Writer: Dr Rupali Jeswal and Damien Martin
In traditional warfare the objective is to destroy the adversary and occupy the territory, the guerrilla’s aim and objective is to control the population. By using blind terrorism the insurgents win latent support and by selective terrorism they are able to isolate the counter-forces and terrorise the people into silence. Insurgents always start with a cause and nothing else; a counter-insurgent starts with everything else but the cause. Nepalese and Filipino Maoist outfits have long been suspected of providing rhetorical and material support to the CPI(M). Maoists are acquiring weapons through Bangladesh, Myanmar and possibly Nepal. Some members of the Communist Party of Philippines (CPP), one of the major communist insurgent outfits of the world, had met Indian Maoist leaders in Chhattisgarh. Agencies also claimed that CPI (Maoist) cadres are undergoing training in urban guerrilla warfare in different Indian cities

As emergency responders and equipment suppliers participate in these debates, I hope they will add their own perspectives about critical infrastructure (a concept most Americans have never heard of) and how to best protect not just property, but human life itself.

Writer: Dr Rupali Jeswal

The visceral nature of emotions amplified by mainstream mass media.

The great changes of our time, the emotional tectonic shifts have provided new causes for anger, past dreams to be fulfilled and new tools of attack. Emotion’s role enables past experiences to be determined with appraisal of history, which further enables current circumstances to be quickly referred to and deduced – this is the case with all beings also in politics and in terrorism.

Information technology has given this process speed and larger, diverse area of dissemination.

Writer: Dr. Vivek Lall

There are a number of aeronautics organisations like HAL, NAL, DRDO laboratories, engineering colleges etc. in the country. Moreover, the sector is divided into defence and non-defence segments. With the entry of private companies, an institutional arrangement becomes necessary which could harness the knowledge residing in these various entities. Such an institution could map indigenous capabilities, identify knowledge gaps, direct resources efficiently to address critical technology gaps. The offset policy can become a significant contributor and catalyst to the development of the Indian aerospace sector. The successful implementation of offset policies of countries like Brazil and South Korea provides some encouragement of a similar success in India.

Writer: Vassilios Damiras Ph.D. (ABD)

Cyber threats are the new security dilemma of the twenty-first century. These kinds of high tech attacks threaten to destroy or severely damage critical global economic interests and undermine world wide security stability. The growing dependency on the information technology (IT) makes cybersecurity a vital component of the U.S. national security infrastructure. Lately, data collection, processing, storage, transmission capabilities, mobile, wireless, and cloud computing are increasing in huge numbers and make cyber attacks easily to occur.

Writer: Patrick Dunleavy

The writer, a former Deputy Inspector General for the New York Correctional System, provides chilling examples of radicalisation of prisoners while serving their prison sentences. He highlights the need to monitor such prisons and also address the sizable prison population who are most susceptible to radicalisation. Those common criminals who if left to themselves will only progress from bad to worse. Whether this is done by de-radicalisation programmes or counter radicalisation programmes is open for debate.

Writer: Dr Satoru Nagao
In 1990, US Navy possessed 230 “big surface combatants” while China possessed only 16. By 2013, however, US possession has come down to 101 while that of China has increased to 40 “big surface combatants”. This has been fuelling Chinese assertiveness.  In response Vietnam ordered six new submarines in 2009. Likewise, Malaysia got two submarines in 2009. Singapore, also, increased their submarines from four to five. Indonesia plans to increase submarines from two to twelve. Similarly, Philippines’ and Thailand’s plan to acquire their first submarine are under consideration.

Writer: Steve Melito

Thirty years ago this month, U.S. infrared satellites detected "a bizarre event out in the middle of Soviet nowhere", writes Thomas C. Reed in At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War (2004, Ballantine Books). A veteran of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, where his work included thermonuclear weapons physics, Reed served on the National Security Council (NSC) in the Regan White House and was a former Secretary of the Air Force under Presidents Ford and Carter.

Writer: Jessica Snapper

Although there are several versions of the story, the famous Middle East parable about the frog and the scorpion goes something like this: a frog and a scorpion want to cross a river, but the scorpion cannot swim. He asks the frog to carry him on his back, to which the frog responds, “How can I trust that you won’t sting me?”
The scorpion promises he will not attack the frog and they sign a treaty. The frog then carries the scorpion to the other side of the river. Once the scorpion finds himself on safe ground again, he immediately turns around and delivers a fatal sting to the frog. As the frog lays on the ground dying, he gasps, “How could you do something so dishonest? You promised you wouldn’t attack me!”

Writer: Dr. Vivek Lall

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is a tool which empowers the acquisition / procurement managers to make more informed decisions by enabling them to incorporate costs and benefits that occur over the lifetime of a product into their procurement decisions. To mitigate LCC evaluation challenges, the next step would be to move towards a Performance-Based Logistics (PBL) approach. The significance of PBL is that the OEM / supplier is compensated not on promise of performance nor on its cost: compensation is based on the actual performance of the product. PBL was introduced by the US Department of Defence (DoD) in 2001 for weapon system acquisition and logistics management. PBL was made mandatory the same year - its initial guidance was promulgated by the office of Secretary of Defence. The potential annual savings to the US DoD just from reduced inventory holding and transportation is estimated to range from US$ 2.8 - 3.7 billion annually.