Frankenstein and Alien.
The visual style of science fiction film is characterized by a clash between alien and familiar images. This clash is implemented when alien images become familiar, as in A Clockwork Orange, when the repetitions of the Korova Milkbar make the alien decor seem more familiar. As well, familiar images become alien, as in the films Repo Man and Liquid Sky. For example, in Dr. Strangelove, the distortion of the humans make the familiar images seem more alien. Finally, alien images are juxtaposed with the familiar, as in The Deadly Mantis, when a giant praying mantis is shown climbing the Washington Monument.
Cultural theorist Scott Bukatman has proposed that science fiction film allows contemporary culture to witness an expression of the sublime, be it through exaggerated scale, apocalypse or transcendence.
== History ==
=== 1900–1920s ===
Science fiction films appeared early in the silent film era, typically as short films shot in black and white, sometimes with colour tinting. They usually had a technological theme and were often intended to be humorous. In 1902, Georges Méliès released Le Voyage dans la Lune, generally considered the first science fiction film, and a film that used early trick photography to depict a spacecraft's journey to the Moon. Several early films merged the science fiction and horror genres. Examples of this are Frankenstein (1910), a film adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), based on the psychological tale by Robert Louis Stevenson. Taking a more adventurous tack, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) is a film based on Jules Verne’s famous novel of a wondrous submarine and its vengeful captain. In the 1920s, European filmmakers tended to use science fiction for prediction and social commentary, as can be seen in German films such as Metropolis (1927) and Frau im Mond (1929). Other notable science fiction films of the silent era include The Impossible Voyage (1904), The Motorist (1906), The Conquest of the Pole (1912), Himmelskibet (1918; which with its runtime of 97 minutes generally is considered the first feature-length science fiction film in history), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Mechanical Man (1921), Paris Qui Dort (1923), Aelita (1924), Luch Smerti (1925), and The Lost World (1925).
=== 1930s–1950s ===
In the 1930s, there were several big budget science fiction films, notably Just Imagine (1930), King Kong (1933) and Things to Come (1936). Starting in 1936, a number of science fiction comic strips were adapted as serials, notably Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, both starring Buster Crabbe. These serials, and the comic strips they were based on, were very popular with the general public. Other notable science fiction films of the 1930s include Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Doctor X (1932), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), F.P.1 (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1932), Deluge (1933), The Invisible Man (1933), Master of the World (1934), Mad Love (1935), Trans-Atlantic Tunnel (1935), The Devil-Doll (1936), The Invisible Ray (1936), The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936), The Walking Dead (1936), Non-Stop New York (1937), and The Return of Doctor X (1939). The 1940s brought us Before I Hang (1940), Black Friday (1940), Dr. Cyclops (1940), The Devil Commands (1941), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Man Made Monster (1941), It Happened Tomorrow (1944), It Happens Every Spring (1949), and The Perfect Woman (1949). The release of Destination Moon (1950) and Rocketship X-M (1950) brought us to what many people consider "the golden age of the science fiction film".
In the 1950s, public interest in space travel and new technologies was great. While many 1950s science fiction films were low-budget B movies, there were several successful films with larger budgets and impressive special effects. These include The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another World (1951), When Worlds Collide (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), This Island Earth (1955), Forbidden Planet (1956), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) and On the Beach (1959). There is often a close connection between films in the science fiction genre and the so-called "monster movie". Examples of this are Them! (1954), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and The Blob (1958). During the 1950s, Ray Harryhausen, protege of master King Kong animator Willis O'Brien, used stop-motion animation to create special effects for the following notable science fiction films: It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).
The most successful monster movies were Japanese film studio Toho's kaiju films directed by Ishirō Honda and featuring special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. The 1954 film Godzilla, with the title monster attacking Tokyo, gained immense popularity, spawned multiple sequels, led to other kaiju films like Rodan, and created one of the most recognizable monsters in cinema history. Japanese science fiction films, particularly the tokusatsu and kaiju genres, were known for their extensive use of special effects, and gained worldwide popularity in the 1950s. Kaiju and tokusatsu films, notably Warning from Space (1956), sparked Stanley Kubrick's interest in science fiction films and influenced 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). According to his biographer John Baxter, despite their "clumsy model sequences, the films were often well-photographed in colour ... and their dismal dialogue was delivered in well-designed and well-lit sets."
=== 1960s-present ===
With the Space Race between the USSR and the US going on, documentaries and illustrations of actual events, pioneers and technology were plenty. Any movie featuring realistic space travel was at risk of being obsolete at its time of release, rather fossil than fiction. There were relatively few science fiction films in the 1960s, but some of the films transformed science fiction cinema. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) brought new realism to the genre, with its groundbreaking visual effects and realistic portrayal of space travel and influenced the genre with its epic story and transcendent philosophical scope. Other 1960s films included Planet of the Vampires (1965) by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, that is regarded as one of the best movies of the period, Planet of the Apes (1968) and Fahrenheit 451 (1966), which provided social commentary, and the campy Barbarella (1968), which explored the comical side of earlier science fiction. Jean-Luc Godard's French "new wave" film Alphaville (1965) posited a futuristic Paris commanded by an artificial intelligence which has outlawed all emotion.
The era of crewed trips to the Moon in 1969 and the 1970s saw a resurgence of interest in the science fiction film. Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979) are two widely acclaimed examples of the renewed interest of film auteurs in science fiction. Science fiction films from the early 1970s explored the theme of paranoia, in which humanity is depicted as under threat from sociological, ecological or technological adversaries of its own creation, such as George Lucas's directional debut THX 1138 (1971), The Andromeda Strain (1971), Silent Running (1972), Soylent Green (1973), Westworld (1973) and its sequel Futureworld (1976), and Logan's Run (1976). The science fiction comedies of the 1970s included Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973), and John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974). The sports science fiction genre can be seen in films such as Rollerball (1975).
Star Wars (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) were box-office hits that brought about a huge increase in science fiction films. In 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture brought the television series to the big screen for the first time. It was also in this period that the Walt Disney Company released many science fiction films for family audiences such as The Black Hole, Flight of the Navigator, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. The sequels to Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), also saw worldwide box office success. Ridley Scott's films, such as Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982), along with James Cameron's The Terminator (1984), presented the future as dark, dirty and chaotic, and depicted aliens and androids as hostile and dangerous. In contrast, Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), one of the most successful films of the 1980s, presented aliens as benign and friendly, a theme already present in Spielberg's own Close Encounters of the Third Kind. James Bond also entered the science fiction genre in 1979 with Moonraker.
The big budget adaptations of Frank Herbert's Dune and Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon, as well as Peter Hyams's sequel to 2001, 2010: The Year We Make Contact (based on 2001 author Arthur C. Clarke's sequel novel 2010: Odyssey Two), were box office failures that dissuaded producers from investing in science fiction literary properties. Disney's Tron (1982) turned out to be a moderate success. The strongest contributors to the genre during the second half of the 1980s were James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven with The Terminator and RoboCop entries. Robert Zemeckis' film Back to the Future (1985) and its sequels were critically praised and became box office successes, not to mention international phenomena. James Cameron's sequel to Alien, Aliens (1986), was very different from the original film, falling more into the action/science fiction genre, it was both a critical and commercial success and Sigourney Weaver was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the Academy Awards. The Japanese cyberpunk anime film Akira (1988) also had a big influence outside Japan when released.
In the 1990s, the emergence of the World Wide Web and the cyberpunk genre spawned several movies on the theme of the computer-human interface, such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Total Recall (1990), The Lawnmower Man (1992), and The Matrix (1999). Other themes included disaster films (e.g., Armageddon and Deep Impact, both 1998), alien invasion (e.g., Independence Day (1996)) and genetic experimentation (e.g., Jurassic Park (1993) and Gattaca (1997)). Also, the Star Wars prequel trilogy began with the release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, which eventually grossed over one billion dollars.
As the decade progressed, computers played an increasingly important role in both the addition of special effects (thanks to Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park) and the production of films. As software developed in sophistication it was used to produce more complicated effects. It also enabled filmmakers to enhance the visual quality of animation, resulting in films such as Ghost in the Shell (1995) from Japan, and The Iron Giant (1999) from the United States.
During the first decade of the 2000s, superhero films abounded, as did earthbound science fiction such as the Matrix trilogy. In 2005, the Star Wars saga was completed (although it was later continued, but at the time it was not intended to be) with the darkly themed Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. Science-fiction also returned as a tool for political commentary in films such as A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, Sunshine, District 9, Children of Men, Serenity, Sleep Dealer, and Pandorum. The 2000s also saw the release of Transformers (2007) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), both of which resulted in worldwide box office success. In 2009, James Cameron's Avatar garnered worldwide box office success, and would later become the highest-grossing movie of all time. This movie was also an example of political commentary. It depicted humans destroying the environment on another planet by mining for a special metal called unobtainium. That same year, Terminator Salvation was released and garnered only moderate success.
The 2010s saw new entries in several classic science fiction franchises, including Predators (2010), Tron: Legacy (2010), a resurgence of the Star Wars series, and entries into the Planet of the Apes and Godzilla franchises. Several more cross-genre films have also been produced, including comedies such as Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012), Safety Not Guaranteed (2013), and Pixels (2015), romance films such as Her (2013), Monsters (2010), and Ex Machina (2015), heist films including Inception (2010) and action films including Real Steel (2011), Total Recall (2012), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Pacific Rim (2013), Chappie (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), and Ghost in the Shell (2017). The superhero film boom has also continued, into films such as Iron Man 2 (2010) and Iron Man 3 (2013), several entries into the X-Men film series, and The Avengers (2012), which became the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time. New franchises such as Deadpool and Guardians of the Galaxy also began in this decade.
Further into the decade, more realistic science fiction epic films also become prevalent, including Battleship (2012), Gravity (2013), Elysium (2013), Interstellar (2014), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), The Martian (2015), Arrival (2016), Passengers (2016), and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Many of these films have gained widespread accolades, including several Academy Award wins and nominations. These films have addressed recent matters of scientific interest, including space travel, climate change, and artificial intelligence.
Alongside these original films, many adaptations were produced, especially within the young adult dystopian fiction subgenre, popular in the early part of the decade. These include the Hunger Games film series, based on the trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins, The Divergent Series based on Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy, and the Maze Runner series, based on James Dashner's The Maze Runner novels. Several adult adaptations have also been produced, including The Martian (2015), based on Andy Weir's 2011 novel, Cloud Atlas (2012), based on David Mitchell's 2004 novel, World War Z, based on Max Brooks' 2006 novel, and Ready Player One (2018), based on Ernest Cline's 2011 novel.
Independent productions also increased in the 2010s, with the rise of digital filmmaking making it easier for filmmakers to produce movies on a smaller budget. These films include Attack the Block (2011), Source Code (2011), Looper (2012), Upstream Color (2013), Ex Machina (2015), and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017). In 2016, Ex Machina won the Academy Award for Visual Effects in a surprising upset over the much higher-budget Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).
== Themes, imagery, and visual elements ==
Science fiction films are often speculative in nature, and often include key supporting elements of science and technology. However, as often as not the "science" in a Hollywood science fiction movie can be considered pseudo-science, relying primarily on atmosphere and quasi-scientific artistic fancy than facts and conventional scientific theory. The definition can also vary depending on the viewpoint of the observer.
Many science fiction films include elements of mysticism, occult, magic, or the supernatural, considered by some to be more properly elements of fantasy or the occult (or religious) film. This transforms the movie genre into a science fantasy with a religious or quasi-religious philosophy serving as the driving motivation. The movie Forbidden Planet employs many common science fiction elements, but the film carries a profound message - that the evolution of a species toward technological perfection (in this case exemplified by the disappeared alien civilization called the "Krell") does not ensure the loss of primitive and dangerous urges. In the film, this part of the primitive mind manifests itself as monstrous destructive force emanating from the Freudian subconscious, or "Id".
Some films blur the line between the genres, such as films where the protagonist gains the extraordinary powers of the superhero. These films usually employ quasi-plausible reason for the hero gaining these powers.
Not all science fiction themes are equally suitable for movies. Science fiction horror is most common. Often enough, these films could just as well pass as Westerns or World War II films if the science fiction props were removed. Common motifs also include voyages and expeditions to other planets, and dystopias, while utopias are rare.
=== Imagery ===
Film theorist Vivian Sobchack argues that science fiction films differ from fantasy films in that while science fiction film seeks to achieve our belief in the images we are viewing, fantasy film instead attempts to suspend our disbelief. The science fiction film displays the unfamiliar and alien in the context of the familiar. Despite the alien nature of the scenes and science fictional elements of the setting, the imagery of the film is related back to humankind and how we relate to our surroundings. While the science fiction film strives to push the boundaries of the human experience, they remain bound to the conditions and understanding of the audience and thereby contain prosaic aspects, rather than being completely alien or abstract.
Genre films such as westerns or war movies are bound to a particular area or time period. This is not true of the science fiction film. However, there are several common visual elements that are evocative of the genre. These include the spacecraft or space station, alien worlds or creatures, robots, and futuristic gadgets. Examples include movies like Lost in Space, Serenity, Avatar, Prometheus, Tomorrowland, Passengers, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. More subtle visual clues can appear with changes of the human form through modifications in appearance, size, or behavior, or by means a known environment turned eerily alien, such as an empty city The Omega Man (1971).
=== Scientific elements ===
While science is a major element of this genre, many movie studios take significant liberties with scientific knowledge. Such liberties can be most readily observed in films that show spacecraft maneuvering in outer space. The vacuum should preclude the transmission of sound or maneuvers employing wings, yet the soundtrack is filled with inappropriate flying noises and changes in flight path resembling an aircraft banking. The filmmakers, unfamiliar with the specifics of space travel, focus instead on providing acoustical atmosphere and the more familiar maneuvers of the aircraft.
Similar instances of ignoring science in favor of art can be seen when movies present environmental effects as portrayed in Star Wars and Star Trek. Entire planets are destroyed in titanic explosions requiring mere seconds, whereas an actual event of this nature takes many hours.
The role of the scientist has varied considerably in the science fiction film genre, depending on the public perception of science and advanced technology. Starting with Dr. Frankenstein, the mad scientist became a stock character who posed a dire threat to society and perhaps even civilization. Certain portrayals of the "mad scientist", such as Peter Sellers's performance in Dr. Strangelove, have become iconic to the genre. In the monster films of the 1950s, the scientist often played a heroic role as the only person who could provide a technological fix for some impending doom. Reflecting the distrust of government that began in the 1960s in the United States, the brilliant but rebellious scientist became a common theme, often serving a Cassandra-like role during an impending disaster.
Biotechnology (e.g., cloning) is a popular scientific element in films as depicted in Jurassic Park (cloning of extinct species), The Island (cloning of humans), and (genetic modification) in some superhero movies and in the Alien series. Cybernetics and holographic projections as depicted in RoboCop and I, Robot are also popularized. Interstellar travel and teleportation is a popular theme in the Star Trek series that is achieved through warp drives and transporters while intergalactic travel is popular in films such as Stargate and Star Wars that is achieved through hyperspace or wormholes. Nanotechnology is also featured in the Star Trek series in the form of replicators (utopia), in The Day the Earth Stood Still in the form of grey goo (dystopia), and in Iron Man 3 in the form of extremis (nanotubes). Force fields is a popular theme in Independence Day while invisibility is also popular in Star Trek. Arc reactor technology, featured in Iron Man, is similar to a cold fusion device. Miniaturization technology where people are shrunk to microscopic sizes is featured in films like Fantastic Voyage (1966), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), and Marvel's Ant-Man (2015).
The late Arthur C. Clarke's third law states that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Past science fiction films have depicted "fictional" ("magical") technologies that became present reality. For example, the Personal Access Display Device from Star Trek was a precursor of smartphones and tablet computers. Gesture recognition in the movie Minority Report is part of current game consoles. Human-level artificial intelligence is also fast approaching with the advent of smartphone A.I. while a working cloaking device / material is the main goal of stealth technology. Autonomous cars (e.g. KITT from the Knight Rider series) and quantum computers, like in the movie Stealth and Transcendence, also will be available eventually. Furthermore, although Clarke's laws do not classify "sufficiently advanced" technologies, the Kardashev scale measures a civilization's level of technological advancement into types. Due to its exponential nature, sci-fi civilizations usually only attain Type I (harnessing all the energy attainable from a single planet), and strictly speaking often not even that.
=== Alien lifeforms ===
The concept of life, particularly intelligent life, having an extraterrestrial origin is a popular staple of science fiction films. Early films often used alien life forms as a threat or peril to the human race, where the invaders were frequently fictional representations of actual military or political threats on Earth as observed in films such as Mars Attacks!, Starship Troopers, the Alien series, the Predator series, and The Chronicles of Riddick series. Some aliens were represented as benign and even beneficial in nature in such films as Escape to Witch Mountain, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Fifth Element, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Avatar, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and the Men in Black series.
In order to provide subject matter to which audiences can relate, the large majority of intelligent alien races presented in films have an anthropomorphic nature, possessing human emotions and motivations. In films like Cocoon, My Stepmother Is an Alien, Species, Contact, The Box, Knowing, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Watch, the aliens were nearly human in physical appearance, and communicated in a common earth language. However, the aliens in Stargate and Prometheus were human in physical appearance but communicated in an alien language. A few films have tried to represent intelligent aliens as something utterly different from the usual humanoid shape (e.g. An intelligent life form surrounding an entire planet in Solaris, the ball shaped creature in Dark Star, microbial-like creatures in The Invasion, shape-shifting creatures in Evolution). Recent trends in films involve building-size alien creatures like in the movie Pacific Rim where the CGI has tremendously improved over the previous decades as compared in previous films such as Godzilla.
=== Disaster films ===
A frequent theme among science fiction films is that of impending or actual disaster on an epic scale. These often address a particular concern of the writer by serving as a vehicle of warning against a type of activity, including technological research. In the case of alien invasion films, the creatures can provide as a stand-in for a feared foreign power.
Films that fit into the Disaster film typically also fall into the following general categories:
Alien invasion: Hostile extraterrestrials arrive and seek to supplant humanity. They are either overwhelmingly powerful or very insidious. Typical examples include The War of the Worlds (1953), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966), Independence Day (1996), War of the Worlds (2005), The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), Skyline (2010), The Darkest Hour (2011), Battle: Los Angeles (2011), Battleship (2012), The Avengers (2012), Man of Steel (2013), Pacific Rim (2013), Ender's Game (2013), Pixels (2015), Independence Day: Resurgence (2016), and Justice League (2017). Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) takes an alternative look at the subject, involving an extraterrestrial political entity invading planet Naboo for commercial reasons.
Environmental disaster: such as major climate change, or an asteroid or comet strike. Movies that have employed this theme include Soylent Green (1973), Waterworld (1995), Deep Impact (1998), Armageddon (1998), The Core (2003), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), 2012 (2009), Snowpiercer (2013) and Geostorm (2017).
Man supplanted by technology: Typically in the form of an all-powerful computer, advanced robots or cyborgs, or else genetically modified humans or animals. Among the films in this category are the Terminator series, The Matrix trilogy, I, Robot (2004), and the Transformers series.
Nuclear war: Usually in the form of a dystopic, post-holocaust tale of grim survival. Examples of such a storyline can be found in the movies Dr. Strangelove (1964), Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965), Planet of the Apes (1968; remade in 2001), A Boy and His Dog (1975), Mad Max (1979), City of Ember (2008), The Book of Eli (2010), Oblivion (2013), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and Friend of the World (2020).
Pandemic: A highly lethal disease, often one created by man, threatens or wipes out most of humanity in a massive plague. This topic has been treated in such films as The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Omega Man (1971), 12 Monkeys (1995), 28 Weeks Later (2007), I Am Legend (2007), and the Resident Evil series. This version of the genre sometimes mixes with zombie films or other monster movies.
=== Monster films ===
While monster films do not usually depict danger on a global or epic scale, science fiction film also has a long tradition of movies featuring monster attacks. These differ from similar films in the horror or fantasy genres because science fiction films typically rely on a scientific (or at least pseudo-scientific) rationale for the monster's existence, rather than a supernatural or magical reason. Often, the science fiction film monster is created, awakened, or "evolves" because of the machinations of a mad scientist, a nuclear accident, or a scientific experiment gone awry. Typical examples include The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Jurassic Park films, Cloverfield, Pacific Rim, the King Kong films, and the Godzilla franchise or the many films involving Frankenstein's monster.
=== Mind and identity ===
The core mental aspects of what makes us human has been a staple of science fiction films, particularly since the 1980s. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, examined what made an organic-creation a human, while the RoboCop series saw an android mechanism fitted with the brain and reprogrammed mind of a human to create a cyborg. The idea of brain transfer was not entirely new to science fiction film, as the concept of the "mad scientist" transferring the human mind to another body is as old as Frankenstein while the idea of corporations behind mind transfer technologies is observed in later films such as Gamer, Avatar, and Surrogates.
Films such as Total Recall have popularized a thread of films that explore the concept of reprogramming the human mind. The theme of brainwashing in several films of the sixties and seventies including A Clockwork Orange and The Manchurian Candidate coincided with secret real-life government experimentation during Project MKULTRA. Voluntary erasure of memory is further explored as themes of the films Paycheck and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Some films like Limitless explore the concept of mind enhancement. The anime series Serial Experiments Lain also explores the idea of reprogrammable reality and memory.
The idea that a human could be entirely represented as a program in a computer was a core element of the film Tron. This would be further explored in the film version of The Lawnmower Man, Transcendence, and Ready Player One and the idea reversed in Virtuosity as computer programs sought to become real persons. In The Matrix series, the virtual reality world became a real-world prison for humanity, managed by intelligent machines. In movies such as eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor, and Inception, the nature of reality and virtual reality become intermixed with no clear distinguishing boundary.
Telekinesis and telepathy are featured in movies like Star Wars, The Last Mimzy, Race to Witch Mountain, Chronicle, and Lucy while precognition is featured in Minority Report as well as in The Matrix saga (in which precognition is achieved by knowing the artificial world).
=== Robots ===
Robots have been a part of science fiction since the Czech playwright Karel Čapek coined the word in 1921. In early films, robots were usually played by a human actor in a boxy metal suit, as in The Phantom Empire, although the female robot in Metropolis is an exception. The first depiction of a sophisticated robot in a United States film was Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Robots in films are often sentient and sometimes sentimental, and they have filled a range of roles in science fiction films. Robots have been supporting characters, such as Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet, Huey, Dewey and Louie in Silent Running, Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, sidekicks (e.g., C-3PO and R2-D2 from Star Wars, JARVIS from Iron Man), and extras, visible in the background to create a futuristic setting (e.g., Back to the Future Part II (1989), Total Recall (2012), RoboCop (2014)). As well, robots have been formidable movie villains or monsters (e.g., the robot Box in the film Logan's Run (1976), HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, ARIIA in Eagle Eye, robot Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past, the battle droids in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, or the huge robot probes seen in Monsters vs. Aliens). In some cases, robots have even been the leading characters in science fiction films; in the film Blade Runner (1982), many of the characters are bioengineered android "replicants". This is also present in the animated films WALL-E (2008), Astro Boy (2009), Big Hero 6 (2014), Ghost in the Shell (2017) and in Next Gen (2018).
Films like Bicentennial Man, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Chappie, and Ex Machina depicted the emotional fallouts of robots that are self-aware. Other films like The Animatrix (The Second Renaissance) present the consequences of mass-producing self-aware androids as humanity succumbs to their robot overlords.
One popular theme in science fiction film is whether robots will someday replace humans, a question raised in the film adaptation of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot (in jobs) and in the film Real Steel (in sports), or whether intelligent robots could develop a conscience and a motivation to protect, take over, or destroy the human race (as depicted in The Terminator, Transformers, and in Avengers: Age of Ultron). Another theme is remote telepresence via androids as depicted in Surrogates and Iron Man 3. As artificial intelligence becomes smarter due to increasing computer power, some sci-fi dreams have already been realized. For example, the computer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion in 1997 and a documentary film, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine, was released in 2003. Another famous computer called Watson defeated the two best human Jeopardy (game show) players in 2011 and a NOVA documentary film, Smartest Machine on Earth, was released in the same year.
Building-size robots are also becoming a popular theme in movies as featured in Pacific Rim. Future live action films may include an adaptation of popular television series like Voltron and Robotech. The CGI robots of Pacific Rim and the Power Rangers (2017) reboot was greatly improved as compared to the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995). While "size does matter", a famous tagline of the movie Godzilla, incredibly small robots, called nanobots, do matter as well (e.g. Borg nanoprobes in Star Trek and nanites in I, Robot).
=== Time travel ===
The concept of time travel—travelling backwards and forwards through time—has always been a popular staple of science fiction film and science fiction television series. Time travel usually involves the use of some type of advanced technology, such as H. G. Wells' classic The Time Machine, the commercially successful 1980s-era Back to the Future trilogy, the Bill & Ted trilogy, the Terminator series, Déjà Vu (2006), Source Code (2011), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and Predestination (2014). Other movies, such as the Planet of the Apes series, Timeline (2003) and The Last Mimzy (2007), explained their depictions of time travel by drawing on physics concepts such as the special relativity phenomenon of time dilation (which could occur if a spaceship was travelling near the speed of light) and wormholes. Some films show time travel not being attained from advanced technology, but rather from an inner source or personal power, such as the 2000s-era films Donnie Darko, Mr. Nobody, The Butterfly Effect, and X-Men: Days of Future Past.
More conventional time travel movies use technology to bring the past to life in the present, or in a present that lies in our future. The film Iceman (1984) told the story of the reanimation of a frozen Neanderthal. The film Freejack (1992) shows time travel used to pull victims of horrible deaths forward in time a split-second before their demise, and then use their bodies for spare parts.
A common theme in time travel film is the paradoxical nature of travelling through time. In the French New Wave film La jetée (1962), director Chris Marker depicts the self-fulfilling aspect of a person being able to see their future by showing a child who witnesses the death of his future self. La Jetée was the inspiration for 12 Monkeys, (1995) director Terry Gilliam's film about time travel, memory and madness. The Back to the Future trilogy and The Time Machine go one step further and explore the result of altering the past, while in Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Star Trek (2009) the crew must rescue the Earth from having its past altered by time-travelling cyborgs and alien races.
== Genre as commentary on social issues ==
The science fiction film genre has long served as useful means of discussing sensitive topical issues without arousing controversy, and it often provides thoughtful social commentary on potential unforeseen future issues. The fictional setting allows for a deeper examination and reflection of the ideas presented, with the perspective of a viewer watching remote events. Most controversial issues in science fiction films tend to fall into two general storylines, Utopian or dystopian. Either a society will become better or worse in the future. Because of controversy, most science fiction films will fall into the dystopian film category rather than the Utopian category.
The types of commentary and controversy presented in science fiction films often illustrate the particular concerns of the periods in which they were produced. Early science fiction films expressed fears about automation replacing workers and the dehumanization of society through science and technology. For example, The Man in the White Suit (1951) used a science fiction concept as a means to satirize postwar British "establishment" conservatism, industrial capitalists, and trade unions. Another example is HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). He controls the shuttle, and later harms its crew. "Kubrick's vision reveals technology as a competitive force that must be defeated in order for humans to evolve." Later films explored the fears of environmental catastrophe, technology-created disasters, or overpopulation, and how they would impact society and individuals (e.g. Soylent Green, Elysium).
The monster movies of the 1950s—like Godzilla (1954)—served as stand-ins for fears of nuclear war, communism and views on the Cold War. In the 1970s, science fiction films also became an effective way of satirizing contemporary social mores with Silent Running and Dark Star presenting hippies in space as a riposte to the militaristic types that had dominated earlier films. Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange presented a horrific vision of youth culture, portraying a youth gang engaged in rape and murder, along with disturbing scenes of forced psychological conditioning serving to comment on societal responses to crime.
Logan's Run depicted a futuristic swingers' utopia that practiced euthanasia as a form of population control and The Stepford Wives anticipated a reaction to the women's liberation movement. Enemy Mine demonstrated that the foes we have come to hate are often just like us, even if they appear alien.
Contemporary science fiction films continue to explore social and political issues. One recent example is Minority Report (2002), debuting in the months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and focused on the issues of police powers, privacy and civil liberties in a near-future United States. Some movies like The Island (2005) and Never Let Me Go (2010) explore the issues surrounding cloning.
More recently, the headlines surrounding events such as the Iraq War, international terrorism, the avian influenza scare, and United States anti-immigration laws have found their way into the consciousness of contemporary filmmakers. The film V for Vendetta (2006) drew inspiration from controversial issues such as the Patriot Act and the War on Terror, while science fiction thrillers such as Children of Men (also 2006), District 9 (2009), and Elysium (2013) commented on diverse social issues such as xenophobia, propaganda, and cognitive dissonance. Avatar (2009) had remarkable resemblance to colonialism of native land, mining by multinational-corporations and the Iraq War.
=== Future noir ===
Lancaster University professor Jamaluddin Bin Aziz argues that as science fiction has evolved and expanded, it has fused with other film genres such as gothic thrillers and film noir. When science fiction integrates film noir elements, Bin Aziz calls the resulting hybrid form "future noir", a form which "... encapsulates a postmodern encounter with generic persistence, creating a mixture of irony, pessimism, prediction, extrapolation, bleakness and nostalgia." Future noir films such as Brazil, Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys, Dark City, and Children of Men use a protagonist who is "...increasingly dubious, alienated and fragmented", at once "dark and playful like the characters in Gibson's Neuromancer, yet still with the "... shadow of Philip Marlowe..."
Future noir films that are set in a post-apocalyptic world "...restructure and re-represent society in a parody of the atmospheric world usually found in noir's construction of a city—dark, bleak and beguiled." Future noir films often intermingle elements of the gothic thriller genre, such as Minority Report, which makes references to occult practices, and Alien, with its tagline "In space, no one can hear you scream", and a space vessel, Nostromo, "that hark[s] back to images of the haunted house in the gothic horror tradition". Bin Aziz states that films such as James Cameron’s The Terminator are a subgenre of "techno noir" that create "...an atmospheric feast of noir darkness and a double-edged world that is not what it seems."
== Film versus literature ==
When compared to science-fiction literature, science-fiction films often rely less on the human imagination and more upon action scenes and special effect-created alien creatures and exotic backgrounds. Since the 1970s, film audiences have come to expect a high standard for special effects in science-fiction films. In some cases, science fiction-themed films superimpose an exotic, futuristic setting onto what would not otherwise be a science-fiction tale. Nevertheless, some critically acclaimed science-fiction movies have followed in the path of science-fiction literature, using story development to explore abstract concepts.
=== Influence of science fiction authors ===
Jules Verne (1828–1905) became the first major science-fiction author whose works film-makers adapted for the screen - with Méliès' Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902) and 20,000 lieues sous les mers (1907), which used Verne's scenarios as a framework for fantastic visuals. By the time Verne's work fell out of copyright in 1950, the adaptations were generally adapted as costume dramas with a Victorian aesthetic. Verne's works have been adapted a number of times since then, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), From the Earth to the Moon (1958), and two film versions of Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1959 and 2008.
H. G. Wells's novels The Invisible Man, Things to Come and The Island of Doctor Moreau were all adapted into films during his lifetime (1866–1946), while The War of the Worlds, updated in 1953 and again in 2005, was adapted to film at least four times altogether. The Time Machine has had two film versions (1960 and 2002) while Sleeper in part is a pastiche of Wells's 1910 novel The Sleeper Awakes.
With the drop-off in interest in science-fiction films during the 1940s, few of the "golden age" science-fiction authors made it to the screen. A novella by John W. Campbell provided the basis for The Thing from Another World (1951). Robert A. Heinlein contributed to the screenplay for Destination Moon (1950), but none of his major works were adapted for the screen until the 1990s: The Puppet Masters (1994) and Starship Troopers (1997). The fiction of Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) influenced the Star Wars and Star Trek films, but it was not until 1988 that a film version of one of his short stories (Nightfall) was produced. The first major motion-picture adaptation of a full-length Asimov work was Bicentennial Man (1999) (based on the short stories Bicentennial Man (1976) and The Positronic Man (1992), the latter co-written with Robert Silverberg), although I, Robot (2004), a film loosely based on Asimov's book of short stories by the same name, drew more attention.
The 1968 film adaptation of some of the stories of science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke as 2001: A Space Odyssey won the Academy Award for Visual Effects and offered thematic complexity not typically associated with the science-fiction genre at the time. Its sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact (inspired to Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two), was commercially successful but less highly regarded by critics. Reflecting the times, two earlier science-fiction works by Ray Bradbury were adapted for cinema in the 1960s: Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and The Illustrated Man (1969). Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five was filmed in 1971 and Breakfast of Champions in 1998.
Philip K. Dick's fiction has been used in a number of science-fiction films, in part because it evokes the paranoia that has been a central feature of the genre. Films based on Dick's works include Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), Impostor (2001), Minority Report (2002), Paycheck (2003), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and The Adjustment Bureau (2011). These films represent loose adaptations of the original stories, with the exception of A Scanner Darkly, which is more inclined to Dick's novel.
== Market share ==
The estimated North American box-office market-share of science fiction as of 2019 comprised 4.77%.
== See also ==
== Citations ==
== General and cited references ==
Luca Bandirali, Enrico Terrone, Nell'occhio, nel cielo. Teoria e storia del cinema di fantascienza, Turin: Lindau, 2008, ISBN 978-88-7180-716-4.
Welch Everman, Cult Science Fiction Films, Citadel Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8065-1602-X.
Peter Guttmacher, Legendary Sci-Fi Movies, 1997, ISBN 1-56799-490-3.
Phil Hardy, The Overlook Film Encyclopedia, Science Fiction. William Morrow and Company, New York, 1995, ISBN 0-87951-626-7.
Richard S. Myers, S-F 2: A pictorial history of science fiction from 1975 to the present, 1984, Citadel Press, ISBN 0-8065-0875-2.
Gregg Rickman, The Science Fiction Film Reader, 2004, ISBN 0-87910-994-7.
Matthias Schwartz, Archeologies of a Past Future. Science Fiction Films from Communist Eastern Europe, in: Rainer Rother, Annika Schaefer (eds.): Future Imperfect. Science – Fiction – Film, Berlin 2007, pp. 96–117. ISBN 978-3-86505-249-0.
Dave Saunders, Arnold: Schwarzenegger and the Movies, 2009, London, I. B. Tauris
Errol Vieth, Screening Science: Context, Text and Science in Fifties Science Fiction Film, Lanham, MD and London: Scarecrow Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8108-4023-5.
== Further reading ==
Simultaneous Worlds: Global Science Fiction Cinema edited by Jennifer L. Feeley and Sarah Ann Wells, 2015, University of Minnesota Press
== External links ==
The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television — horror, science fiction, fantasy and animation
The Greatest Films: Science Fiction Films
LIFE Sci-Fi | Tech News, Movies, Reviews
LIFE in a word | Wikipedia/Science_fiction_film |
French science fiction is a substantial genre of French literature. It remains an active and productive genre which has evolved in conjunction with anglophone science fiction and other French and international literature.
== History ==
=== Proto science fiction before Jules Verne ===
As far back as the 17th century, space exploration and aliens can be found in Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657) and Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle's Entretien sur la Pluralité des Mondes (1686). Voltaire's 1752 short stories Micromégas and Plato's Dream are particularly prophetic of the future of science fiction.
Also worthy of note are Simon Tyssot de Patot's Voyages et Aventures de Jacques Massé (1710), which features a Lost World, La Vie, Les Aventures et Le Voyage de Groenland du Révérend Père Cordelier Pierre de Mésange (1720), which features a Hollow Earth, Louis-Sébastien Mercier's L'An 2440 (1771), which depicts a future France, and Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne's La Découverte Australe par un Homme Volant (1781) known for his prophetic inventions.
Other notable proto-science fiction authors and works of the 18th and 19th century include:
Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville's Le Dernier Homme (1805) about the Last Man on Earth.
Historian Félix Bodin's Le Roman de l'Avenir (1834) and Emile Souvestre's Le Monde Tel Qu'il Sera (1846), two novels which try to predict what the next century will be like.
Louis Geoffroy's Napoleon et la Conquête du Monde (1836), an alternate history of a world conquered by Napoleon.
C.I. Defontenay's Star ou Psi de Cassiopée (1854), an Olaf Stapledon-like chronicle of an alien world and civilization.
Astronomer Camille Flammarion's La Pluralité des Mondes Habités (1862) which speculated on extraterrestrial life.
Henri de Parville's An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars. Originally a hoax in the French newspaper Le Pays in 1864, about a Colorado oil prospector who finds a meteorite with a mummy inside that is believed to come from Mars; it was later published in an expanded book version by Jules Verne's publisher during 1865.
Achille Eyraud's Voyage to Venus (1865), a story about humans who travel to Venus in an interplanetary rocket-powered spaceship, where they find an utopian society.
However, modern French science fiction, and arguably science fiction as a whole, begins with Jules Verne (1828–1905), the author of many of the classics of science fiction.
=== After Jules Verne ===
The first few decades of French science fiction produced several renowned names of literature, the Scientific Marvelous. Not only Jules Verne, but also:
Louis Boussenard, a successor of Verne.
Didier de Chousy, who wrote Ignis (1883), a novel such that an inventor tries to tap the energy from the centre of the earth in a dystopian society dominated by technology.
Charles Derennes (1882–1930), who wrote novels like Le peuple du pole (1907) (The People of the Pole), where explorers find a secret alien society of technologically-advanced reptilian humanoids who have evolved in isolation from the rest of the world for millions of years.
Arnould Galopin, creator of Doctor Omega (1906).
Jean de La Hire, creator of Nyctalope
Paul d'Ivoi, author of the Vernian Voyages Excentriques and creator of Pulp heroes Lavarède and Docteur Mystère (1900).
André Laurie, another successor of Verne.
John Antoine Nau, who won the first Prix Goncourt in 1903 for his science fiction novel Enemy Force.
Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny, who sent their heroes explore the Solar System in Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'un Savant Russe (1888)
Gustave Le Rouge, author of Le Prisonnier de la Planète Mars (1908) and Le Mystérieux Docteur Cornélius (1913).
Albert Robida, a writer and an artist, arguably the main initiator of science fiction illustration.
Maurice Renard, a Wellsian writer, author of Le Docteur Lerne (1908), Le Péril Bleu (1910) and Les Mains d'Orlac ("The Hands of Orlac", 1920).
J.-H. Rosny aîné, born in Belgium, a major developer of "modern" French science fiction, a writer comparable to H. G. Wells, who wrote the classic Les Xipehuz (1887) and La Mort de la Terre (1910).
Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, author of L'Ève future (1886)
After H. G. Wells' The Time Machine was translated into French by Henry D. Davray in 1895 as the first of his works, succeeded soon by other translations of his stories, influencing French science fiction writers such as Maurice Renard.
World War I brought an end to this early period. While the rapid development of science and technology during the late 19th century motivated the optimistic works of early science fiction authors, the horrors of industrialised warfare and specifically the application of advanced technologies in such a destructive manner made many later French authors more pessimistic about the potential of technological development.
Between the two world wars, Rosny aîné published his masterpiece Les Navigateurs de l'Infini (1924), in which he invented the word "astronautique". There were a few notable new authors during the period:
Régis Messac, for Quinzinzinzili (1935).
José Moselli, for La fin d'Illa (1925).
Jacques Spitz, for La guerre des mouches (1938).
René Thévenin for Chasseurs d'Hommes (1930) and Sur l'Autre Face du Monde (1935), the latter under a pseudonym.
=== After World War II ===
Until the late 1950s, relatively little French science fiction was published, and what was published was often very pessimistic about the future of humanity, and was frequently not advertised as "science fiction" at all. René Barjavel's Ravage (1943) and Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes (1963) are examples well known.
This period of decrease of French science fiction (abbreviated SF) is considered by many to be a "golden age" of English-language and particularly American science fiction. When French science fiction began reappearing strongly after World War II, it was the themes and styles of Anglophone science fiction which served as an inspiration for new works. The first genre magazine, Fiction – at first a translation of the American Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction – began appearing during 1953.
The major genre imprint of the 1950s and '60s publishing translations of American novels was Le Rayon Fantastique published by Hachette and Gallimard, and edited by George Gallet and Stephen Spriel. Nevertheless, Le Rayon Fantastique helped begin the careers of a number of French authors:
Francis Carsac
Philippe Curval
Daniel Drode
Michel Jeury (writing under the pseudonym of "Albert Higon")
Gérard Klein
Nathalie Henneberg
During 1951, publisher Fleuve Noir initiated Anticipation, a paperback series devoted mostly to French authors which released a steady series of pulp-like novels. Among its authors were:
Pierre Barbet
Richard Bessière
B. R. Bruss (aka Roger Blondel, pseudonyms of René Bonnefoy)
André Caroff
Jimmy Guieu
Gérard Klein (writing under the pseudonym of "Gilles d'Argyre")
Maurice Limat
André Ruellan (writing under the pseudonym of "Kurt Steiner")
Louis Thirion
Stefan Wul
René Barjavel
Later, many major names of French science fiction were printed first by that company.
Another series, Présence du Futur, was initiated during 1954 by publisher Denoël. Among its authors were:
Jean-Pierre Andrevon
Jean-Louis Curtis
Gérard Klein
Jacques Sternberg
Jacques Vallee (writing under the pseudonym of "Jérôme Sériel")
During this era, there was very little mainstream critical interest for French SF. French cinema, however, proved to be more successful for science fiction. Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 movie Alphaville—- a thriller and satire of French politics—- was the first major example of French "New Wave" science fiction.
Unlike American science fiction, space travel was not the major theme for the post-1968 French authors. A new generation of French writers, who had few memories of the horrors of the past two generations, were inspired by the transformation of France during the post-war era. Especially after May 1968, French SF authors wrote about political and social themes in their works. Authors like Michel Jeury, Jean-Pierre Andrevon and Philippe Curval began to attract acclaim for their redevelopment of a genre which, at the time, was still considered primarily a juvenile entertainment.
During the 1970s, comics began to be important for French SF. Métal hurlant—- the French magazine that was imitated as the American magazine Heavy Metal –- began developing the possibilities of science fiction as a source for cartoons. Graphic novels are now a major— if not the major— outlet for French science fiction production today.
During the 1980s, French authors began to consider science fiction as appropriate for experimental literature. The influence of postmodernism on literature and the development of cyberpunk themes catalysed a new body of French SF, near the end of the decade: the so-called "Lost Generation" (represented by such writers as Claude Ecken, Michel Pagel, Jean-Marc Ligny or Roland C. Wagner)
At present, French SF is particularly well represented by graphic novels, and a number of titles are printed annually. As in most of the developed world, magazine culture has decreased dramatically because of the internet, but a number of French SF magazines remain in print, including Bifrost, Galaxies and Solaris. Despite the space opera revival of the beginning of the 1990s (Ayerdhal, Serge Lehman, Pierre Bordage, Laurent Genefort) the influence from English language science fiction and movies has diminished considerably since the "Lost Generation", while the influence of animation, video games and other international science fiction traditions (German, Italian) has increased. The influence of Japanese manga and anime has also been particularly noticeable during recent years for graphic formats.
== Other notable French science fiction authors, post-World War II ==
G.-J. Arnaud
Ayerdhal
Pierre Bordage
Serge Brussolo
Richard Canal
Alain Damasio
Maurice G. Dantec
Michel Demuth
Sylvie Denis
Thierry Di Rollo
Dominique Douay
Catherine Dufour
Jean-Claude Dunyach
Claude Ecken
Jean-Pierre Fontana
Yves Fremion
Laurent Genefort
Philippe Goy
Johan Héliot
Joël Houssin
Emmanuel Jouanne
Serge Lehman
Jean-Marc Ligny
Xavier Mauméjean
Michel Pagel
Pierre Pelot (writing under the pseudonym of "Pierre Suragne")
Julia Verlanger (writing under the pseudonym of "Gilles Thomas")
Élisabeth Vonarburg
Roland C. Wagner
Daniel Walther
Bernard Werber
Joëlle Wintrebert
== Literary awards ==
The Prix Rosny-Aîné is an annual award for French-language science fiction.
Other Awards for French-language science fiction (non-exclusively) include or have includes the Prix Apollo (1972–1990), the Prix Bob Morane (1999– ), the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire (1974– ), the Prix Julia Verlanger (1986– ), the Prix Jules Verne (1927–1933; 1958–1963), the Prix Ozone (1977–2000) and the Prix Tour Eiffel (1997–2002).
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Louit, Robert; Chambon, Jacques; Langford, David (2024). "France". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 17 March 2024.
== External links ==
THE FRENCH ON MARS: A HUNDRED YEARS RETROSPECTIVE (1865–1965)
Black Coat Press: publisher of English translations of French Science Fiction | Wikipedia/French_science_fiction |
Anatomy of Wonder — A Critical Guide to Science Fiction is a reference book by Neil Barron. It covers hundreds of works of science fiction.
== Publication history ==
The book received a total of five editions, each updated and expanded compared to the previous ones:
Anatomy of Wonder: Science Fiction (1976)
Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction: Second Edition (1981)
Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction: Third Edition (1987)
Anatomy of Wonder 4: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction (1995)
Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction: Fifth Edition (2004)
== Reception ==
Dave Langford reviewed Anatomy of Wonder for White Dwarf #39, and stated that "The book records hundreds of 'major' SF works from antiquity to 1980, with useful plot summaries [...] and idiosyncratic recommendations for building up a collection of fine SF. A unique reference book, shortlisted for the 1982 Hugo Award, non-fiction category."
The book was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work for 1982, but lost to Danse Macabre.
== Reviews ==
Review by Jeff Frane (1981) in Locus, #248 September 1981
Review by Thomas D. Clareson (1981) in Extrapolation, Winter 1981
Review by Arthur O. Lewis (1982) in Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review, #1, January-February 1982
Review by Tom Staicar (1982) in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March 1982
Review by Thomas A. Easton [as by Tom Easton] (1982) in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, May 1982
Review by T. E. D. Klein (1982) in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, August 1982
== See also ==
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Encyclopedia of Fantasy
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction by Brian Stableford
== References ==
== External links ==
[1] Locus
[2] Science Fiction Studies
Reviews at ISFDB | Wikipedia/Anatomy_of_Wonder:_A_Critical_Guide_to_Science_Fiction |
Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. In a conventional science fiction story, the world is presented as grounded by the laws of nature and comprehensible by science, while a conventional fantasy story contains mostly supernatural elements that do not obey the scientific laws of the real world. The world of science fantasy, however, is laid out to be scientifically logical and often supplied with hard science-like explanations of any supernatural elements.
During the Golden Age of Science Fiction, science fantasy stories were seen in sharp contrast to the terse, scientifically plausible material that came to dominate mainstream science fiction, typified by the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. Although science fantasy stories at that time were often relegated to the status of children's entertainment, their freedom of imagination and romance proved to be an early major influence on the "New Wave" writers of the 1960s, who became exasperated by the limitations of hard science fiction.
== Historical view ==
The term "science fantasy" was coined in 1935 by critic Forrest J. Ackerman as a synonym for science fiction. In the 1950s, the British journalist Walter Gillings considered science fantasy as a part of science fiction that was not plausible from the point of view of the science of the time (for example, the use of nuclear weapons in H.G. Wells' novel The World Set Free was a science fantasy from the point of view of Newtonian physics and a work of science fiction from the point of view of Einstein's theory). In 1948, writer Marion Zimmer (later known as Marion Zimmer Bradley) called "science fantasy" a mixture of science fiction and fantasy in Startling Stories magazine. Critic Judith Murry considered science fantasy as works of fantasy in which magic has a natural scientific basis. Science fiction critic John Clute chose the narrower term "technological fantasy" from the broader concept of "science fiction". The label first came into wide use after many science fantasy stories were published in the American pulp magazines, such as Robert A. Heinlein's Magic, Inc., L. Ron Hubbard's Slaves of Sleep, and Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp's Harold Shea series. All were relatively rationalistic stories published in John W. Campbell Jr.'s Unknown magazine. These were a deliberate attempt to apply the techniques and attitudes of science fiction to traditional fantasy subjects.
Distinguishing between pure science fiction and pure fantasy, Rod Serling argued that the former was "the improbable made possible" while the latter was "the impossible made probable". As a combination of the two, science fantasy gives a scientific veneer of realism to things that simply could not happen in the real world under any circumstances. Where science fiction does not permit the existence of fantastical or supernatural elements, science fantasy explicitly relies upon them to complement the scientific elements.
In explaining the intrigue of science fantasy, Carl D. Malmgren provides an intro regarding C. S. Lewis's speculation on the emotional needs at work in the subgenre: "In the counternatural worlds of science fantasy, the imaginary and the actual, the magical and the prosaic, the mythical and the scientific, meet and interanimate. In so doing, these worlds inspire us with new sensations and experiences, with [quoting C. S. Lewis] 'such beauty, awe, or terror as the actual world does not supply', with the stuff of desires, dreams, and dread."
Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore published novels in Startling Stories, alone and together, which were far more romantic. These were closely related to the work that they and others were doing for outlets like Weird Tales, such as Moore's Northwest Smith stories.
Ace Books published a number of books as science fantasy during the 1950s and 1960s.
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction points out that as a genre, science fantasy "has never been clearly defined", and was most commonly used in the period between 1950 and 1966.
The Star Trek franchise created by Gene Roddenberry is sometimes cited as an example of science fantasy. Writer James F. Broderick describes Star Trek as science fantasy because it includes semi-futuristic as well as supernatural/fantasy elements such as The Q. According to the late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, many purists argue that Star Trek is science fantasy rather than science fiction because of its scientifically improbable elements, which he partially agreed with.
The status of Star Wars as a science fantasy franchise has been debated. In 2015, George Lucas stated that "Star Wars isn't a science-fiction film, it's a fantasy film and a space opera".
== Characteristics and subjects ==
Science fantasy blends elements and characteristics of science fiction and fantasy. This usually takes the form of incorporating fantasy elements in a science fiction context. It tends to describe worlds that appear much like fantasy worlds but are made believable through science fiction naturalist explanations. For example, creatures from folklore and mythology typical for fantasy fiction become seemingly possible in reinvented forms through for example the element of extra-terrestrial beings. Such works have also been described as 'mythopoeic science fantasy'. In the genre, subjects are often conceptualized on a planetary scale.
== See also ==
Dieselpunk
Dying Earth (genre)
Lovecraftian horror
New weird
Planetary romance (also known as Sword and Planet)
Raygun Gothic
Steampunk
Technofantasy
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Attebery, Brian (2014). "The Fantastic". In Latham, Rob (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199838844.013.0011. ISBN 978-0-19-983884-4.
Scholes, R. (1987). Boiling Roses: Thoughts on Science Fantasy. Intersections: Science Fiction and Fantasy. SIU Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-1374-7
== External links ==
"Science Fantasy" in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction | Wikipedia/Science_fantasy |
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