Effects of National Strategic Policy on the Military Engineer Force Structure from 1919 through 1991

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron D. Bohrer
1999 ◽  
Vol 158 ◽  
pp. 314-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Li

At the 15th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress held in September 1997, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin announced that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) would reduce its manpower by 500,000 in the next three years. This is apparently a new step to deepen the military reform that Deng Xiaoping had initiated in early 1980s. Such reform aims to transform the PLA from a manpower-based military geared toward fighting a major defensive “people's war” to a technology-based military capable of forward deployment to deal with more variegated local contingencies. While substantial research has been done on major aspects of this reform, changes within major PLA organizations, such as the Central Military Commission (CMC), the higher command structure, the research and learning institutions, and the force structure, have not been adequately and systematically analysed. This study intends to shed light on these changes. Such a study is necessary and significant also because it helps towards an understanding of the extent, direction and problems of China's defence modernization drive, which may have important implications for Asian security. Finally, it provides an analytical framework for research regarding further organizational changes of the PLA.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Hughey ◽  
Christopher Spevak ◽  
Eric Stedje-Larsen

ABSTRACT Active duty military service members (ADSMs) suffer disproportionately from chronic pain. In the USA, military pain physicians serve an important role in the treatment of pain conditions in addition to the maintenance of the fighting force. Expanding roles for pain physicians, including novel therapies, consulting roles for opioid policy, and usefulness in a deployed setting create enormous value for military pain physicians. Ongoing force structure changes, including proposed reduction in the U.S. Military’s healthcare workforce may significantly impact pain care and the health of the fighting forces. Military pain physicians support a variety of different roles in the military healthcare system. Ultimately, maintaining a robust faculty of pain physicians allows for both preservation of the fighting forces and a ready medical force.


Author(s):  
Damir Tulić

Senior representatives of the Venetian Republic inspired distinguished noblemen and rich citizens in Venice, as well as in Terraferma and Stato da Mar, to perpetuate their memory through lavish commemorative monuments that were erected in churches and convents. Their endeavour for self-promotion and their wish to monopolise glory could be detected in the choice of material for the busts that adorned almost every monument: marble. The most elaborate monument of this kind belongs to the Brutti family, erected in 1695 in Koper Cathedral. In 1688 the Town of Labin ordered a marble bust of local hero Antonio Bollani and placed it on the facade of the parish church. Fine examples of family glorification could be found in the capital of Venetian Dalmatia – Zadar. In the Church of Saint Chrysogonus, there is a monument to the provveditore Marino Zorzi, adorned with a marble portrait bust. Rather similar is the monument to condottiere Simeone Fanfogna in Zadar’s Benedictine Church of Saint Mary and the monument to the military engineer Francesco Rossini in Saint Simeon. All these monuments embellished with portrait busts have a common purpose: to ensure the everlasting memory of important individuals. This paper analyses comparative examples, models, artists, as well as the desires of clients or authorities that were able to invest money in self or family promotion, thus creating the identity of success.


Author(s):  
Katarzyna Zysk

The Russian armed forces and military thought have been undergoing a historic transition. Following several failed attempts at military reforms since the 1990s, it became increasingly clear that the organizational structure, operational doctrines, and weaponry of Soviet provenience were poorly adapted to the radically changed security environment, as well as to Russia’s economic, material, and human capabilities. Since Vladimir Putin’s second presidential term, the political will to prioritize the defence sector has systematically increased and eventually led to a comprehensive military transformation. A new command and force structure, massive introduction of new materiel, and sharply increased quality and quantity of training have been accompanied by doctrinal revisions to accommodate changing forms of warfare. Nevertheless, the modernization efforts have been unevenly distributed and in some cases incoherent, undermined by inadequate industrial, technological, socio-economic, and demographic resources. The end objective of the military transformation remains a subject of an ongoing discussion.


Author(s):  
Tim McFarland ◽  
Jai Galliott

While some are reluctant to admit it, we are witnessing a fundamental shift in the way that advanced militaries conduct their core business of fighting. Increasingly autonomous ‘unmanned' systems are taking on the ‘dull, dirty and dangerous' roles in the military, leaving human war fighters to assume an oversight role or focus on what are often more cognitively demanding tasks. To this end, many military forces already hold unmanned systems that crawl, swim and fly, performing mine disposal, surveillance and more direct combat roles. Having found their way into the military force structure quite rapidly, especially in the United States, there has been extensive debate concerning the legality and ethicality of their use. These topics often converge, but what is legal will not necessarily be moral, and vice versa. The authors' contribution comes in clearly separating the two parts. In this paper, they provide a detailed survey of the legality of employing autonomous weapons systems in a military context.


2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Michaud

This article narrates a remarkable endeavor, a venture into the colonial ethnography of borderland mountain societies of today’s northern Vietnam, then upland Tonkin, from the unlikely cultural perspective of the military. This venture, commissioned by Governors Generals Paul Doumer and Paul Beau, was conducted a little over a century ago, yielding over four thousand manuscript pages penned by seventy different authors.First, I consider the logic of the militarization of the northern borderlands at the end of the nineteenth century, a strategic policy that triggered the launch of two surveys in 1897 and 1903. I then examine the methods used in the performance of these surveys and, building upon material from the original documents, I comment on the mindset of the officers who performed this task and on the strength of this material for anthropological research today.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-109
Author(s):  
Leonardo Casini

Las obras defensivas de Portobelo y del Chagre en la costa caribeña panameña representan un testimonio importante sobre la aplicación en el Nuevo Mundo, de modelos de fortificaciones desarrolladas en Eu-ropa entre los siglos XVI y XVIII.Las fortificaciones de Panamá fueron proyectadas por el ingeniero italiano Battista Antonelli a finales del siglo XVI, en el ámbito de un amplio plan estratégico de defensa regional para el área del Caribe. Las obras que se ejecutaron están entre las primeras aplicaciones en América de la tipología de la “Fortificazione alla Moderna”, así como, se realizaron en Italia y seguidamente, se perfeccionaron en el teatro bélico Europeo. Después del ataque inglés llevado a cabo por el almirante Vernon en 1740, la Corona Española decide proceder a un nuevo y detallado plan de redefinición de sitios que contará en la obra, principal-mente, con los ingenieros del Real Cuerpo de Ingenieros, Ignacio Sala y Manuel Hernández, quienes actualizarán los sitios de Portobelo y el Chagre de acuerdo con los nuevos modelos planteados en Francia a finales del siglo XVII, por Vauban.La comparación de las soluciones adoptadas permite observar la evolución de los modelos de fortifica-ciones dentro de un lapso de tiempo de casi ciento cincuenta años. En paralelo, el análisis de los acon-tecimientos proyectuales y constructivos permiten recorrer el crecimiento de la figura del ingeniero mi-litar en España y la evolución de su retrotierra cultural y formativo que culmina con la fundación del “Real Cuerpo de Ingenieros” en 1711 y de la “Real Academia Militar de Matemáticas de Barcelona”.   Abstract The defensive works of Portobelo and Chagre on the Caribbean coast of Panama represent an important testimony of the application in the New World of models of fortifications developed in Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.The fortifications of Panama were designed by the Italian engineer Battista Antonelli at the end of the 16th century, within the framework of a comprehensive regional defense strategic plan for the Caribbean area. The works that were executed are among the first applications in America of the typology of the "Fortificazione alla Moderna", as well as, they were developed in Italy and later, perfected in the European war theater. After the English attack carried out by admiral Vernon in 1740, the Spanish Crown decides to proceed to a new and detailed plan of redefinition of sites that will have in the work, mainly with the engineers of the “Real Cuerpo de Ingenieros”, Ignacio Sala and Manuel Hernández, who will update the sites of Portobello and Chagre according to the new models developed in France in the late 17th century by Vauban.The comparison of the adopted solutions allows to observe the evolution of the models of fortifications within a temporal arc of time of almost one hundred and fifty years. At the same time, the analysis of the projective and constructive events allows to traverse the development of the figure of the military engineer in Spain and the evolution of its cultural and formative background culminating with the foun-dation of the “Real Cuerpo de Ingenieros” in 1711 and the “Real Academia Militar de Matemáticas de Barcelona”.


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