The solitaire army is a one-person peg jumping game where a player attempts to advance an “army” of pegs as far as possible into empty territory. The game was introduced by John Conway and is also known as “Conway’s Soldiers.” We consider various generalizations of this game in different 2D geometries, unify them under a common mathematical framework, and find the minimum size army capable of a...

In April 1997, the United States Army announced that savings had finally overtaken costs in closing or realigning 803 of its installations worldwide. This milestone occurred in the ninth year of a 13-year program approved by Congress and Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. The cost of this program is $5.3 billion, and when complete, the army expects annual savings of $996 million in perpetuit...