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Using long-run trend data for US tactical and bomber aircraft, Norman Augustine’s Law 16 famously suggests continuously rising US armament unit costs. By the year 2054, the country’s entire defence budget would be expended on a single aircraft, which an industry colleague dubbed as the Battlestar Galactica. However, while it is thought provoking, what does Law 16 in fact entail? It appears that the mechanics of Augustine’s ‘Law’ has never been examined in detail. To help disentangle the matter and assess its relevance in the context of today’s battlefield technology, which is increasingly focussed on the application of large numbers of small, cheap, expendable, electronically linked, yet highly autonomous systems, this chapter introduces the concept of an Augustine weapons system.

Purpose – The purpose of the study was to get a deeper understanding of officers’ views of the factors that contribute to army ranger conscripts’ willingness to apply for international military service as well as to look at the officers’ own role in the recruitment process.

Methodology/approach – A grounded theory approach was used. Nine officers from the Swedish Army Ranger Battalion were interviewed.

Findings – Factors that seem to promote the possibility to recruit conscripts to international military service could be understood from five main categories: international military service, education, officers, the Swedish Army Ranger Battalion, and recruitment.

Originality/value of paper – Interviewing key figures in the recruitment process of the Swedish Armed Forces.

This paper serves to present the Swiss data in the framework of the international project “Civil–Military Gap” of ERGOMAS Working Group “Military Profession”. Its theoretical basis has been developed in a common working paper (Jelusic, Caforio, Haltiner, Moelker, & Szvircsev Tresch, 2003) and will be presented in a more detailed way in a forthcoming common cross-national analysis. The main research hypothesis and its implied research questions refer to the existence of a growing cultural gap between the military and its parent democratic society: Is there such a gap between the armed forces, mainly its professional bodies and democratic society? If yes, what is the nature of that gap? According to the planning of the research project, the following research steps are carried on in the participating countries: (1) investigate the political culture of future (civilian and military) elites by simultaneously surveying cadets at military academies and students at civilian universities; (2) carry out semi-structured interviews with present elites (an expert survey) in order to assess changes in civil–military relations over time; and (3) elaborate and compare results at cross-national level and compare and contrast them with data from the American (Feaver, Kohn, & Cohn, 2001) research. This paper first outlines some peculiarities of the Swiss military system, considering them as somewhat important for the question of the nature of a possible civil–military gap. It then presents the methodological procedure and the main findings of Switzerland.

We review the state of the literature concerning work–family conflict in the military, focusing on service members’ parenting roles and overall family and child well-being. This includes recognition that for many women service members, parenting considerations often arise long before a child is born, thereby further complicating work–family conflict considerations in regard to gender-specific conflict factors such as pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and breastfeeding. Subsequently, we consider more gender-invariant conflict factors, such as the nature of the work itself as causing conflict for the service member as parent (e.g., nontraditional hours, long separations, and child care challenges) as well as for the child (e.g., irregular contact with parent, fear for parent’s safety, and frequent relocations), and the ramifications of such conflict on service member and child well-being. Finally, we review formalized support resources that are in place to mitigate negative effects of such conflict, and make recommendations to facilitate progress in research and practice moving forward.

The goal of this chapter is to reexamine the nature and structure of the military–industrial complex (MIC) through the works of John Kenneth Galbraith. MIC, or military power as he prefers, is a coalition of vested interests within the state and industry that promoted the military power in the name of “national security” for their interests. Galbraith’s theory of giant corporations helps us understand the role of military corporations in the MIC. Moreover, he is a critical scholar in examining this topic because he was a political insider in the Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations and a prominent public intellectual against the Vietnam War. Against this background, this chapter has three parts. After explaining the development of military Keynesianism with respect to the main economic thoughts, it examines the history of the MIC and its impact on economic priorities during and after the Cold War through Galbraith’s works. Finally, this chapter discusses MIC’s relevancy today and evaluates Galbraith’s prophecies.

Since more than one decade, the German armed forces are undergoing massive modifications in structure, size and mission, which can be traced back to the transformation of the international security environment and globalisation effects after the end of the Cold War (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1999). As the threat scenarios changed from mutual deterrence to a multitude of risks and dangers, including violent internal conflict, international terrorism and global ecological crisis, the threat perceptions within wider society underwent simultaneous changes. Today, ‘security’ and ‘insecurity’ are terms with totally different connotation than only 20 years ago. Clearly, these alterations also initiated a new era of civil–military relations in Germany after 1990. Besides the rather obvious transnational effects described by the changing security context as well as the trend towards globalisation and to new security regimes, perpetual societal changes within West European societies evenly took place during the last thirty years. These societies are therefore becoming ‘post-traditional societies’ (Giddens, 1994)¹ or – as far as the armed forces are concerned – ‘post-military’ societies (Shaw, 2000). This study aims at examining the current state of civil–military relations and deals with the question of the existence of a civil–military gap in Germany. Therefore, empirical data stemming from an international project will be examined. After a sketch of the patterns of civil–military relations in Germany, a brief description of the methodology of the German part within the Civil–Military-Gap-project is given. Afterwards, some key findings of the project data, concerning a set of questions relating to security, war and peace issues, are presented and discussed.

Homosexual activity in the military has long been dealt with harshly in the military by superiors and peers, yet officially at least, homosexuals seem to be largely ignored in the ROC army, almost as much are they are genuinely accepted by Taiwan society. Thus this dimension can be assessed as being in the realm of the postmodern military. Taiwan is a traditional Confucian-influenced society, and yet it recently became the first Asian nation to recognize same-sex marriage. The military, moreover, is a very conservative, risk-averse institution within society, and the way in which homosexuals are treated is illustrative of civil–military relations. The issue of homosexuals serving in the ROC military has not received the frank discussion that it deserves, neither in the academic literature nor in wider society. The vast majority (58.5 percent) of respondents in the current research expressed a preference for what essentially amounts to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as had been practiced in the United States military until the turn of the century. An impressive 30.8 percent expressed the belief that homosexuals should be allowed to serve openly, while just 10.7 percent said they believed that homosexuals should be kicked out of the military. Overall, these results confirm what has already been observed and paint Taiwan as a nation that is remarkably tolerant of homosexuality – especially in comparison with its East Asian neighbors. By connecting with the media, popular culture, and postmodernism, gay/lesbian/queer movements on the island have succeeded in presenting their community as avant-garde, trendy, and most progressive on the cultural front.

Romania has experienced a dramatic transition, after 1989, starting from one of the fiercest communist regimes and trying to build a democratic regime and to join the Western institutions, such as NATO and EU. The issue of democratisation of civil–military relations ranked high on the reform agenda of both Romanian policymakers and international donors that offered assistance for transition. The main reason was – for the Romanian public – the concern that the military could seize the power and institute dictatorship, while – for the Western countries – it was the perception that the military was a pillar of a socialist state and the neo-Kantian assumption that democracies do not fight each other, so a civilian control over the military is desirable to be instituted in Eastern Europe. However, the relations between the Romanian military and its parent society present some particular features that should be acknowledged before the presentation of research results.

Academic freedom is a complicated issue for military service academies. As accredited institutions of higher learning, academic freedom is valued. At the same time, the academies are subject to regulations that guide speech and publishing by the Department of Defense. This chapter explores the balance between maintaining academic freedom while upholding the discipline contained in regulations concerning free speech. The chapter concludes with a view to the future and opportunities for further research.

The class profile of the cadets joining the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) has changed dramatically in the past 50 years. Gone are the days when children of the elite and upper-classes were still attracted to military service. None other than the current Superintendent of the PMA, General Leopoldo Maligalig (AFP) admitted that the majority of the cadets joining the Academy are from low-middle to very low-income families. Despite their working-class “habitus,” however, the entry of these cadets into the military “field” initially through the PMA and later-on through various training institutions within the military organization enable them to acquire the lifestyle and perspectives associated with a distinct military “habitus.” As was very clearly illustrated by Bourdieu in his analysis of the French educational system, this chapter argues that the military educational system through its unique system of instruction, the bureaucratic system of administration, not to mention the highly regimented daily activities, rituals, and traditions all contribute to the reproduction of a hierarchical military institution in the Philippines, where the symbolic and cultural capital of a segment of PMAers translate into economic and political capital for themselves and their progeny. As history has proven since the Marcos years, the military has now a part of the ruling and dominant class. In a sense, PMA education within the military “field” in the Philippines has provided an avenue for upward social mobility.

This chapter is a preliminary step toward a more systematic study of how PMA education reinforces a military habitus (e.g., hierarchy, organization and networks, culture) that put those who share this habitus in the trajectory of the middle classes, if not the elite. It explores what has happened to selected members of the PMA 1991 graduating class since graduation and how, from their perspective, their education in the Academy has contributed to the social mobility (or immobility) of their families.