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This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

Computer simulation is a test-bed for research that began in the 1970s, grew tremendously in popularity in the 1990s, and has since continued to mature in complexity and realism. When computer simulations were in their infancy, their biggest advantage was the ability to have complete control over the environment in which the simulation took place. Missions could be changed from daylight to twilight with a few keystrokes. Weather conditions could be altered or inserted based on the needs of the experiment. Perhaps most importantly, the landmasses in which the simulations took place were boundless, in their cyber world.

Peace, war and international security is an area in which economists are often conspicuous by their absence, to a degree that rivals the importance of economic issues to the problems at hand. It is getting to the point where the supposed ‘imperialism’ of economics in the social science (Fine, 2001) is reversed and the political scientists, international relations and other such groups exclude the economists and take on the economics themselves. It is not unusual to find studies of post-conflict reconstruction in which economics is surprisingly found to be important. In the case of the World Bank, it came as a great shock to the other social scientists when economists started to argue that economics might have a major role to play in understanding civil wars (Collier et al., 2003). Economists do have the gift of overstatement and a tendency to state unpleasant truths in a clear and precise way that can disturb other social scientists, whose indignation and overreaction reflected this. More recently the debate has reached a more civilised recognition of the complexity of such issues (Arnson & Zartman, 2005; Berdal & Malone, 2000).