Strategic Consequences: How Executive and Organizational Decision-Making Impacts the Outcome of Unconventional Warfare

Conventional academic discussion vis-à-vis America’s Special Operations Forces, is largely focused at the tactical and operational level of analysis. This means the emphasis on explaining outcomes is placed on personnel (recruiting, assessing, selecting, and training), cutting edge equipment, innovative tactics, or advanced command and control procedures. Addressing this long-standing trend, I argue that factors well beyond the widely accepted explanations for success or failure are in play. Additionally, these factors are understandable, are manageable, and may have as great or greater an impact on the outcome of a campaign as any tactical consideration. Using the narrowly defined and discrete special operations mission of Unconventional Warfare (UW) as a platform, this dissertation looks beyond the traditional explanations to expand our understanding of the role that executive level organizations play in achieving success or failure. The central research question is: How do the organizational actions at the executive level of government impact the success or failure of unconventional warfare? This study builds from a foundation of five hypotheses that each attempt to address a segment of the totality of the question and form a complete answer. The hypotheses include – decentralizing control, intent coherence across stakeholders, a unified effort from those stakeholders, continuity in key personnel, and the impact of the President’s attitude toward special operations. Analyzing the cases with a combination of index scoring, key aspects of Lay Epistemic and Groupthink Theory, and contextual deconstruction in the spirit of critical hermeneutics, provided the intellectual rigor to substantiate the findings. Ultimately, the evidence demonstrates that Intent Coherence is a necessary condition for a successful outcome. Unity of Effort is also necessary but is pinned to intent coherence. Delegation is important and considered a sufficient condition because it contributes to the likelihood of success. The findings also confirm the validity of the key aspects of Groupthink Theory and Lay Epistemics / Cognitive Closure. Key Words: Unconventional Warfare, Decision-Making, Strategy, Policy, Syria, Guatemala, Bay of Pigs, Cuba, Angola, Tibet. Recommended Citation.: Joseph E. Osborne (2020), Strategic Consequences: How Executive and Organizational Decision-Making Impacts the Outcome of Unconventional Warfare, PhD Dissertation, Kennesaw State Universit

State Dependence of Stimulus-Induced Variability Tuning in Macaque MT

Behavioral states marked by varying levels of arousal and attention modulate some properties of cortical responses (e.g. average firing rates or pairwise correlations), yet it is not fully understood what drives these response changes and how they might affect downstream stimulus decoding. Here we show that changes in state modulate the tuning of response variance-to-mean ratios (Fano factors) in a fashion that is neither predicted by a Poisson spiking model nor changes in the mean firing rate, with a substantial effect on stimulus discriminability. We recorded motion-sensitive neurons in middle temporal cortex (MT) in two states: alert fixation and light, opioid anesthesia. Anesthesia tended to lower average spike counts, without decreasing trial-to-trial variability compared to the alert state. Under anesthesia, within-trial fluctuations in excitability were correlated over longer time scales compared to the alert state, creating supra-Poisson Fano factors. In contrast, alert-state MT neurons have higher mean firing rates and largely sub-Poisson variability that is stimulus-dependent and cannot be explained by firing rate differences alone. The absence of such stimulus-induced variability tuning in the anesthetized state suggests different sources of variability between states. A simple model explains state-dependent shifts in the distribution of observed Fano factors via a suppression in the variance of gain fluctuations in the alert state. A population model with stimulus-induced variability tuning and behaviorally constrained information-limiting correlations explores the potential enhancement in stimulus discriminability by the cortical population in the alert state.Comment: 36 pages, 18 figure

Observations of Field Enhancement on the HMS Lancaster

Prepared for: Theater Nuclear Warfare Program Office, PHS 423 Naval Sea Systems Command, Department of the Navy and Defense Nuclear AgencyField enhancement was observed aboard the HMS Lancaster, during EMP ship trials using Empress II. Measured fields exceeded nominal free fields by several hundred percent. This report describes measurements, present observations and makes suggestions for future trials.PMS 423 and Defense Nuclear AgencyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Three axis pulsed plasma thruster with angled cathode and anode strip lines

A spacecraft attitude and altitude control system utilizes sets of three pulsed plasma thrusters connected to a single controller. The single controller controls the operation of each thruster in the set. The control of a set of three thrusters in the set makes it possible to provide a component of thrust along any one of three desired axes. This configuration reduces the total weight of a spacecraft since only one controller and its associated electronics is required for each set of thrusters rather than a controller for each thruster. The thrusters are positioned about the spacecraft such that the effect of the thrusters is balanced

The Delivery of Special Education Services in Catholic Schools: One Hand Gives, the Other Hand Takes Away

This article examines legal issues surrounding the delivery of special education to children whose parents have voluntarily enrolled them in Catholic schools. In so doing, the article reviews the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), its regulations, and case law over the extent to which special education must be provided, the way in which it is delivered, and the quality of services that students in Catholic schools receive. The final portion of the article addresses questions about the delivery of special education in Catholic schools, including guidelines for implementing the new provisions in the IDEA in a manner that avoids running afoul of the Establishment Clause

JULES-crop: a parametrisation of crops in the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator

Studies of climate change impacts on the terrestrial biosphere have been completed without recognition of the integrated nature of the biosphere. Improved assessment of the impacts of climate change on food and water security requires the development and use of models not only representing each component but also their interactions. To meet this requirement the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) land surface model has been modified to include a generic parametrisation of annual crops. The new model, JULES-crop, is described and evaluation at global and site levels for the four globally important crops; wheat, soybean, maize and rice. JULES-crop demonstrates skill in simulating the inter-annual variations of yield for maize and soybean at the global and country levels, and for wheat for major spring wheat producing countries. The impact of the new parametrisation, compared to the standard configuration, on the simulation of surface heat fluxes is largely an alteration of the partitioning between latent and sensible heat fluxes during the later part of the growing season. Further evaluation at the site level shows the model captures the seasonality of leaf area index, gross primary production and canopy height better than in the standard JULES. However, this does not lead to an improvement in the simulation of sensible and latent heat fluxes. The performance of JULES-crop from both an Earth system and crop yield model perspective is encouraging. However, more effort is needed to develop the parametrisation of the model for specific applications. Key future model developments identified include the introduction of processes such as irrigation and nitrogen limitation which will enable better representation of the spatial variability in yield

Review of Salvage Therapy for Biochemically Recurrent Prostate Cancer: The Role of Imaging and Rationale for Systemic Salvage Targeted Anti-Prostate-Specific Membrane Antigen Radioimmunotherapy

Despite local therapy with curative intent, approximately 30% of men suffer from biochemical relapse. Though some of these PSA relapses are not life threatening, many men eventually progress to metastatic disease and die of prostate cancer. Local therapy is an option for some men, but many have progression of disease following local salvage attempts. One significant issue in this setting is the lack of reliable imaging biomarkers to guide the use of local salvage therapy, as the likely reason for a low cure rate is the presence of undetected micrometastatic disease outside of the prostate/prostate bed. Androgen deprivation therapy is a cornerstone of therapy in the salvage setting. While subsets may benefit in terms of delay in time to metastatic disease and/or death, research is ongoing to improve salvage systemic therapy. Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is highly overexpressed by the majority of prostate cancers. While initial methods of exploiting PSMA's high and selective expression were suboptimal, additional work in both imaging and therapeutics is progressing. Salvage therapy and imaging modalities in this setting are briefly reviewed, and the rationale for PSMA-based systemic salvage radioimmunotherapy is described