The new U.S. Army vision contends that heuristics are practical tools for achieving innovation. Overcoming complex terrain and adaptive hybrid threats in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan requires technological innovation. Supportability issues result from modifying deployed weapon systems with new technology for countering these types of threats. Collecting detailed data on deployed weapon systems ...

This study discusses a diagnostic approach to examining the lifecycle support system of a weapon system—specifically illustrating the approaches for the US Navy Phalanx Closein Weapon System (CIWS). The study gauges the status of current readiness and analyzes a snapshot of cost structures. The study identifies the program’s influential cost factors and system performance drivers. As a diagnost...

This communication addresses real-time weapon classification by analysis of asynchronous acoustic data, collected from microphones on a sensor network. The weapon classification algorithm consists of two parts: (i) feature extraction from time-series data using symbolic dynamic filtering (SDF), and (ii) pattern classification based on the extracted features using the language measure (LM) and s...

Hacking trauma is often encountered in forensic cases, but little experimental research has been conducted that would allow for the recognition of wounds caused by specific weapon types. In this paper, we report the results of a hacking trauma caused by machete, cleaver, and axe weapons and the characteristics of each weapon type on bone. Each weapon type was employed in multiple trials on pig ...

We propose a winner-takes-all (WTA) classifier for structures represented by graphs. WTA classification follows the principle elimination of competition. The input structure is assigned to the class corresponding to the winner of the competition. In experiments we investigate the performance of the WTA classifier and compare it with the canonical maximum similarity (MS) classifier.

Article history: Received 22 May 2006 Received in revised form 4 July 2007 Accepted 6 July 2007 Available online 1 August 2007 This paper highlights how farmers' willingness to supply non-marketed ecosystem services (ES) is influenced by whether or not the non-marketed ES are produced jointly with agricultural products. When marketed products and non-marketed ES share some production inputs the...

Since March 1996, Dr. Jonathan B. Tucker has directed the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), Monterey Institute of International Studies. During the 1999-2000 academic year, he is on leave as the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Dr. Kathleen M. V...

"cannot be disinvented." Yet the present policy of the declared nuclear weapon states of trying to impose nuclear apartheid by force provokes the spread of nuclear weapons, rather than supporting the stated goal of non-proliferation. The only way out of this lethal spiral is to accept global nuclear disarmament by consistent use of the law -as the world is already doing with chemical and biolog...

The Agents of Bioterrorism course (BSBD 640, University of Maryland University College) is a graduate level course created in response to an elevated need for scientists working in the field of medical countermeasures to biological and chemical weapons in the years following 9/11. Students read and evaluate assigned current primary literature articles investigating medical countermeasures at ea...