COIN is dead - long live transformation

Donald Rumsfeld was right. Force transformation works. The techniques that led to the initial victories in Afghanistan in 2001 were precisely those that produced success in Libya in 2011.1 Small-scale deployments of special forces backed by precision strike and deep attack capabilities used to support an allied indigenous armed group proved an effective military tool for achieving specific strategic outcomes. In contrast, the results of large-scale troop deploy- ments as part of counterinsurgency (COIN), stabilization and nation-building activities over the past ten years in Iraq and Afghanistan have been less defini- tive. Despite intensive investment in blood, treasure, and military effort, the precise long-term outcomes of these two campaigns remain unclear and will be open to debate for years to come. This challenging operational experience has, however, highlighted some necessary and enduring truths about the use of military force. This paper explores those in light of the last ten years of counterinsurgenc

Airy beam induced optical routing

We present an all-optical routing scheme based simultaneously on optically induced photonic structures and the Airy beam family. The presented work utilizes these accelerating beams for the demonstration of an all-optical router with individually addressable output channels. In addition, we are able to activate multiple channels at the same time providing us with an optically induced splitter with configurable outputs. The experimental results are corroborated by corresponding numerical simulations

Nonlinear lattice structures based on families of complex nondiffracting beams

We present a new concept for the generation of optical lattice waves. For all four families of nondiffracting beams, we are able to realize corresponding nondiffracting intensity patterns in one single setup. The potential of our approach is shown by demonstrating the optical induction of complex photonic discrete, Bessel, Mathieu, and Weber lattices in a nonlinear photorefractive medium. However, our technique itself is very general and can be transferred to optical lattices in other fields like atom optics or cold gases in order to add such complex optical potentials as a new concept to these areas as well