Journal Title: Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences

ISSN (Print): 3126-3666

ISSN (Online): 3126-3674

Publisher: Society for Ancient Philosophy, Cosmology, Religion, Anthropology and Astrobiology

Contact: info@sapcraa.com Phone: +38765471075

Adress: Banja Luka, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Publication Frequency: The journal publishes two regular issues per year (June and December). In addition, special thematic issues devoted to specific topics in military sciences may be published throughout the year, subject to editorial approval.

Language: English

Editor-in-Chief: Academician Prof. Dr. Predrag Dašić, Engineering Academy of Serbia (IAS), Republic of Serbia.

AIMS & SCOPE

Aims

Military Studies aims to advance the rigorous study of war, strategy, and the technological and social dimensions of armed force. Published by SAPCRAA, the journal seeks to provide an international, double-blind peer-reviewed forum for scholars and practitioners in strategic and defense studies, fostering methodological pluralism and connecting military science with its political, social, and ethical context. It upholds the highest standards of academic excellence and publication ethics and makes research accessible to a global research community.

Scope

The journal publishes original research articles, review articles, and case studies in military, strategic, and defense sciences. Its core areas are military theory and doctrine; strategy and tactics; security and defense studies; the history of warfare; military medicine, contemporary and hybrid conflict; and the technological dimension of military affairs, including military engineering and aviation. It gives particular attention to interdisciplinary work connecting these subjects with geopolitics, international relations, and the political, social, and ethical analysis of war, where such work makes a clear contribution to the understanding of strategy, defense, and military power. The journal values historical case studies, comparative and theoretical analyses, and technical studies alike. All articles are published in English with full abstracts.

Types of Contributions

The journal welcomes the following types of submissions

Original research articles,
Review articles and theoretical essays,
Case studies and comparative analyses,
Research notes and commentaries,
Book reviews.

All submissions except book reviews undergo double-blind peer review.

PUBLICATION ETHICS

This journal is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics. Please see our [Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement] for more information.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

All manuscripts submitted to Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review process to ensure the highest standards of academic quality and integrity. Each submission is initially assessed by the Editor-in-Chief for scope and quality before being sent to at least two independent reviewers with expertise in the relevant field. For complete details on our review procedures, criteria, and timelines, please refer to our [Peer Review Process].

AUTHOR GUIDELINES

Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences welcomes submissions from researchers, academics, and practitioners in the field of military sciences and related disciplines. Before submitting a manuscript, authors are kindly requested to carefully review our formatting requirements, citation style, and submission procedures. Complete instructions for preparing and submitting your manuscript are available in our [Author Guidelines].

ARCHIVE AND ACCESS

Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences is committed to the principles of open scholarship. As a fully open access journal, we provide immediate and unrestricted access to all published research. Complete full-text versions of all issues are available in our [Archive]. To ensure permanence and citability, each article is assigned a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI). All content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), permitting others to share, copy, and adapt the work for any purpose, provided appropriate credit is given to the original authors and source.

All journal issues and articles are available in the [Archive].

INDEXING AND ABSTRACTING

Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences is committed to ensuring global visibility and accessibility of published research. The journal is currently indexed in the following databases:

The journal has been indexed in the Serbian Citation Index (SCIndeks) since 11 June 2026.

The journal has been indexed in the Dimensions database.

The journal is registered on the eLIBRARY.ru platform (Scientific Electronic Library, Moscow).

The journal's content is crawled and made discoverable through Google Scholar.

Metadata for the journal and all published articles are available in OpenAlex, an open catalog of scholarly works.

The publisher is a Crossref member. Metadata for all articles is deposited with Crossref, and each article receives a persistent DOI (prefix 10.65932).

All published articles are available on the journal's Academia.edu profile.

The journal is present on ResearchGate.

COPYRIGHT POLICY

Authors who publish in Military Studies retain full copyright of their work. By submitting a manuscript, authors grant the journal the right of first publication. All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This means that anyone may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, provided that proper attribution is given to the original authors and source.

Authors are permitted to:

Share and distribute their published work through any medium,
Deposit their work in institutional or subject repositories,
Reuse their work in subsequent publications,
Retain patent and trademark rights,
Gender and diversity in armed forces,

No formal copyright transfer is required.

PLAGIARISM POLICY

Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences is committed to maintaining the highest standards of academic integrity. All submitted manuscripts are screened for plagiarism and originality using iThenticate prior to peer review. Manuscripts found to contain plagiarised content, including self-plagiarism, will be rejected immediately. If plagiarism is detected after publication, the journal will follow the guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and may retract the article. Authors are expected to ensure that their work is entirely original and that any use of others' ideas, words, or data is properly cited.

RETRACTION POLICY

Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences follows the retraction guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Articles may be retracted in the following circumstances:

Clear evidence of unreliable findings due to misconduct or honest error,

Plagiarism or redundant publication,
Fabrication or falsification of data,
Failure to disclose major conflicts of interest,
Ethical violations involving human or animal subjects,
Copyright infringement.

Retraction notices will be published and linked to the original article, which will remain accessible but clearly marked as retracted. Retractions may be initiated by the authors, the Editor-in-Chief, or the publisher upon verified evidence of misconduct.

APPEALS AND COMPLAINTS

Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences is committed to fair and transparent editorial processes. Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision or file a complaint may do so by following the procedures outlined below.

Appeals: Authors may submit an appeal if they believe a rejection decision was made in error. Appeals must be submitted in writing to the Editor-in-Chief within 30 days of the decision and should include a detailed response to the reviewers' comments and a clear justification for reconsideration. Appeals will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief and, if necessary, by an independent member of the Editorial Board. The decision on the appeal is final.

Complaints: Complaints regarding editorial conduct, peer review process, or publication ethics should be addressed in writing to the Editor-in-Chief at editor@sapcraa.com All complaints will be investigated promptly and handled in accordance with COPE guidelines.

AI POLICY

Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences follows current guidelines of COPE, WAME, and ICMJE concerning the use of artificial intelligence in scholarly publishing. AI tools, including large language models and generative systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot, cannot be listed as authors, since authorship entails intellectual accountability that AI systems cannot bear. Full responsibility for every aspect of a submitted manuscript — including any content produced, drafted, edited, translated, or otherwise assisted by AI — rests entirely with the human authors, who remain accountable for the accuracy of all claims, the integrity of all citations, and the originality of all arguments. Authors must disclose any substantive use of AI tools in the methods section or in a dedicated acknowledgments statement, identifying the tool, its version, and the function performed (text generation, idea development, literature search, code or statistical analysis, image generation, translation, and similar). Routine language polishing does not require detailed itemisation but should be acknowledged in general terms. The fabrication of citations, quotations, or data — whether by AI or otherwise — constitutes a serious breach of research integrity and will result in rejection, retraction, and, in cases of bad faith, notification of the authors' institutions. Reviewers and editors are prohibited from uploading submitted manuscripts to public or third-party AI systems, as this violates the confidentiality of peer review. AI-generated images and figures must be clearly labelled as such and may not represent empirical, archival, or ethnographic material without explicit methodological justification. The Editorial Board reserves the right to request further information about AI use at any stage, to require revision, and to reject or retract work where AI use has not been properly disclosed. The policy is reviewed periodically and updated to reflect evolving standards in scholarly publishing.

PRIVACY POLICY

Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences is committed to protecting the privacy of all users, authors, reviewers and readers.

Data Collection: We collect personal information (such as names, email addresses, and institutional affiliations) only when voluntarily provided during manuscript submission, registration, or correspondence. This information is used solely for editorial and publishing purposes.

Data Usage: Personal data is used to manage the submission and peer review process, communicate with authors and reviewers, and improve our services. We do not share personal information with third parties except as necessary for publishing operations or when required by law.

Cookies: Our website may use cookies to enhance user experience and analyse site traffic. Users may disable cookies through their browser settings.

Data Security: We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against unauthorised access, alteration, or disclosure.

Rights: Users have the right to access, correct, or request deletion of their personal data. For any privacy-related inquiries, please contact us at [email].

This policy is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES

Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences is primarily funded through donations, institutional support, and the resources of the Society for Ancient Philosophy, Cosmology, Religion, Anthropology and Astrobiology. As a result, the journal strives to minimise financial barriers for authors and does not routinely charge Article Processing Charges (APCs). Submission and peer review are always free of charge. However, in exceptional circumstances, a modest APC may be applied to support the costs of publication. Authors will be informed of any applicable charges upon acceptance of their manuscript. For further information, please contact the editorial office at info@sapcraa.com

SUBMISSION

Military Studies: Journal for Strategy, Technology and Defense Sciences welcomes original submissions from researchers, academics, and practitioners worldwide. Manuscripts may be submitted through one of the following methods:

Option 1: Submit via our online submission form [here].

Option 2: Submit via email to info@sapcraa.com with “Manuscript Submission” in the subject line. Authors will receive confirmation of receipt within 5 business days. Before submitting, please ensure that your manuscript complies with the formatting and style requirements outlined in our [Author Guidelines].

Editorial Board

Emeritus Prof. Dr. Carlyle A. ThayerThe University of New South Wales (UNSW) at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) and director Thayer ConsultancyExpert in international relations and security in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Vietnam, Cambodia and the South China Sea(Australia)
Brigadier General Prof. Dr. Zoltan JobbagyHead of the Department of Military Strategy, Faculty of Military Science and Officer Training, Ludovika University of Publ. ServiceMilitary strategy and the theory and practice of allied joint operations, with a focus on operational art, hybrid and irregular warfare, and defence human resource management(Republic of Hungary)
Prof. Dr. Shankar ChakrabortyDepartment of Production Engineering, Jadavpur UniversityMulti-criteria decision-making methods applied to manufacturing, machining process optimization, and industrial engineering(Republic of India)
Prof. Dr. Darko TrifunovićUniversity of Belgrade - Faculty of Security StudiesIntelligence and counter-intelligence studies; counter-terrorism and violent extremism; hybrid and cognitive warfare; critical infrastructure protection; national and international security in the Western Balkans (Republic of Serbia)
Prof. Dr. Konovalova SvetlanaNational Academy of Sciences of UkraineOrganic chemistry and synthesis of biologically active compounds(Republic of Ukraine)
Prof. Dr. Liliana BrožičFaculty of Government and European Studies, New University and Ministry of DefenceSecurity studies, military communication and media, and evaluation of defense programs.(Republic of Slovenia)
Prof. Dr. Eyal ZisserTel Aviv UniversityMiddle Eastern security and strategy, modern political and military history of Syria and Lebanon, regime survival and civil–military relations in the Arab state, non-state armed actors and proxy warfare, Israeli defence policy and the Arab–Israeli conflict(State of Israel)
Prof. Dr. Miroslav Mitrović, colonel (ret.)Strategic Research Institute, Ministry of DefenceStrategic Studies, Domestic and International Security, Security Analytics, Hybrid Warfare, Strategic Communication and Security Risk Management(Republic of Serbia)
Prof. Dr. Friedrich FranekAustrian Center of Competence for TribologyTribological performance of armored systems and defense technology(Republic of Austria)
Prof. Dr. Andrzej KrzakJan Długosz University in CzęstochowaMilitary history and security studies, intelligence and counterintelligence services (Polish and Soviet, 1918–1939, and contemporary), armed conflicts and geopolitics of the Balkans in the 20th and 21st centuries, asymmetric warfare, strategy and military-political relations in Eastern Europe(Republic of Poland)
Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thai DungLe Quy Don Technical UniversityAmmunition design and weapons systems, with a focus on ballistics and special military equipment(Socialist Republic of Vietnam)
Prof. Dr. Goran Ranković, col.University of Niš - Faculty od MedicineMilitary medicine and physiology(Republic of Serbia)
Prof. Dr. Raul TurmanidzeGeorgian Technical UniversityManufacturing engineering, precision micro-tools, cutting materials, industrial robotics, and Industry 4.0(Republic of Georgia)
Prof. Dr. Jasmina MarkovskiIra A. Fulton Schools of EngineeringDrinking water treatment, nanotechnology-enabled water purification, hybrid sorbent media, and water resources management(United States of America)
Prof. Dr. Valentin NedeffUniversity of BacauEnvironmental engineering, mechanical engineering, millitary engineering, modeling and optimization in machine building, and water quality analysis(Republic of Romania)
Academician Prof. Dr. Nedžad KorajlićUniversity of Sarajevo & BANUKOrganized crime, terrorism, and contemporary security threats, as well as in forensic-investigative methods applicable to the security and defense sector(Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Latest Issue

Volume: 4 Issue: 1 (2026) Serial Number: 5

29 June 2026

9–23

The instrumentalization of migration flows as state-sponsored pressure on the Belarus–Poland border: a model of coercion below the threshold of armed conflict

Tatevik Vardanjan

In 2021 the Belarusian state organised the movement of thousands of third-country nationals to its border with Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, channelling them toward the European Union as a deliberate instrument of pressure. The episode crystallised a mode of coercion that uses people rather than weapons and that operates carefully below the threshold of armed conflict, yet existing scholarship has explained it mainly descriptively, through the lens of securitisation or of the law, without a model that specifies how the leverage is actually generated. This article develops that model. Its original contribution is the Sub-Threshold Coercion (STC) model of weaponised migration, built around a novel concept, the target's normative-entrapment dilemma, and expressed through a composite Coercive Leverage Index defined as the product of cost asymmetry, deniability, and normative entrapment divided by target resilience. The model holds that the coercive power of instrumentalised migration comes not from the physical size of the flow but from the gap the coercer engineers between the target's security imperative and its own legal and normative commitments to asylum and non-refoulement, a gap that converts every available response into a cost. A conceptual theory-building method is combined with a structured comparison that applies the model to the Belarus–Poland case and, illustratively, to the 2020 Turkey–European Union and 2021 Morocco–Ceuta episodes, with the index components estimated ordinally to demonstrate the model's logic rather than to measure it. The analysis finds that deniability and normative entrapment, not flow magnitude, drive the index, that the Belarusian case scores highly because it combined a deniable channel with a target deeply committed to refugee-protection norms, and that effective counter-coercion works by lowering the index, chiefly by reducing normative entrapment through lawful, legitimacy-preserving responses and by building resilience, rather than by hardening the border alone. The model offers a transferable analytic for a coercive instrument that is becoming a standard feature of grey-zone competition. All index values are model-derived and require empirical operationalisation before use.

DOI: 10.65932/military-studies-2026-1-1 download

24–39

Modular anti-drone cage armour on main battle tanks: an engineering assessment of effectiveness against fpv-delivered shaped-charge warheads in trench warfare conditions

Emre Aydin

First-person view (FPV) drones carrying repurposed shaped-charge warheads have inverted the cost-of-attrition logic of mechanised warfare, and crews have responded with improvised roof grids, the so-called 'cope cages', whose engineering value remains contested. This article asks a narrow question: under what geometric conditions does a roof-mounted, modular cage measurably reduce the perforation probability of a top-attack FPV-delivered shaped charge, and when does it fail to do so? The study integrates the grid-interaction probability model developed for slat armour against the RPG-7 threat with the empirically anchored standoff–penetration response of a representative warhead and with established jet-formation and penetration mechanics. Its original contribution is the Top-Attack Cage Effectiveness (TACE) index, a dimensionless composite that multiplies the warhead-disruption probability of a grid by the residual-penetration margin of any jet that survives initiation at the cage standoff, evaluated against the roof protection threshold. The index makes explicit a counter-intuitive result: because a shaped charge reaches peak penetration at a finite optimal standoff, about 317 mm against 278 mm at contact for the modelled warhead, a cage that merely adds standoff without disrupting the warhead can raise penetration rather than lower it. Illustrative computation across grid pitches of 30–60 mm and roof gaps of 250–450 mm shows TACE values ranging from below 0.30 for poorly placed coarse grids to above 0.80 for fine, disruption-dominated configurations. The analysis concludes that cope cages are defensible as the outermost layer of a graduated counter-UAS survivability architecture rather than as standalone protection, and that their design must be driven by warheaddisruption geometry, not standoff alone. All numerical TACE values are model-derived and require experimental validation before fielding.

DOI: 10.65932/military-studies-2026-1-2 download

40–54

Reducing exposure time in pontoon bridge emplacement under persistent drone ISR: engineering solutions for rapid assembly and shore concealment

Gordana Simić

Wet-gap crossing has become one of the most dangerous engineering tasks on the contemporary battlefield, because a pontoon bridge is a large, fixed, thermally and geometrically conspicuous structure that must remain in place long enough for a force to cross, all under persistent unmanned reconnaissance. This article asks a narrow question: what determines whether a crossing survives, and where should engineering effort be spent to reduce the exposure that gets bridging units killed? The study reframes survivability as a race between two clocks. The first is the total exposure time of the crossing site — the sum of assembly, trafficking, and recovery; the second is the adversary's reconnaissance-strike loop, the interval from first detection to delivered effect. Its original contribution is the Crossing Exposure Index (CEI), defined as the ratio of total exposure time to the reconnaissance-strike loop time, together with a concealment-adjusted survivability function in which probability of completing the crossing before a strike arrives decays exponentially with the exposure that overhangs the enemy loop, scaled by a concealmentreduced detection rate. The model yields a sharp design rule absent from the bridging and operations-research literatures alike: when exposure is driven below the loop time, the crossing completes inside the adversary's decision cycle and timely engagement becomes near-impossible, whereas above that threshold survivability falls off rapidly and concealment, not further speed, governs the residual. Illustrative computation across assembly times of 30 to 150 minutes, loop times of 10 to 40 minutes, and concealment effectiveness of zero to eighty percent produces modelled crossing-survival probabilities ranging from below 0.10 for a slow, unconcealed crossing against a fast loop to above 0.90 for a rapid, well-concealed crossing. The analysis concludes that exposure reduction is a systems problem: modular and parallel assembly to compress the timeline, signature management to lower the detection rate, and sequencing to keep the detectable window beneath the enemy loop, each insufficient alone. All numerical values are model-derived and require empirical and exercise validation before use.

DOI: 10.65932/military-studies-2026-1-3 download

55–70

Moral injury in combat drone (remotely piloted aircraft) operators versus classic PTSD: a distinctive symptom profile and its implications for psychological selection and support

Islam Bekov

Operators of remotely piloted aircraft kill and watch from thousands of kilometres away and then drive home to their families, an occupational reality that fits poorly with a diagnostic model of combat trauma built around personal life-threat. The mental-health literature on these crews has documented real distress, yet it has largely measured that distress with fear-based post-traumatic stress disorder instruments, and it has not articulated why the operators' suffering should take a different form. This article develops that argument. Its original contribution is the Agentic-Exposure differential model, which locates remotely piloted aircraft operators in a twodimensional traumatic-load space defined by fear-based load on one axis and moral-emotional injury on the other, and predicts that this population occupies a distinctive region: high moral injury and attenuated fear, a profile qualitatively different from the fear-circuitry-dominant posttraumatic stress disorder of physically deployed combatants. The model identifies two exposure pathways that drive the moral load, an agentic pathway of precision killing and battle-damage assessment and a witnessing pathway of prolonged intimate surveillance without the power to intervene, and it derives a predicted symptom profile dominated by guilt, shame, loss of meaning, anhedonia, and social alienation rather than by hyperarousal, re-experiencing, and external avoidance. The model is built by integrative theoretical synthesis of the moral-injury and the operator mental-health literatures and is expressed through two conceptual diagrams and two comparative tables. Its central practical claims follow directly: that standard fear-based screening systematically under-detects clinically significant distress in this population and should be supplemented by validated moral-injury instruments; that selection should weight moral-emotional resilience and cognitive and moral-schema flexibility rather than only fear-reactivity; and that first-line support should be meaning- and values-based rather than fear-extinction-based. The model is conceptual and its predicted profiles are illustrative, generating testable hypotheses that the article specifies for empirical validation.

DOI: 10.65932/military-studies-2026-1-4 download

71–86

Whole blood at the point of injury in prolonged field care: a protocol for delayed tactical evacuation scenarios

Iva Jurić

Haemorrhage remains the leading cause of potentially survivable death on the battlefield, and whole blood transfusion close to the point of injury is now established as the resuscitation of choice. The doctrine that surrounds it, however, was written for the golden hour, a world in which a casualty reaches surgery within sixty minutes, and that world is disappearing. In large-scale combat operations against a peer adversary, evacuation may be delayed for many hours, and the medic who gives a single unit of whole blood and waits for a helicopter that does not come is left without a plan. This article develops that plan. Its original contribution is the Point-of-Injury Whole Blood protocol for Prolonged Field Care, a phased and titratable resuscitation algorithm built specifically for delayed evacuation, together with the underlying argument that the prolonged scenario requires four departures from golden-hour practice: a shift from a single fixed bolus to a titratable resuscitation governed by a sustained permissive perfusion endpoint; a serial walking-blood-bank cycle that turns a finite blood supply into a renewable one; an explicit time-indexed monitoring loop for the metabolic derangements, hypocalcaemia, hypothermia, and acidosis, that accumulate over hours of transfusion and that short-evacuation protocols can neglect; and the integration of these into one decision algorithm a far-forward provider can follow without laboratory or imaging support. The protocol is grounded in an evidence synthesis, presented as a narrative forest plot of mortality estimates from recent trials and cohorts, that supports the efficacy of whole blood and early transfusion while acknowledging the null findings that temper it. The protocol is presented as two figures and two tables: a clinical algorithm, a forest plot of the supporting evidence, a comparison of the golden-hour and prolonged-care paradigms, and a time-indexed schedule for the accumulating metabolic threats. The protocol is an evidence-informed design and not a validated standard; it generates specific, testable predictions that the article specifies for prospective field evaluation.

DOI: 10.65932/military-studies-2026-1-5 download

87–101

Sabotage of submarine critical infrastructure (cables and pipelines) in the baltic sea, 2023–2025: the attribution problem and legal grey-zone gaps

Mpho Khumalo

Between October 2023 and early 2025 the Baltic Sea experienced a sequence of damaging incidents to submarine telecommunications cables and energy pipelines, from the Balticconnector gas pipeline and adjacent data cables to the C-Lion1, Estlink 2, and related cable breaks, most of them attributed in public debate to anchor-dragging by vessels linked to a sanctioned shadow fleet. This review synthesises the peer-reviewed literature published between 2019 and 2026 on three questions raised by these events: why the infrastructure is so vulnerable, why responsibility is so hard to attribute, and why international law struggles to prevent or sanction such acts beyond the territorial sea. A semi-systematic, thematic review method was applied across Scopus, Web of Science, and Crossref, supplemented by primary legal instruments and European Union and NATO documents, yielding forty-seven sources synthesised into four domains: the threat landscape, the attribution problem, the legal grey-zone gaps, and the emerging response. The review's contribution is an integrative attribution–accountability gap framework that joins three literatures usually kept apart, the maritime-infrastructure-security, the grey-zone and attribution, and the law-of-the-sea literatures, and traces a four-link chain from detection to attribution to legal characterisation to response, showing that Baltic subsea sabotage occupies a doubly permissive space in which an act is simultaneously hard to attribute and hard to sanction. The synthesis finds that physical vulnerability is structural and growing, that deniability is the deliberate design feature of grey-zone action rather than an incidental difficulty, that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea protects the laying of cables and pipelines far better than it protects them from intentional harm, and that the institutional response is real but immature. The review concludes that closing the accountability gap depends less on new technology than on strengthened coastal-state jurisdiction, evidentiary cooperation, and a resilience-by-design posture, and it identifies the absence of an agreed legal threshold for sabotage below the use of force as the field's central unresolved problem.

DOI: 10.65932/military-studies-2026-1-6 download

102–116

Distance learning and computer-based training in easa-regulated pilot education during the covid-19 pandemic

Milan Marković, Brane Janković, Zoran Ribarić

The COVID-19 pandemic forced approved training organisations (ATOs) to move theoretical pilot instruction online, replace classroom examinations with computer-based testing, and ration the irreducibly hands-on flight phase. This review synthesises peer-reviewed evidence published between 2019 and 2025 on how pilot training adapted within the European Union Aviation Safety Agency regulatory framework, organising it into a four-domain framework: regulatory accommodation, online theoretical instruction, constrained practical training, and organisational-economic effect. A semi-systematic review of thirty-eight sources drawn from Scopus, Web of Science, and Crossref was conducted, with the case of a Bosnian-Herzegovinian ATO serving as an illustrative anchor. The synthesis shows that regulators permitted distance learning through competency-based provisions, that online theory proved feasible despite genuine assessment-integrity risks, that simulation and emerging virtual-reality tools only partially offset lost flight hours and the documented danger of skill decay, and that organisations which adapted early reported resilience. The review's contribution is an integrative framework connecting regulatory, pedagogical, technological, and economic strands treated separately in the literature. Distance learning emerges as a durable gain, assessment integrity and skill-decay monitoring as unresolved problems, and a hybrid model as the likely steady state

DOI: 10.65932/military-studies-2026-1-7 download

117–131

Additive manufacturing of spare parts in military maintenance systems: a review of technological advances and logistical implications

Rumen Angelov

Military maintenance organizations hold some of the largest and least liquid spare parts inventories in existence, and they operate them under conditions that commercial after-sales networks rarely face: intermittent demand, aging platforms, vanished suppliers, and supply lines that an adversary actively tries to sever. This review examines what additive manufacturing (AM) can realistically contribute to such systems. Drawing on 49 verified sources published between 2019 and 2025, of which 46 are peer-reviewed journal articles, the analysis is organized along three axes: the technological maturity of AM processes relevant to spare parts production and repair; the logistical and economic evidence on when printing outperforms stocking; and the qualification, certification, and digital-security constraints that currently govern adoption. The evidence supports a consistent conclusion. AM already delivers documented value at the margins of military supply chains. Audit data record procurement lead times cut from two years to roughly one week, and unit costs reduced by several orders of magnitude for selected parts. Yet operations research modeling shows that printing complements rather than replaces inventory, with dualsourcing savings of 8-30% concentrated among low-demand, long-lead-time items. The binding constraints are no longer primarily technical: qualification pathways, fatigue-critical defect populations, and the cybersecurity of the digital thread now set the adoption frontier. The review contributes a three-axis readiness framing that connects engineering, logistics, and assurance literatures which have largely developed in isolation, and identifies the research gaps that matter most for defense maintenance planners.

DOI: 10.65932/military-studies-2026-1-8 download

132–136

Book review

Ingrid Maier

Book review

DOI: 10.65932/military-studies-2026-1-9 download

Volume: 4 Issue: 2 (2025) Serial Number: 5 download