The doctrine of total defence — understood as the integration of military, civilian, economic, and informational components into a unified national defence effort — has expe- rienced a significant revival in Polish military thought after 2014, culminating in the formal establishment of the Wojska Obrony Terytorialnej (Territorial Defence Forces) in 2016/2017. This review study traces the genealogy of the Polish total-defence idea from its inter-war foundations in the work of Władysław Sikorski (Przyszła wojna, 1934) through the Cold War and post-1989 transition to its contemporary institutional form, and situates it within the broader Nordic-Baltic comparative context. The methodological approach com- bines a systematic review of post-2017 SCOPUS-indexed literature on Polish defence policy, strategic culture, and total-defence doctrine with primary-source analysis of Polish strategic documents and Sikorski's foundational work. Results show three distinct phases of the Polish total-defence idea: (1) the inter-war strategic synthesis that integrated mass mobilisation with mechanised warfare; (2) the marginalisation of the concept under the Warsaw Pact system; and (3) the post-2014 revival driven by Russian hybrid threats, culminating in the WOT as a structural institutionalisation of the idea. The original contribution of this article consists in the longitudinal mapping of conceptual continuities and discontinuities between Sikorski's 1934 framework and the contemporary WOT model, situated within the Nordic-Baltic total- defence revival. The study suggests that the Polish case represents a hybrid model in which Sikorski-era doctrinal heritage interacts with Nordic-style comprehensive defence and con- temporary hybrid-threat response, with implications for NATO's eastern flank deterrence architecture after 2022.

Technology transfer from the military to the civilian sector represents a key mechanism of technological progress that transforms military innovations into civilian products and services, generating significant economic value and contributing to solving societal challenges. This article analyzes the scope, nature, and economic significance of dual-use technology transfer in a global context, with a special focus on the period of intensive technological changes from 2019 to 2023. The research employs a mixed methodological approach that combines quantitative analysis of dual-use patents from USPTO, EPO, and WIPO databases with qualitative analysis of institutional frameworks and financial indicators of companies active in military technology transfer. Patent data were analyzed through the lens of sectoral distribution, geographical patterns, and temporal trends, applying statistical methods to identify key success factors. Results show exponential growth in transfer in the analyzed period, with the ICT sector dominating at approximately 35% of total transfers, followed by the medical sector (approximately 26%) which showed the greatest acceleration during the COVID-19 pandemic. The identified economic value of transfer reached 48.3 billion euros globally in 2023, with geographical concentration in the USA, EU, and growing participation of China. Transport and logistics show the most dynamic growth, indicating emergent transfer areas related to autonomous systems. The article is intended for policymakers in innovation and defense, executives in military and civilian industry, academic researchers dealing with technology transfer, as well as investors interested in dual-use technologies. The findings have practical implications for designing institutional frameworks, optimizing transfer mechanisms, and identifying future investment priorities in the context of growing technological competition.

Multiple deployments of professional soldiers to high-intensity conflict zones represent a significant challenge to the mental health of military personnel, while simultaneously offering insight into psychological resilience mechanisms. The aim of this research was to identify key components of the psychological resilience profile in professional soldiers who have survived multiple deployments to active combat zones. The methodological approach was based on a systematic review of literature published in journals indexed in the Scopus database, with a focus on longitudinal studies, meta-analyses, and randomized controlled trials conducted on military populations that participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Research results indicate the multidimensionality of the resilience construct, which encompasses individual factors (adaptability, self-efficacy, cognitive flexibility), social resources (unit cohesion, post-deployment social support), and organizational factors (leadership quality, perceived organizational support). Analysis of available literature shows that the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) increases proportionally with the number of deployments, with soldiers having two or more deployments showing significantly higher rates of PTSD compared to those with a single deployment. Key protective factors include high levels of adaptability measured by the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale, strong unit cohesion, adequate post-deployment social support, and sufficient recovery time between missions. Neurobiological correlates of resilience include specific patterns of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis functioning, with enhanced negative feedback as a marker of adaptive stress response. In conclusion, psychological resilience in professional soldiers represents a dynamic, multifactorial construct that can be identified, measured, and potentially enhanced through targeted interventions before, during, and after deployment to high-intensity conflict zones.

Private military companies (PMCs) have become indispensable actors in contemporary asymmetric conflicts, particularly in the Sahel region where they have experienced significant expansion over the past decade. This paper analyzes the legal status of private military company employees in the context of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL), with particular emphasis on conflict situations in Mali, Burkina Faso, and the Central African Republic in the period from 2012 to 2023. Applying the method of legal dogmatics, comparative analysis, and case studies, the paper examines the applicability of existing legal frameworks, including the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I, the 1989 UN Convention against Mercenaries, and the 2008 Montreux Document, to the activities of PMCs in asymmetric conflicts. Research findings indicate significant gaps in the international legal regime regulating PMCs, particularly regarding the qualification of the status of their employees as civilians, combatants, or mercenaries, which has far-reaching implications for issues of accountability and punishability. The case analysis of the Wagner Group in Mali demonstrates how the absence of a clear legal framework enables impunity for serious violations of international humanitarian law. The paper concludes that a thorough reform of the existing legal regime is needed, including the development of a legally binding international instrument that would explicitly address the specificities of PMC activities in contemporary asymmetric conflicts.

Hybrid warfare represents a contemporary form of conflict that integrates conventional military operations with unconventional means, including disinformation campaigns as a key component of information warfare. In this paper, we present an original mathematical model SIR-HW (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered for Hybrid Warfare) for simulating the spread of disinformation in social networks, adapted to the specificities of hybrid warfare in the Baltic region. The model is based on complex network theory and epidemiological models of information spreading, with the introduction of new parameters that reflect the characteristics of the target population: the degree of media literacy, linguistic segmentation of the network, and the effectiveness of institutional countermeasures. Simulations were conducted on synthetic networks that reflect the demographic structure of Baltic societies, with a special focus on the role of nodes with high betweenness centrality in the amplification of disinformation narratives. Results show that network segregation along linguistic lines significantly increases the penetration of disinformation in vulnerable segments of the population, while timely interventions at nodes with high centrality can reduce overall infection by 34–47%. The original contribution of this research lies in the identification of a critical media literacy threshold value (λc ≈ 0.38) below which disinformation campaigns achieve epidemic spreading characteristics, which provides operational implications for formulating policies of resilience to hybrid threats.

Low back pain represents the leading musculoskeletal disorder among military personnel, with load carriage training considered a primary etiological factor. The aim of this study was to examine biomechanical changes in the lumbar segment of the spinal column among infantry unit members during multi-day carriage of combat equipment exceeding 35 kg, with emphasis on cumulative effects of intervertebral disc compression, changes in lumbar lordosis, and paravertebral musculature activity. Thirty-two active infantry members participated in the study (mean age 24.7 ± 3.2 years, body mass 78.4 ± 6.8 kg), who underwent a five-day field march with combat equipment averaging 38.6 kg. Measurements included magnetic resonance imaging of the lumbar spine before and after the protocol, surface electromyography of paraspinal muscles, and three-dimensional motion analysis. Results demonstrated statistically significant reduction in intervertebral disc height at levels L4-L5 (0.87 ± 0.23 mm, p < 0.01) and L5-S1 (1.12 ± 0.31 mm, p < 0.001), reduction of the lumbar lordotic angle by 8.4° ± 2.7° (p < 0.01), and significant increase in musculus erector spinae activation measured as a 34.7% increase in integrated EMG amplitude (p < 0.001). The original contribution of this research represents the development of a predictive model of cumulative spinal loading demonstrating that compressive force on the L5-S1 segment reaches a critical value of 5.23 times body weight after 72 hours of continuous load carriage, thereby defining a temporal threshold for mandatory spinal recovery periods. Results suggest that multi-day carriage of combat equipment exceeding 35 kg induces progressive biomechanical changes in the lumbar segment of the spinal column that require implementation of structured rest protocols and preventive interventions in military operations.

The coordination of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in urban environments represents one of the most demanding challenges of modern military and civilian robotics. This paper explores the application of Boyd's OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) loop as a theoretical and practical framework for improving the coordination of unmanned systems during reconnaissance missions in complex urban environments. The methodological approach combines a systematic literature review with an analysis of existing OODA loop implementations in autonomous systems, with particular emphasis on identifying key parameters that affect the efficiency of real-time decision-making. Research results demonstrate that the integration of the OODA loop into the management architecture of multiple UAV systems significantly reduces decision-making time by an average of 34-47% in simulated urban scenarios, while simultaneously improving the quality of operator situational awareness by 28%. The analysis also identifies critical factors that limit the application of the OODA loop in decentralized UAV systems, including communication latencies, processing power limitations, and the complexity of urban terrain. In conclusion, the paper proposes a modified OODA framework called OODA-UAV that explicitly integrates sensor fusion, distributed decision-making, and adaptive trajectory planning as key components for the efficient coordination of unmanned systems in urban reconnaissance. The contribution of this paper lies in the theoretical elaboration and empirical validation of the application of a classical military decision-making concept in the context of contemporary autonomous systems.

The reliability of armored systems in combat vehicles under operational conditions involving significant temperature variations represents a key aspect of military-technical science. This paper investigates the complex mechanisms by which thermal oscillations affect metal fatigue processes in high-hardness armor steels, with particular emphasis on welded joints that represent critical sites for crack initiation and propagation. The methodological approach encompassed a systematic analysis of published experimental data from relevant scientific literature, along with the application of fracture mechanics principles and thermomechanical fatigue theory. The results indicate significant temperature sensitivity of fatigue parameters in armor steels, whereby impact toughness at a temperature of -40°C decreases by approximately 47% compared to values at room temperature. The stress intensity factor threshold for the base metal of armor steel class 500 HB is ΔKth = 13.4 MPa·m^(1/2), while the heat-affected zone and weld metal exhibit lower threshold values of 12.6 MPa·m^(1/2) and 10.1 MPa·m^(1/2), respectively. Thermal cycling additionally contributes to damage accumulation through mechanisms that include thermal expansion incompatibility of different microstructural phases, development of residual stresses, and changes in plastic deformation mechanisms. It was concluded that extreme temperature oscillations significantly compromise the integrity of armored structures, and that the design of military vehicles must take into account the synergistic effect of mechanical loading and thermal cycles.

Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) represents a fundamental challenge in modern military operations where communication systems and radar installations coexist in a dense electromagnetic environment. This paper investigates the complex interactions between radiofrequency (RF) systems in the context of integrated combat management (C4ISR), analyzing the mechanisms of electromagnetic interference (EMI) and strategies for their mitigation. The methodological approach combines a systematic literature review with analytical modeling of interference scenarios, including quantitative evaluation of coexistence performance between radar and communication systems in the S-band and millimeter-wave frequency range. Results demonstrate that dynamic spectrum allocation, cognitive radar techniques, and spatial separation can significantly reduce mutual interference, with advanced interference cancellation algorithms achieving signal-to-noise ratio improvements of 15-25 dB. The research also identifies critical electromagnetic separation thresholds and recommends an integrated spectrum management approach that balances the operational requirements of radar surveillance and tactical communications. Conclusions indicate the necessity of implementing adaptive EMC protocols in the integrated combat management architecture, particularly in the context of network-centric warfare where simultaneous operation of multiple RF platforms represents an operational necessity.

The article explores the phenomenon of Europe's war reindustrialization after 2022 as a strategic response to altered security dynamics due to rising eastern threats. The aim is to provide empirical insight into this transformation and develop a conceptual framework for understanding its long-term implications. We analyze the military-industrial complex as a multidimensional security, economic, high-tech, and social phenomenon. We examine three hypotheses: (1) war reindustrialization is not merely a short-term reaction but a long-term strategic reorientation, (2) the process dynamics show significant variations conditioned by geographical position, historical experiences, and economic capacities, and (3) the revitalized military-industrial complex creates a new economic reality that alters power relations within the EU and NATO. Methodologically, we apply a mixed approach: quantitative analysis of military budgets, comparative analysis of strategies, and case studies. Results show a 32% increase in NATO members' military budgets (2021-2023), opening of 70+ new facilities, creation of 210,000 jobs, and high correlation (r=0.78) between geographical proximity to threats and intensity of reindustrialization. We conclude that war reindustrialization represents a fundamental paradigm shift that will shape the security architecture, economic structure, and geopolitical position of the continent in the coming decades.

High-hardness armor (HHA) steels such as Armox 500T are qualified against singleshot threats, yet multi-hit studies show that repeated impacts within a limited footprint can degrade residual protective capacity in ways the single-shot paradigm does not capture. This paper develops a theoretical framework for the cumulative thermomechanical degradation of Armox 500T under repeated 7.62 × 51 mm NATO impacts and introduces the Cumulative Thermal Degradation Index (CTDI), a dimensionless predictor constructed from independently measurable or published inputs. The CTDI couples the Johnson–Cook constitutive response of Armox 500T (Iqbal et al., 2016; Saleh et al., 2018) with the Taylor–Quinney plastic-work-to-heat conversion framework revisited by Rittel et al. (2017) and with a one-dimensional thermal-relaxation model parameterized by published diffusivity data for martensitic steels. Hardness, fracture toughness and microstructural state appear only as validation outputs — never as inputs — removing the circularity that has complicated earlier cumulative-damage indices. The CTDI is validated against published datasets of Demir (2023) for Armox 600T and Saleh et al. (2018) for Armox 500T. Against Demir (2023) the CTDI shows Pearson r = 0.993 (p < 0.001, RMSE = 0.34 %); against Saleh et al. (2018) r = 0.997 (p = 0.003, RMSE = 0.11 %). Under hypothesis H1, localized heating can exceed the 720 °C recrystallization threshold for dense impact patterns with inter-shot intervals below approximately six seconds. The framework identifies inter-shot interval, overlap geometry and local plastic strain as dominant controls, and suggests that STANAG 4569 protocols may under-report residual-capacity loss for realistic short-burst engagements. All code, tables, figures and raw CTDI outputs are released as open supplementary material.

This article develops an engineering-grounded framework for determining the optimal depth of entrenched infantry positions intended to defeat top-attack strikes delivered by firstperson view (FPV) quadcopter drones carrying approximately 200 g of RDX-based high explosive — a charge mass now canonical on the Russo-Ukrainian frontline. The analytical problem is framed around three coupled physics regimes that jointly determine survivability: the peak incident and reflected airblast overpressure field generated by a near-vertical detonation above an open trench, the fragmentation flux produced by the drone's steel or cast-iron casing and embedded preformed fragments, and the attenuation of ground shock in soils of different grain-size and moisture-content classes. Using the Kingery–Bulmash polynomial representation as validated in recent SCOPUS blast-engineering literature, and benchmarking against Kinney–Graham scaleddistance predictions, the study computes peak overpressure, positive-phase impulse and fragment impact kinetic energy as functions of entrenchment depth, parapet height and soil type. The analysis integrates empirical data from the Russo-Ukrainian war, where FPV fragmentation warheads now cause over 70 % of frontline infantry casualties, with computational fluid dynamics findings reported in the 2024 Defence Technology study of trench blast injury. The principal original contribution is the formulation and quantitative calibration of an Entrenched Position Survival Index (EPSI) — a five-dimensional composite metric aggregating airblast attenuation, fragmentation shielding, ground-shock dissipation, thermal-flash mitigation and structural-collapse resistance — specifically tuned to the 200 g RDX-class top-attack threat. Results indicate that legacy field-manual depths of 1.5–1.8 m, which were calibrated for indirect artillery fire, offer EPSI scores below 0.55 against FPV top-attack, whereas a 2.0–2.2 m trench with a 0.3–0.5 m sandbagequivalent overhead cover and a 0.5 m parapet raises the composite to 0.88–0.93, yielding predicted >95 % survival probability for a soldier at the trench floor. Soil grain-size modulation is non-trivial: sandy loams require an additional 20 cm of depth relative to cohesive clay loams to achieve equivalent EPSI, a consequence of higher blast coupling and reduced fragment-arrest capacity documented in the 2018 Lu and Fall review. The findings argue for doctrinal revision of entrenchment standards in FPV-saturated battle-spaces and provide a transparent engineering template for small-unit engineer officers.

Disinformation operations have become a persistent feature of the Western Balkan security environment and are increasingly treated, in both NATO doctrine and regional strategic documents, as an asymmetric instrument of pressure targeting the cognitive rather than the material layer of the defence system. This article examines the empirical link between the intensity and coherence of disinformation operations and the evolution of public confidence in the armed forces across five Western Balkan states — Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo — over the period 2016–2023. A composite Disinformation-Cohesion Transfer Index (DCTI) is proposed, combining the per-capita volume of tagged military-relevant narratives, social-media platform penetration, a HerfindahlHirschman thematic-coherence measure and a per-capita refutation-intensity term from regional fact-checkers, anchored to a cohesion baseline derived from Gallup World Poll and Balkan Barometer data. A forty-observation country-year panel is assembled from the EU East StratCom Task Force database, the DFRLab case catalogue, regional fact-checker outputs, social-media penetration statistics and public-opinion waves; four case studies — the 2016 Montenegro coup-attempt cluster, the 2018 Prespa Agreement referendum, the 2021– 2022 BiH secession-rhetoric spike, and the 2022–2023 Kosovo license-plate and Banjska crisis — are analysed in depth. Within-country fixed-effects regression of the change in military confidence on log DCTI and its one-year lag yields a negative contemporaneous elasticity of –10.9 pp per log unit, a weaker positive first-lag coefficient of +4.7 pp per log unit consistent with a recovery pathway, and an adjusted R² of 0.66 across thirty-five country-year transitions. Three hypotheses are supported: disinformation intensity is non-trivially linked to militarycohesion erosion across the five states; thematic coherence amplifies the impact of raw narrative volume; and refutation intensity below a country-specific threshold is associated with non-linear erosion of public trust in the armed forces. The principal contribution is the DCTI framework, which renders asymmetric disinformation pressure on military cohesion a measurable, panel-comparable quantity and provides a first empirical bridge between the hybridwarfare and military-sociology literatures for the Western Balkan operating environment.

This article evaluates the evolution of civilian control over the armed forces in Bulgaria across two decades of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership (April 2004 — April 2024), combining a longitudinal institutional analysis with a structured regional comparison. The study develops an original composite indicator, the Civilian Oversight Completeness Index (COCI), which aggregates seven dimensions of civil control — parliamentary oversight, executive–ministerial balance, judicial autonomy over military justice, intelligence oversight, defencebudget transparency, media and civil-society engagement, and procurement transparency — each scored on a 0-to-10 scale using coded indicators drawn from NATO host-nation assessments, DCAF peer reviews, Transparency International Defence Index data, V-Dem and Varieties-ofDemocracy micro-variables, Bulgarian National Audit Office reports, and a systematic reading of 124 parliamentary-committee transcripts. The empirical analysis yields three principal findings. First, Bulgaria's aggregate COCI score rose from 4.2 (2004) to 7.3 (2024), a gain of 3.1 points that places Bulgaria in the upper-middle tier of Central and Eastern European NATO members but clearly below Slovenia (8.1), Slovakia (7.6) and Romania (7.4). Second, the institutional progress is highly uneven across dimensions: parliamentary formal powers, executive civilianisation, and budget transparency advanced by more than 3.5 points each, whereas judicial autonomy over military justice, intelligence oversight, and procurement transparency improved by only 1.6, 1.1 and 1.4 points respectively, producing a pronounced dimensional-disparity index of 0.47. Third, the gap between formal and substantive civil control in Bulgaria — captured by the COCI versus the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) substantive-democracy score — stands at 1.2 points in 2024, compared with 0.4 in Slovenia, 0.5 in Slovakia, and 0.8 in Romania, indicating the largest institutional-substantive gap in the regional peer group. The article interprets these findings through a political-institutionalist lens and argues that Bulgaria exemplifies a trajectory of accelerated formal compliance combined with retarded substantive democratisation, in which NATO accession pressure consolidated formal oversight architecture but left three residual deficits — parliamentary depth, intelligence autonomy, and procurement transparency — only partially addressed. The article concludes with policy implications for NATO enlargement conditionality, for the Allied Centres of Excellence agenda on resilient governance, and for the prospective security-sector-reform trajectories of non-member Western Balkan states

The transition from a logistical pause to a combat manoeuvre represents one of the most underexamined inflection points in armoured-mechanised operations. During a pause, vehicles are dispersed in an assembly area with heterogeneous fuel states shaped by patrol activity, engine idling, environmental conditioning and unequal previous consumption; when the orderto-move arrives, the battalion must refuel and move out within a fixed window that is typically 90 to 180 minutes. This article develops an original formal model of fuel redistribution for a reinforced armoured-mechanised battalion of ninety vehicles across three consumption classes, and compares four redistribution policies (proportional, priority-based, greedy shortest-processing-time, and an optimised lexicographic weighted schedule) under three tanker-fleet configurations (three, five, and eight 15,000-litre tankers). The study introduces the Battalion Refueling Readiness Index (BRRI), a novel composite metric that integrates the share of vehicles meeting their class-specific fuel threshold, the dispersion of the post-refuelling fuel distribution, and the makespan of the refuelling operation. Two hundred Monte Carlo realisations of pre-manoeuvre fuel states yield three principal findings. First, policy choice is decisive in the knife-edge fleet regime: in the small-fleet configuration the priority-based policy outperforms the proportional baseline by 8.7 percentage points of BRRI, whereas in the large-fleet configuration all four policies converge within 0.5 points. Second, the greedy shortest-processing-time rule maximises the headcount readiness rate in constrained fleets (59.4% vs. 50.0% under priority), but does so at the price of elevated dispersion (22.3% vs. 17.3%), which is operationally costly because it leaves heavy vehicles of the main effort below the combat threshold. Third, sensitivity analysis shows that reducing the order-to-move window from 120 to 60 minutes collapses BRRI by roughly half in the small-fleet configuration while leaving the large-fleet configuration essentially unaffected, which identifies tanker-to-vehicle ratio rather than scheduling sophistication as the dominant lever. The original contribution of this article is threefold: the BRRI metric, a transition-specific mixed-integer scheduling formulation distinct from steady-state convoy refuelling problems, and an empirical demonstration that class-priority heuristics dominate in the operationally relevant fleet regime. The results have direct implications for the doctrinal sizing of Class III (Bulk) distribution platoons in small NATO and partner-state armoured brigades.

The contemporary European security debate has revived the classical question of how far the progressive professionalization of small armed forces converges with, or diverges from, the civilian society that sustains them. This article examines the longitudinal relationship between military professionalization and the civil-military gap across eight small states of Southeast Europe — Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina — over the period 2014–2023. Two composite, dimensionless country-year indices are proposed. The Military Professionalization Index (MPI) combines the share of professional volunteer personnel, the tertiary-education share of the officer corps, defense expenditure as a share of GDP, a NATO-interoperability proxy and a multilateral-exercise-intensity component. The Civil-Military Gap Index (CMGI) combines the trust differential between the armed forces and civilian institutions, a demographicrepresentativeness distance, a value-orientation divergence measure calibrated on EVS and WVS data, and a recruitment-difficulty indicator. An eighty-observation country-year panel is assembled from SIPRI, NATO Official Texts, the IISS Military Balance, Eurobarometer and Balkan Barometer waves, EVS/WVS rounds and DCAF regional reports. Within-country fixed-effects regression of CMGI on MPI and MPI² yields a negative linear coefficient of – 1.88 (t = –6.84) and a positive quadratic coefficient of +1.35 (t = 7.31), implying a U-shaped relationship with a country-invariant minimum at an MPI threshold of 0.697 (adjusted R² = 0.487). The cross-country Pearson correlation between sample-average MPI and CMGI is – 0.53. Three hypotheses are supported: professionalization narrows the civil-military gap at low-to-intermediate levels of development; the relationship is non-linear and reverses beyond the threshold, consistent with the specialization-divergence thesis; and NATO membership affects the gap primarily through professionalization rather than directly. The principal contribution is the joint MPI-CMGI framework, which renders the professionalization-gap relationship a measurable, panel-comparable quantity and provides the first empirical bridge between the classical civil-military-relations literature and the military sociology of post-modern small-state armed forces in the Southeast European operating environment.

This article examines the operational effectiveness of 250-gram-class First-Person View (FPV) drones as a precision munition system in urban and semi-urban combat during the Russo-Ukrainian war, drawing on a structured synthesis of operational data released between February 2022 and December 2024. The study proposes and applies a six-dimensional Urban FPV Precision Effectiveness Index (UFPEI) that quantifies performance across target-class versatility, cost-to-kill ratio, electronic-warfare resilience, urban kill-chain latency, operator-training efficiency, and logistical-production footprint. Empirical calibration is performed through three case studies: the defence of Bakhmut (October 2022 – May 2023), the defence of Avdiivka (October 2023 – February 2024), and the Kupiansk–Kharkiv axis operations (2024). The results show that 250-gram-class FPV platforms with commercial-off-the-shelf components achieved a 20– 50% hit-rate band against moving or partially covered targets, with a cost-to-target-value ratio ranging from 1:80 to 1:50,000 depending on target class, and contributed to a documented 60– 70% share of confirmed Russian armoured-vehicle kills during the Avdiivka phase. The integration of FPV strike cycles into the Delta and Kropyva battle-management systems reduced urban kill-chain latency from the early-war baseline of 15–30 minutes to a 2–5-minute operating band by late 2024, while the growth of Ukrainian FPV production from approximately 1,200 units in 2022 to 1.7 million in 2024 demonstrates that the sustainable scaling of a precision munition system at micro-platform scale is possible outside the traditional defence-industrial base. The original contribution of the study is threefold: the proposal of the UFPEI composite metric, the first systematic comparative calibration of FPV urban effectiveness across three major city battles, and the articulation of a second-generation FPV-doctrinal regime characterised by battlemanagement-system integration, tactical unit professionalisation, and sustained production at scale.

Torsion-bar springs remain the dominant primary suspension element in tracked armored platforms of the 30–50 t class — CV90, Puma, K21, Namer, K9 — because they deliver the highest strain-energy density per unit mass of any single-component spring within the geometric constraints of an armored hull (Gomes et al., 2024a). Their dynamic life on cross-country terrain is, however, tightly coupled to two design variables whose individual effects are well understood but whose combined optimum has been only sparsely mapped in the open literature: the shoulder-fillet ratio r_f/d at the spline-to-active-length transition, and the active-to-shoulder diameter ratio D/d. This paper develops a coupled spectral-fatigue framework that combines a calibrated Pilkey-type shoulder-fillet stress-concentration model with the Tovo–Benasciutti spectral correction (Benasciutti & Dirlik, 2021), an ISO 8608 displacement PSD (Lenkutis et al., 2021), and a single-degree-of-freedom wheel-station transfer function, and proposes a new dimensionless Geometric Fatigue-Efficiency Index (GFEI) that couples the stress-concentration penalty, the fillet geometry, the active-length slenderness and the bar mass into a single design-selection scalar. The framework is applied to ten parametric scenarios covering the 33–50 t combat-mass range and is validated against ten synthetic S-N points generated from the published Basquin parameters of five SCOPUS-indexed 2018–2024 fatigue studies on 51CrV4 / SAE 5160 spring steels, achieving Pearson r = 0.580, RMSE = 0.73 decades in log N, and a regression slope of 1.05 consistent with one-decade scatter typical of high-strength spring-steel S-N data (Gomes et al., 2024a; Saklakoglu et al., 2021). Results show that increasing r_f/d from the common-practice value of 0.05 to an optimum of 0.12–0.16 extends the cross-country service life by more than three orders of magnitude in the uncapped Basquin extrapolation, at a bar-mass penalty below 3 %, while lengthening the active length past 2.1 m yields diminishing GFEI gains below 5 % beyond the baseline. The original contribution of the paper is the GFEI index, which condenses the coupled geometric-fatigue trade-off into a single comparable scalar and enables direct designspace screening prior to full FE or field testing.

Medium-caliber autocannon barrels operate under thermo-mechanical loading regimes that combine high transient gas temperatures (1800–2700 K), peak chamber pressures of the order of 350–450 MPa, and cyclic mechanical contact between projectile driving bands and the rifled bore. Under accelerated firing regimes — bursts of 100–300 rounds at firing rates exceeding 200 rounds per minute — the resulting thermo-mechanical degradation accumulates non-linearly across the bore, thread, and chamber regions. The published 2017–2023 evidence base on gunbarrel degradation has matured substantially during this window, with sustained progress in coupled thermo-mechanical finite element modelling, validated material-testing data for 30SiMn2MoVA gun steel, and quantitative laws of bore-diameter evolution under continuous firing. Despite this maturation, no published study has supplied an integrated bedside-applicable degradation index that combines the three principal degradation mechanisms — thermo-mechanical fatigue, thermochemical-mechanical erosion-wear, and low-cycle fatigue — into a single composite remaining-service-life predictor specifically calibrated for medium-caliber autocannon geometries. This article, written with the benefit of the 2022–2023 cohort of validated thermomechanical models and the parallel maturation of the experimental literature on 30SiMn2MoVA degradation, fills that gap. The article introduces the Composite Bore Degradation Index (CBDI), a normalised 0–100 index constructed from three weighted sub-indices: a thermo-mechanical sub-index drawn from peak temperature and von Mises stress fields, an erosion-wear sub-index drawn from the diameter-change-rate law, and a low-cycle fatigue sub-index drawn from cumulative damage at the rifling start point. The CBDI is operationalised through a numerical workflow that combines coupled thermo-mechanical finite element simulation with the experimentally derived parameters of 30SiMn2MoVA steel and is applied to a generic 30 mm autocannon geometry across three accelerated firing scenarios. Three hypotheses are tested: that the dominant degradation mechanism in medium-caliber autocannons under accelerated firing is multi-mechanism rather than single-mechanism; that the CBDI's three sub-indices contribute non-uniformly to remaining-service-life prediction with the thermo-mechanical sub-index dominating in the first 2,000-round window; and that the CBDI offers actionable predictive accuracy that single-axis degradation metrics cannot replicate.

Western operational doctrine has long classified the conduct of war across four domains — land, sea, air, and space — and added cyberspace as the fifth domain following the 2010 NATO Lisbon Summit. The accelerating convergence of neuroscientific research, algorithmic computation, and large-scale information operations has, between 2017 and 2023, generated empirical and conceptual pressure to recognise the cognitive domain as a distinct operational space alongside the existing five. The Russo-Ukrainian war that opened in February 2022 has supplied the most consequential case for that pressure, and the parallel cognitive-domain operations of the People's Liberation Army of China have generated a second consequential body of evidence. This article, written with the benefit of two campaign years of evidence from Ukraine and the consensus formation around NATO's cognitive-warfare exploratory concept, addresses a specific gap in the existing literature. Although peer-reviewed scholarship on cognitive warfare has matured substantially during 2017–2023, no published study has produced a structured, operationalised assessment instrument by which a state-actor's preparedness in the cognitive domain can be measured. The article introduces the Cognitive-Domain Operational Readiness Index (CDORI), a novel five-axis assessment framework covering information-environment surveillance, cognitive force protection, offensive cognitive-operations capability, algorithmic detection and counter-deepfake capacity, and doctrinal-and-organisational integration. Each axis is scored from zero to two against operationalised criteria, yielding a composite total of zero to ten. The CDORI is applied to three coded cases — NATO collectively, the Russian Federation, and the People's Republic of China — for the 2017–2023 window and yields composite scores of 6, 8, and 7 respectively. Three hypotheses are tested: that the cognitive domain has structurally crossed the threshold of doctrinal recognition during the analysed period; that cognitive-operations capability is unevenly distributed across the three reference state-actors with Russia exhibiting the highest composite score; and that the principles of the art of war require formal extension into the cognitive domain to retain analytical adequacy under contemporary conditions. The doctrinal implications are that the principles of mass, manoeuvre, surprise, and economy of force require explicit cognitive-domain reformulation in the next NATO doctrine review cycle.

Carl von Clausewitz's distinction between absolute war (the warlike element taken to its ultimate expression, in which the spirit of fighting is unencumbered by any external constraint) and real war (war as actually fought, conditioned by friction, political restraint, and the trinity of people, army, and government) has structured western strategic theory for nearly two centuries. This review article surveys the published 2017–2023 evidence base on hybrid warfare, grey-zone competition, cognitive warfare, and the contemporary applicability of Clausewitzian theory, and synthesises the published critiques and defences into a single epistemological revision of the absolute-war concept. The article — written in early 2024 with the benefit of two campaign years of evidence from the Russo-Ukrainian war and the parallel maturation of Chinese cognitive-domain operations — addresses a specific gap in the existing literature: although the published 2017–2023 review and analytic literature has produced substantive critiques of hybrid warfare as a conceptual category, no published study has supplied a structured theoretical framework that operationalises Clausewitzian theory specifically for grey-zone phenomena. The article introduces the Clausewitzian Grey-Zone Operationalisation Framework (CGZOF), a five-test theoretical instrument that determines whether a given grey-zone action qualifies as war in the Clausewitzian sense and where on the absolute-war / real-war / grey-zone continuum it sits. The five tests are: (1) political instrumentality, (2) trinity engagement, (3) friction generation, (4) violence threshold, and (5) continuum positioning. The article applies the CGZOF to the principal grey-zone-action cases documented in the 2017–2023 literature — the Russian operations in Ukraine (2014–2022 sub-period), the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–2023), the Chinese cognitive-domain operations in the Indo-Pacific, and the Russian information-operations campaign — and concludes that Clausewitzian theory, with the absolute-war concept properly understood as a regulative ideal rather than as a phenomenological description, retains substantial analytic adequacy for the contemporary strategic environment.

Defence offsets — additional economic, industrial, and technological benefits that an arms-importing state extracts from a foreign original equipment manufacturer (OEM) as a condition of combat-system procurement — have, since the 1980s, become a near-universal feature of the international arms trade. The published 2017–2023 evidence base on offsets has matured substantially during the analysed window, with sustained progress in the systematic-review literature, in country-case-study scholarship, and in the political-economy analysis of offset persistence under supply-driven arms-trade conditions. Despite this maturation, the buyer-state policy maker continues to face a recurrent decision problem that the existing literature does not resolve: for a given combat-system procurement of a given absolute value, should the offset arrangement be configured as a direct compensation (co-production, sub-contracting, licensed production, technology transfer directly related to the procured platform) or as an indirect compensation (counter-purchase, foreign direct investment, technology transfer in unrelated sectors), and how should the comparative fiscal efficiency of the two models be evaluated? The article introduces the Offset Fiscal Efficiency Index (OFEI), a five-dimension 0–10 composite metric that scores any offset arrangement on technology-absorption depth, industrial output multiplier, time-torealisation, capability sustainability, and cost-recovery ratio. The OFEI is operationalised through a structured comparative workflow and applied to seven country cases — South Korea, Türkiye, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Poland — across the 2017–2023 window for both direct and indirect compensation models. Three hypotheses are tested: that the fiscal efficiency of direct offsets dominates that of indirect offsets across the OFEI dimensions for buyer states with sufficient absorptive capacity; that the comparative advantage of direct over indirect offsets is conditioned by the buyer state's pre-existing industrial base, with mid-tier industrial economies exhibiting the largest direct-over-indirect differential; and that the OFEI offers actionable comparative decision support that single-dimension fiscal-efficiency metrics cannot replicate. The doctrinal implications are that NATO and partner-nation procurement frameworks should adopt the OFEI or an equivalent structured instrument as part of the 2024 procurement-policy review cycle.

Combat-vehicle fleets operating in expeditionary, contested, or otherwise logistically isolated theatres routinely face spare-part availability shortfalls that ground a substantial share of the fleet for weeks or months while replacement components transit a vulnerable conventional supply chain. The published 2017–2023 evidence base on metal additive manufacturing has matured to the point at which selective laser melting (SLM) of nickel, titanium, aluminium, and tool-steel alloys produces parts whose mechanical performance approaches or matches that of conventionally machined counterparts, while the parallel maturation of ruggedised SLM platforms suitable for forward deployment has reduced the operational threshold for in-theatre fabrication. Despite this maturation, no published study has supplied a structured techno-economic decision instrument that determines, for a given combat-vehicle spare part, whether in-theatre SLM production is preferable to conventional resupply under specified logistical-isolation conditions. This article, written in early 2024 with the benefit of the 2022–2023 cohort of SLM process-parameter optimisations and the parallel maturation of military-logistics-with-AM scholarship, fills that gap. The article introduces the Critical Spare-Part Additivability Index (CSAI), a five-criterion 0–10 composite score covering geometric complexity, material-and-process compatibility with available SLM systems, mechanical-load criticality, conventional-supply lead-time penalty, and unit-cost ratio. The CSAI is operationalised through a structured decision workflow and applied to six representative combat-vehicle spare-part categories. Three hypotheses are tested: that in-theatre SLM production yields measurable techno-economic advantages over conventional resupply across a substantial sub-set of combat-vehicle spare-part categories under logistical-isolation conditions; that the CSAI's five criteria are non-redundant and contribute differentially to the additivability assessment; and that the CSAI offers actionable decision support that single-criterion suitability assessments cannot replicate. The doctrinal implications are that NATO and partner nations should adopt the CSAI or an equivalent structured instrument as part of the 2024 doctrine review cycle for forward-maintenance and contested-logistics operations.

The defence industry of the Western Balkans, anchored by Serbia's Yugoslav-era industrial base and by smaller producers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, has experienced sustained export growth across the 2019–2023 window. The literature on the macroeconomic impact of arms exports on GDP, anchored in Defence and Peace Economics, has matured substantially in the same period, but no published study has yet derived an arms-export multiplier specifically calibrated for the small open economies of the Western Balkans. This article, written with the benefit of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database update for 2023 and the most recent national accounts releases for the five reference countries, addresses that gap by constructing the Western Balkan Defence-Export Multiplier (WBDEM), a country-specific GDP-elasticity-of-arms-exports metric calibrated to the small-open-economy structure of the region. The WBDEM is operationalized through a four-step procedure that decomposes the arms-export shock into direct, indirect, and induced components and adjusts the elasticity for the conducting economy's domestic-absorption capacity, import-content of intermediate inputs, and labor-market frictions. The article reviews the underlying evidence base, presents WBDEM estimates for the five Western Balkan economies, and discusses the policy implications of the results for industrial-policy planning across the region. Three hypotheses are tested: that arms exports exert a measurable positive multiplier on the GDP of small Western Balkan economies; that the multiplier is heterogeneous across the region with Serbia exhibiting the largest absolute coefficient; and that the multiplier's magnitude is conditioned by the import content of intermediate inputs in the defence supply chain rather than by arms-export volume in isolation. The doctrinal and policy implications are that defence-industrial policy in small Western Balkan economies should integrate the WBDEM as a planning instrument and that NATO and EU partners engaging with regional defence-industrial cooperation should weight their offset and procurement strategies against the WBDEM-derived absorption profile of each partner economy

For two decades the western combat-casualty paradigm has rested on the so-called golden hour: the assumption that a wounded service member can be evacuated to a Role 2 or Role 3 surgical facility within sixty minutes of point of injury. The Russo-Ukrainian war, together with the broader pivot to large-scale combat operations against near-peer adversaries, has demonstrated that this assumption no longer holds. Evacuation-chain disruption — caused by contested airspace, electronic-warfare denial, mass casualty surges, and tactical fluidity at the line of contact — routinely extends the prehospital interval to twenty-four, forty-eight, or seventy-two hours. Prolonged Field Care (PFC), defined as field-medical care provided by combat medics and physicians beyond the doctrinal evacuation window, has accordingly migrated from a Special Operations niche to a general-force requirement. This article is written in early 2024 with the benefit of two campaign years of evidence from Ukraine and the consensus update of the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care, and it addresses a specific gap in the existing literature: although consensus guidelines for prolonged casualty care have matured between 2017 and 2023, no validated bedside scoring instrument exists to track the stabilization status of a polytraumatized patient across the multi-domain interventions that PFC requires. The article introduces the Polytrauma Evacuation-Lapse Stabilization Index (PELSI), a novel five-domain bedside score covering hemodynamic stability, hemorrhage control, oxygenation, thermoregulation, and infection prophylaxis. Each domain is scored from zero to two against operationalized clinical criteria, yielding a composite score of zero to ten. The PELSI is operationalized through a structured monitoring protocol with measurement intervals at zero, six, twelve, twenty-four, forty-eight, and seventy-two hours. The article reviews the underlying evidence base, specifies the scoring criteria, and discusses the doctrinal implications of pause-aware casualty stabilization for NATO and partner forces entering the 2024 doctrine review cycle. Three hypotheses are tested: that the PFC interval has structurally lengthened beyond the golden-hour window; that polytrauma stabilization in PFC depends on multi-domain rather than single-axis interventions; and that a bedside composite score offers actionable decision support that single-domain monitoring cannot replicate.

Conventional Western operational doctrine has long treated the operational pause as a regrettable, primarily logistical interruption between phases of decisive action — a moment when the attacker has exceeded the culminating point and must consolidate. The RussoUkrainian war from February 2022 through the end of 2023 has rendered that minimalist conception inadequate. Drawing on peer-reviewed scholarship in Survival, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Defence Studies, the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, the Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies, and Small Wars and Insurgencies, together with RUSI tactical reports and a granular reconstruction of the campaign's first twenty-two months, this article — written in early 2024 with the benefit of two full campaign years of evidence — introduces the Operational Pause Function Typology (OPFT). The OPFT is a three-category analytical framework that classifies operational pauses as regenerative, shaping, or exhaustion-imposed. It is operationalised through seven coded pause episodes spanning the spring 2022 reset around Kyiv, the early-Donbas culmination of summer 2022, the Kharkiv-Kherson autumn 2022 transfer of initiative, the Russian Kherson withdrawal of November 2022, the Russian winter operational pause of 2022–2023, the Ukrainian shaping pause preceding the June 2023 counteroffensive, and the Ukrainian exhaustion-imposed pause of October–December 2023. The study finds that across these episodes the burden of strategic exhaustion was transferred not principally through casualty arithmetic but through pause-management — that is, through one belligerent's capacity to convert the other's compulsory regeneration into a shaping window. Three hypotheses are tested: that operational pauses can serve as deliberate exhaustion instruments; that pause-frequency correlates with shifts in strategic initiative; and that Russian pauses functioned distinctly as exhaustion-impositions rather than as voluntary recoveries. The doctrinal implications are that operational art under modern attrition demands explicit pause-design as a planning category and that NATO operational doctrine should integrate pause-aware metrics into the next doctrine review cycle.

The proliferation of private military companies (PMCs) represents one of the most significant phenomena in the transformation of contemporary warfare, raising fundamental questions about the applicability of existing international humanitarian law. This review article analyzes the legal framework for the engagement of private military companies in armed conflicts, with particular focus on evaluating the compliance of their activities with normative standards established by the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977. By applying the dogmatic-legal method, comparative analysis, and case studies, the research identifies key legal gaps in regulating the status of PMC personnel, determines problems in attributing responsibility for violations of international humanitarian law, and evaluates the effectiveness of existing oversight and sanctioning mechanisms. The innovative contribution of this research consists in the development of an original analytical model called the “Legal Responsibility Matrix for PMC Activities” (LRMA), which systematizes four dimensions of responsibility: state, corporate, individual, and command, and establishes criteria for their delineation and cumulative application in various operational scenarios. Research results show that the existing international legal framework, although formally applicable, suffers from structural deficiencies that enable de facto impunity for PMC personnel, and that it is necessary to draft a special international treaty that would explicitly regulate the status, rights, obligations, and responsibility of private military companies and their employees in the context of armed conflicts. The article concludes that the application of the proposed LRMA model is necessary to overcome the current normative fragmentation and establish a coherent system of legal responsibility that would guarantee effective protection of civilian population and prisoners of war in accordance with the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.

Soft set theory represents a promising mathematical framework for dealing with parametric uncertainty, but its application in military logistics remains unexplored. This exploratory study examines the potential applicability of soft set theory to the resource allocation problem through a retrospective analysis of declassified logistics data from NATO ISAF operations in Regional Command South, Afghanistan (2010-2014). A total of 163 documented logistics requests were analyzed using a model incorporating four parameters: mission priority, time criticality, operational domain, and route security threat level. Results show a moderate correlation (r = 0.42, p = 0.003) between the proposed allocation and documented mission outcomes, with a hypothetical improvement of 19% in delivery time. However, the retrospective nature of the study precludes establishing causal relationships, and cross-validation shows a modest prediction accuracy of 61.4% (95% CI: 55.2-67.6%). Qualitative validation through interviews with four retired ISAF officers indicates significant limitations of automated systems in unpredictable operational environments. The study identifies key methodological challenges and proposes directions for future research, including prospective validation through controlled simulations and comparison with alternative multi-criteria decisionmaking methods. Results suggest that soft set theory has potential as a component of hybrid decision support systems but requires significant further development before consideration for operational implementation.

The proliferation of small unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) represents a growing security challenge in coastal waters worldwide. This research presents an experimental validation of a passive sonar array optimized for detecting low-frequency acoustic emissions from underwater drones in shallow coastal waters up to 50 meters deep. The experimental campaign was conducted under controlled conditions in the coastal waters of the eastern Adriatic coast during spring 2023, using a linear hydrophone array of 16 elements with an inter-element spacing of 0.75 meters. Three types of commercial underwater drones with different propulsion configurations and characteristic frequency emissions in the range of 50 Hz to 500 Hz were used as reference targets. The innovative contribution of this research is the development and validation of an Adaptive Spatio-Temporal Signal Coherence (ASTC) algorithm that integrates beamforming techniques with wavelet decomposition and machine learning for classifying acoustic signatures in multipath sound propagation conditions characteristic of shallow waters. Results demonstrate that the proposed ASTC algorithm achieves a detection probability of 94.2% at a false alarm rate of 2.1% for underwater drones at distances up to 800 meters, representing an improvement of 23.7% compared to conventional frequency analysis methods under equivalent conditions. The analysis additionally showed that the critical factor for successful detection in shallow waters is compensation of multipath effects that cause destructive interference at specific frequencies dependent on depth and seabed type. The proposed methodology enables practical implementation of early warning systems for protection of port installations, critical submarine infrastructure, and ecologically sensitive coastal zones.

Uncontrolled hemorrhage represents the leading cause of preventable death in traumatic injuries, with arterial injuries requiring urgent and effective intervention in prehospital conditions. The aim of this study was to evaluate the comparative efficacy of new-generation hemostatic dressings in achieving hemostasis in arterial injuries under simulated prehospital conditions, with a particular focus on investigating a novel sequential biagent application technique. The research was conducted as a prospective, randomized, controlled study on a porcine model of femoral artery injury, including a retrospective analysis of clinical data from 847 cases of prehospital hemostatic dressing application. Four hemostatic agents were tested: kaolin-impregnated gauze (Combat Gauze), chitosan-based gauze (Celox Gauze), microfibrillar collagen (Avitene), and an experimental nano-cellulose matrix (NC-Matrix). The primary outcome was time to achieving complete hemostasis, while secondary outcomes included total blood loss, rehemorrhage rate, and histopathological changes in vascular tissue. Results showed that the novel sequential biagent application technique, which combines initial application of chitosan-based gauze with subsequent application of kaolin-impregnated gauze, resulted in statistically significantly shorter time to hemostasis (mean 2.3 ± 0.7 minutes) compared to standard monotherapy with any single agent (3.4 ± 1.1 minutes for Combat Gauze; 3.8 ± 1.3 minutes for Celox Gauze; p &lt; 0.001). Additionally, the combined technique showed a 31.4% reduction in total blood loss compared to the best single agent. Histopathological analysis confirmed the safety profile of sequential application without significant increase in tissue necrosis or inflammatory response. These findings suggest that the sequential biagent application technique represents a significant advancement in prehospital treatment of arterial injuries and may contribute to reducing mortality caused by uncontrolled hemorrhage. Implementation of this technique requires additional training for prehospital personnel, but the potential benefits in terms of survival justify investment in educational programs. Future research should include multicenter clinical studies in human populations to confirm the applicability of these results in real clinical conditions

Crossing water obstacles represents one of the most complex operational tasks in military and civilian protection and rescue operations. The success of such operations directly depends on the precision of hydrological forecasts and understanding of watercourse dynamics. This paper examines the role of hydrological modeling in the operational planning process for water obstacle crossings, with particular emphasis on the integration of hydrological data into decision support systems. The research was conducted using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including analysis of hydrological models, crossing scenario simulations, and evaluation of operational procedures under different hydrological conditions. As the key innovative contribution of this research, an Integrated Watercourse Trafficability Assessment Model (IWTAM model) was developed, which synthesizes hydrological parameters with technical characteristics of crossing equipment and geomorphological terrain features into a unified operational trafficability metric. The model was validated on three watercourses in southeastern Europe over a period of 24 months, achieving a prediction accuracy of 87.3% for determining optimal time windows for crossing. Research results show that the application of advanced hydrological models can reduce operational risk by 34% and increase planning efficiency by 41% compared to conventional assessment methods. The paper concludes that the integration of hydrological modeling into operational planning is essential for modern military and civilian operations, and proposes a methodological framework for implementing the IWTAM model into existing decision support systems

The contemporary security environment is characterized by the proliferation of hybrid threats that pose a particular challenge to the critical infrastructure of maritime states. This paper investigates the resilience of port infrastructure to hybrid threats in two geopolitically significant regions of the NATO alliance: the Baltic and the Adriatic. The research encompasses a comparative analysis of eight NATO member states – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland in the Baltic region, and Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Albania in the Adriatic region. By applying a mixed methodology that combines qualitative analysis of security policies, quantitative assessment of infrastructural capacities, and expert interviews with relevant stakeholders, an original analytical framework called the Port Infrastructure Hybrid Threat Resilience Index (PIHTRI) was developed. The research results reveal statistically significant differences in vulnerability profiles between the two regions: Baltic ports demonstrate greater exposure to cyber and energy threats due to geographical proximity to the Russian Federation and dependence on digital infrastructure, while Adriatic ports exhibit greater vulnerability to threats related to uncontrolled migration, organized crime, and terrorism. The key innovative contribution of this research is the identification of a phenomenon the authors term “asymmetric vulnerability complementarity” – an empirically grounded finding that combining the experiences and practices of the two regions can result in a synergistic effect on the overall resilience of NATO's southern and eastern maritime domain. The results suggest the need for developing an integrated approach to port infrastructure resilience management that transcends traditional regional and national frameworks and implies a revision of existing NATO and EU mechanisms for critical infrastructure protection.

Nitrocellulose propellants represent the dominant type of propulsive explosives in modern military and civilian use, whereby their chemical stability during long-term storage remains a critical factor for safety and operational reliability. The subject of this research was the analysis of thermal degradation kinetics of single-base and double-base nitrocellulose propellants exposed to real storage conditions of the Mediterranean climate over a five-year period, with the aim of developing an improved predictive model for estimating remaining service life. The research encompassed continuous monitoring of temperature and hygrometric parameters in three representative storage facilities on the Adriatic coast, along with periodic sampling and laboratory analysis of propellant samples using differential scanning calorimetry methods, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, vacuum stability testing, and high-performance liquid chromatography. The key innovative result of the research is the development of a modified Arrhenius equation that integrates a cumulative thermal oscillation parameter, defined as a time-integral function of daily temperature amplitudes. It was established that standard isothermal models, based solely on mean annual storage temperature, underestimate the actual degradation rate of nitrocellulose propellants under Mediterranean conditions by 18-24% compared to experimentally determined values. The new model, designated as MTOD (Mediterranean Thermal Oscillation Degradation), demonstrated a coefficient of determination R² = 0.967 in predicting the residual content of the stabilizer diphenylamine, which represents a significant improvement compared to conventional isothermal models with R² = 0.891. The research results imply the need for revision of existing NATO STANAG standards for ammunition service life assessment in climatic zones with pronounced temperature oscillations

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operators face unique professional challenges arising from the combination of high cognitive load, prolonged vigilance, and the need for rapid tactical decision-making in dynamic operational environments. The aim of this research was to examine how the accumulation of cognitive load during extended work shifts affects the quality, speed, and precision of tactical decisions made by UAV system operators. The study involved 78 professional unmanned aerial vehicle operators from the military and civilian sectors, with an average age of 31.4 years and a minimum of three years of operational experience. The NASA-TLX questionnaire was used for assessing subjective cognitive load, along with the Psychomotor Vigilance Test, a modified Tactical Decision-Making Test in simulated scenarios, and continuous monitoring of physiological parameters including heart rate variability and electrodermal activity. The research was conducted through simulated operational shifts lasting 4, 8 and 12 hours. Results showed a statistically significant decline in tactical decision quality after the sixth hour of continuous work, with a critical cognitive load threshold identified at 73% of maximum capacity as measured by the NASA-TLX scale. The key innovative finding of this research relates to the discovery of a nonlinear, stepwise pattern of decision-making degradation characterized by an abrupt deterioration of performance after reaching the cognitive saturation threshold, as opposed to the assumed gradual decline. This finding has significant implications for designing operator rotation schedules, implementing real-time cognitive status monitoring systems, and developing protocols for preventing critical errors in unmanned aerial vehicle operations