21st Century Military Operations in a Complex Electromagnetic Environment

Author(s):  
DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD WASHINGTON DC
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 220-225
Author(s):  
Olga Yuryevna Igoshina

This paper considers one of the urgent problems of the great Patriotic war history - the irrevocable human losses during the great Patriotic war. In the 21st century mass sources (electronic databases and databanks) were distributed. Some of them can be used while studying how local people of the Kuibyshev (now - Samara) Region participated in the military operations in 1941-1945. The paper analyzes information opportunities of the generalized databank Memorial and the consolidated database of the all-Russian information and search center Fatherland. The paper also analyzes the electronic database of the irrevocable human losses of the Kuibyshev Region that is founded on The Memory book and made by the author of the paper. The databank Memorial and the database Fatherland are on the Internet and help to determine the fate or find the information about the dead or missing relatives and friends as well as to determine their burial place. Sections of the victims are accompanied by links as well as by digital copies of archival documents that confirm the information about the date, place of service, death and burial of soldier. Electronic resources have unique features and value for achieving the historical truth about the price of Victory.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-64
Author(s):  
Srdjan Korac

The article analyses how robotisation as the latest advance in military technology can depersonalise the methods of killing in the 21st century by turning enemy soldiers and civilians into mere objects devoid of moral value. The departing assumption is that robotisation of warfare transforms military operations into automated industrial processes with the aim of removing empathy as a redundant ?cost?. The development of autonomous weapons systems raises a number of sharp ethical controversies related to the projected moral insensitivity of robots regarding the treatment of enemies and civilian population. The futurist vision of war as a foreign policy instrument entirely ?purified? of the risk of morally wrong actions is in opposition with the negative effects of the use of drones. The author concludes that the use of lethal robots in combat would eventually remove enemy soldiers and civilians from the realm of ethical reasoning and deprive them of human dignity. Decision to kill in military operations ought to be based on human conscience as the only proper framework of making decisions by reasoning whether an action is right or wrong.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-283
Author(s):  
Andrea L. Everett

The practice of humanitarian military action has changed markedly in the 21st century when compared with the 1990s. This essay explores three broad trends that have shaped this evolution. First, the UN has adopted the protection of civilians as a central element of its agenda and as a guiding principle for reforming its peace operations and its responses to atrocities such as genocide and ethnic cleansing. Second, major powers have played a central role as belligerents or patrons of belligerents in many of the worst conflicts of the last two decades. And third, the wealthy Western states with the greatest resources and military capabilities for ambitious humanitarian operations have substantially reduced their direct contributions to these missions. Together, these developments have shifted the balance of responsibility and effort for humanitarian military operations toward the UN and developing countries; constrained the ambitions of these missions; limited what they can accomplish and contributed to gaps between the expectations they create and the protection they are able to deliver; and discouraged meaningful action in response to many of the century’s most devastating conflicts.


Author(s):  
Sergyi GUBSKYI

The article deals with the issues of formation, organizational structure, activities of aviation units of the West Ukrainian National, Hetmanate and the Directory of the Ukrainian People's Republic (1918–1920) in memoir literature and scientific historiographic studies of the 20s of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. In these writings of Ukrainian diaspora and domestic authors, the emphasis is on the role of aviation of Ukrainian independent state formations in protecting their sovereignty, territorial integrity and economic interests. A new direction in the study of historiography on this subject is the work devoted to the biographies of Ukrainian aviators of that period. Further scientific developments in this direction will serve as a thorough study of various aspects of the Ukrainian statehood of the first half of the twentieth century. Key words: aviation, Western Ukrainian People's Republic, Hetmanate, Ukrainian People's Republic, memoirs, historiography, independence, flights, military operations, aviators, Poland, bolsheviks, planes, army, Ukrainian scientists.


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