Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

This study focuses on the Ion Cyclotron Range of frequency (ICRF) Travelling Wave Array (TWA) launcher proposed for the WEST tokamak. This launcher aims to mitigate the detrimental effects associated with resonant ICRF launchers, currently used in most magnetic plasma confinement experiments. The WEST TWA launcher, characterized by reduced near fields and an optimized spatial spectrum, is compared to current WEST ICRF launchers. The parallel component of the electric field on the limiters is particularly investigated, which is a proxy for sheath rectification and impurity production. Full-wave modelling using ANSYS HFSS software, paired with an in-house Python library, was employed to simulate the near fields generated by the TWA and WEST ICRF launchers. The models use experimental equilibrium and plasma profiles from a WEST discharge, with perfect electric conductor boundaries and artificial loss added to the plasma dielectric tensor to damp wavefield amplitude away from the launcher. Results indicate that the TWA launcher present design significantly reduces the amplitude of the toroidal components of the electric field on the limiter surfaces by a factor of more than four compared to the WEST ICRF launchers, which is expected to reduce the impurity production.

This paper introduces a compact spider-shaped monopole antenna tailored for tactical HF radio communication using Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS) propagation. The antenna structure is designed to maximize high-angle radiation, enabling communication across obstructed or mountainous terrain. Featuring a top-loaded radial configuration and choke balun for impedance matching, the prototype antenna achieved a significantly improved VSWR of 1.19. Field deployment confirmed reliable HF communication at a distance of 346 kilometers, highlighting the design’s practical relevance for mobile military operations.

ABSTRACT Iran’s Islamic Republic regime is adept at functioning amidst turmoil. In Triumph and Despair, Mehran Kamrava shows how structural bifurcation, parallel institutions, and fluid political factions are enduring sources of tension within an already hybrid political system. Far from being a handicap, the regime uses internal friction to deflect blame from its shortcomings and to sow confusion among opponents. Nor does it recoil from domestic turmoil, with crisis management increasingly a strategy of choice to compensate for its diminishing legitimacy and failures in governance. Abroad, too, the Islamic Republic seems to revel in geopolitical upheaval in pursuit of overturning the Middle Eastern security architecture. Relying on non-state affiliates as deterrents and power multipliers, it is opportunistic in ensnaring adversaries in proxy conflicts, or exploiting their entanglements, while minimizing the risk of direct confrontation with itself. In Reading Revolutionary Iran, Ze’ev Maghen explains the strategic culture behind the regime’s ambitions.

Antibiotic treatment to reduce the duration and severity of travellers' diarrhoea (Protocol).

While virtually all the historians who have discussed the reasons behind Hitler’s decision to declare war on the US agree that he was resigned to an imminent entry of the US into WW 2, so far no one has made a plausible case for one particular political or military move by Washington tipping him over the edge. From the “Destroyers-for-Bases” deal of September 1940 to the de-facto abolition of the 1939 Neutrality Law an already pro-Allied Roosevelt administration got progressively more and more involved in the war against Nazi Germany while still claiming the status of a neutral. Assessing which of these steps was decisive in predisposing the German leader towards a declaration of war is a major challenge, since no document for internal consumption summarising his thoughts on the matter has ever emerged.

The output of large parts of the German war economy was, if not quite in crisis, then certainly lagging by the autumn of 1941. It had reached a point where it was struggling to meet the current demands of the field army in Russia fighting in Russia, let alone those raised by the planned large-scale expansion of the Luftwaffe. Against such a backdrop, the idea of escalating the war by dragging another great power into it gives legitimacy to the view put forward by some historians that Hitler was seeking his self-immolation.

ABSTRACT Insurgencies are routinely conceptualised using a binary opposition between states and rebels. However, this neglects the complexity of their interaction, especially their collaboration. Although rebel-state collaboration is found throughout the history of insurgency, we lack a full explanation of why it occurs. This article endeavours to take the first step in developing a comprehensive theory by analysing rebel-state collaboration in two heuristic case studies: Afghanistan and Syria. Through process tracing, we find four mechanisms that can explain collaboration: 1) to prevent a costly military stalemate, 2) to gain or maintain legitimacy, 3) because external threats incentivise a mutually beneficial alliance, and 4) because both have to operate under the constraints of the pre-existing political economy. The relative weight of each varies, reflecting the fluid and contextual nature of wartime political orders. Contrasting with more popular explanations, we argue rebels and states are willing to collaborate even when the other benefits too, providing they believe their relative gains would be higher than their opponents, or the costs of competing would be too large. In providing a fuller explanation of rebel-state collaboration, we advocate a rethink about how to capture and analyse the complex and dynamic interactions between rebels and states.

This chapter examines three Napoleonic case studies: first, Saragossa (1809), where the employment of disciplined and well-led conventional forces demonstrated that even the most fanatical resistance may be overcome by persistence, tactical adaptation and an almost fatalistic willingness to accept heavy casualties; second, Fuentes de Onoro (1811), which demonstrated that numerical superiority alone does not necessarily ensure victory and that unquantifiable factors such as superior morale, inspirational leadership and determination can serve as powerful force-multipliers, so mitigating the advantage of numbers in an unequal contest; and, third, Plancenoit (1815), a component part of the wider struggle at Waterloo, which demonstrated that the already impressive fighting qualities of elite troops operating in an urban environment are exponentially enhanced when operating in both attack and defence.

ABSTRACT The academic literature on terrorism largely ignores micro-sociological explanations of violence. This is especially true in relation to the research concerning Homegrown Violent Extremists (HVE). This article provides a micro-sociological analysis of four high-profile terrorist attacks that occurred in the British cities of London and Manchester in 2017, which were carried out with deadly effect by HVE. The main focus of the article is the micro-dynamics surrounding each violent episode, although the article also recognizes the importance of the meso factors and macro motivations underpinning these violent acts. One of the central assertions of this article is that most humans dislike and are not particularly good at violence. As such, it seeks to understand how the individuals involved in these attacks could partake in such violence. It argues that most individuals must employ what we refer to as the principle of Attacker Advantage to commit violent acts, regardless of other factors and motivations.

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that the cohesion and institutional health of NATO was seriously threatened by the policies pursued by the George W. Bush administration in the US during its first term. On the basis of case studies of decisions made in 2001–2003 regarding the Balkans, the response to 9/ 11, and defending Turkish airspace in the build-up to the war with Iraq, it argues that NATO’s status as a robust and mature international institution helped it to effectively channel and blunt potentially serious challenges to its cohesion and effectiveness; both from the Bush administration and from European governments sceptical about aspects of Bush’s approach. Consequently, NATO was not seriously or lastingly damaged by the disputes that did arise during this period.