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The aim of the text is to present the approach to assessing the military potential of the state as well as the will or possibilities to be used to achieve national strategic interests or power objectives. This approach is methodologically based on the sectoral analysis of the state's power potential and its possible projections in the construction and use of armed forces. The described and used approach in the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic is applied to the current Russian Federation and its military or power activities

This article deals with one of the approaches to command - Mission Command - which can be seen as a dominant command philosophy in NATO nations and especially in the United States. This approach is considered as a very important in terms of possible responses to the challenges having impact on current and future security environment. Respective parts of this article describe the military causes and related historical consequences based on which the mentioned command philosophy had been constructed. The relevant parts describe basic principles of Auftragstaktik, developed and implemented by Prussian and later on by German military leaders which aim is to emphasize centralized intent and dispersed execution through disciplined initiative.

On May 15, 2012, the Czech Defence Minister decided to establish the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies. The institution of this type has been long awaited, with great expectations. The author, director of this institute, presents the survey of similar scholarly institutions founded and finally cancelled in this country after 1989. This article introduces the original intent of its founders, namely Centre's future role in the development of strategic studies as a starting point for strategic management, its place in the system of Czech military education and training. The results reached by this institute ought to be truly utilized by MoD leaders and government officials.

Understanding the importance and role of present-day operational art is not always a matter of knowledge of relevant doctrinal publications or the use of experiences from military operations. Number of aspects of operational art had their roots deep in the history of warfare. Many of them are unknown or forgotten. This article aims to give the reader some basic information about the context that led to the awareness of the need of operational art and finally to real fulfilling the imaginary gap between strategy and tactics, which was the place for operational art. The article briefly describes the background of the emergence of operational art and the approach of two basic schools of military theory: Soviet and German that were crucial to its development.

This paper deals with theoretical and practical correlations of "additional" savings in defence sector. Referring to conclusions of White Paper of Defence, the author differencites between rational savings and irrational ones, i.e. the false savings. Rational savings lead us to higher economy, effecitivy and usefulness. Irrational savings present non-system measures when respective "cuts" are only for for appearance's sake, the savings are only for show. In reality, in terms of long-term prospects they will bring even higher social expenditures before those "cuts" were introduced. The author proposes several recommendations concerning effective saving to eliminate wasting defence sources.

When the White Paper on Defence was drafted, there was lot optimism as of crisis, then only set in motion. It was regarded as a mere limited, transitional phenomenon. Nowadays we see that it is not a standard crisis known from history, but the so-called systems crises. It is a different sort of crises; we ought to respond by systems reaction in which the society should response to crisis as a whole. This paper originated as a research paper dealing with methods the Czech state should adapt to avert opening crises, with all its sectors and components, including the sector of Department of Defence. The author proposes to draw up a working document "The Army for the Next Twenty Years".

There is an ambiguous relation as far as management and economy in public sector are concerned. Using the example of British army, the author explains the roots and consequences of changes in the field of source management and compares collected results with the situation in the CR. Both public sector and the Army of the Czech Republic (ACR) are administratively ordered and controlled and meeting the army goals that are not conditioned by economy results. The accounting books do not offer true picture of army possession and properties, among others because the current accountancy system that is not able to classify individual operations, military goals are not measurable. He proposes to set an array of fixed rules to identify ACR economical effectivity.

Supported by published materials and information (LaunchingEUBattleGroups, AsecureEuropeinabetterworld), the authors analyze and evaluate some of the processes in the field of preparation and forming international crisis management. Both NATO Lisbon strategy and the Programme Declaration of the Slovak Republic open new roles and missions of Slovak Army. The Slovak Army must fulfil those commitments even in limited source frame. It concentrates on new priorities: the army is trained and prepared for missions it is going to be deployed in. Last but not least, apart of traditional missions, .the forces will be developing even non-military capabilities useful for peace missions.

Topical problems of insufficient military budget, limited means are a drive force for searching unoccupied financial means to saturate set goals and ensure their unbiased reallocation and rational exploitation. The necessary prerequisite is control implementation and managerial accounting. This ought to create primary predispositions for introducing managerial accounting system, which would be oriented not towards financial, and property operations, but towards effective economy. The article describes phenomena tied with an army unit, together with the position of its commander in the process of gradual implementation of integrated informational system of state treasury, which is most manifested in the field of planning, budgeting and accounting.

The article deals with persistent problems of Czech military policy within 1993-2009, its achievements and failures. A new managerial concept, system planning, programming and budgeting, which superseded a communist central control, was not implemented fully because of governance instability. The office of Defence Minister was held by 11 persons within 1993-2009 (Czech Republic). Among others, it aroused the return of a concept of central planning in 2004, which was not successful, because it was not supported by institutions outside the MoD. The authors propose more transparency in military matters and better cooperation with academic community to prevent the repetition of concepts supporting short-term goals instead of long-term visions.

The contemporaneous security environment is more diverse, dynamic, interconnected and far less predictable than ever. As the major Western militaries undergo continuous changes in missions and tasks, as well as in the form of their organisations, the warfighting abilities of military leaders are not the only ones required. Transformational military leadership, with leaders operating from the post-conventional level of developmental action-logic, arguably become one of the most needed capacities of a military organisation. This type of leadership has to be capable of initiating and leading transformational changes, needed to respond adequately and adaptively to contemporaneous and future security challenges. This article analyses the applicability of transformational leadership to military organisations using the developmental theory and the concept of vertical leadership development as a framework.

The article focuses on the current use of NATO logistics information systems in the NATO Defense Planning Process and the Operations Planning Process in the area of logistics. Information support is provided through the logistics information systems of LOGFAS (Logistics Functional Area Services), which generate the necessary information environment through various software tools. In order to improve future logistics information support, NATO is concurrently preparing a modernization of the existing information environment by the development of the LOG FS projects. In the future, those projects are expected to replace the existing information systems in order to optimize information support, deliver new features and to facilitate the coordination of logistic operations within the NATO integrated command and control network.

It is a book review over the book by Prof. F. Ochrana (editor). Its authors tried to define dimensions and leading actors of the so-called strategical governance in the conditions of the Czech Republic with a special respect to strategical planning in public policy. Two chapters of this book are concentrated on military and defence problems. Predispositions for strategical control are backed by the creation and implementation of strategical documents. Among further themes discussed belonged also the White Paper on Defence. We specifically need single or comparative case studies that examine the process of formulating security strategies and their implementation, the interaction between respective processes at national and international levels, and the results of security policy implementation in respective cases.

This review attempts to analyze in detail the specific roles and interests of the key players represented by Pakistan and India in Afghanistan. The focus of individual actors in the South Asian region was focused on identifying key objectives, defining specific national interests and strategies in Afghanistan. The aim of the article is to find out, analyze, interpret and understand information about the power relations of Pakistan and India in relation to the security situation in Afghanistan. The content focuses on the analysis of Pakistan-India relations and their intertwining in Afghan society. The aim is not to relate the content to a generalized theory or known theoretical paradigm of international relations, but to analyze the aspects of the Afghanistan in relation to Pakistan and India.

The article is focused on operations of autonomous artillery weapon systems and possible requirements on survey units and their equipment. In the light of perspective purchase of artillery weapon systems it is necessary to analyze the character of operations of these systems and determine requirements on preparation of position areas. Goal of this article is to describe the character of autonomous artillery weapon systems operations in terms of functionality of individual components of navigation unit and based on this to set the requirements on survey units equipment. As the main method authors used method of scenarios where were as a scenarios determined individual variants of navigation system functionallity. Output of this article is determination of requirements on survey units equpment used for geting information about position coordinates and directions.

The main goal of this article is to depict the role of postcolonial theory of neo-colonialism in the development of the security situation in Afghanistan. The introductory part is devoted to defining the postcolonial approach. This part is followed by a definition of neo-colonialism as a modern form of continuation of colonialism. The next part is focused on the role of neo-colonialism itself in Afghanistan, in relation to the influence and interests of the USA. In addition, the paper outlines the main security implications as well as the distortions of Afghanistan's regional actors (Pakistan and India) as a result of US engagement in the region. The final part summarizes the essential information in the context of the theoretical requirements and signs of neo-colonialism in relation to the activities of the US and other state actors in Afghanistan and the region.

Tanks and anti-tank weapons in modernized and innovated forms will still appear on battlefields in the next 20 years to eliminate armoured targets and personnel with the usage of precision-guided munition. The progress of electronation and digitalization of tanks allows better situation awareness on the battlefield and cooperation with other military assets. An active protection measures were introduced to protect the crew such as reactive armour, active defence weapon systems and composite armour. By establishing a safe perimeter with active defence systems, tanks can sustain the incoming anti-tank weapons. Hence is the U.S. Army currently looking for a replacement of 3^rd generation Abrams tanks. The U.S. Army is considering in this case unmanned vehicle as well. The Russian Federation on the other hand enhances conventional tank scheme with modern technologies. Far too much electronation does not have to be necessarily due to the automatic loading mechanism always a step forward.

The article discusses the history and present state of instruction in the Arabic language in the Armed Forces of the United States and the United Kingdom within the context of their engagement in the Middle East. The analysis of the evolution of institutions tasked with Arabic language instruction since the end of the World War II mainly addresses the issues of fast language-capacity building and the cooperation between the Armed Forces and the academic sector. The main issue in state-organized instruction in non-standard languages is a discrepancy between the required long-term nature of building of linguistic capacities and an immediate need of states addressing new regional challenges requiring a specific knowledge of new languages.

The article deals with current state of infantry fighting vehicles training and evaluates current status of training documentation (mainly based on own experience). It focuses on the development of crew training mainly based on example of wheeled IFV PANDUR II. The goal of the paper is open a professionally discussion on the topic the IFV´s crew training. Mainly evaluates training maps, which the author regards as essential.

Personnel Recovery intervenes to almost all areas of planning, preparation and implementation of military operations. One of the important areas of the personnel recovery system is the intelligence area. This article describes on the operational level the reasons and basic methods of intelligence support of Personnel Recovery during joint military operations. It introduces selected intelligence disciplines and explains the suitability of their use in the various Personnel Recovery phases. It also describes the intelligence activities related to post-reintegration phase and outlines the basic issues associated with the intelligence support of Personnel Recovery.

Structured analysis is a systematic approach to solving intelligence analytic problems. Methodology and analytical techniques in the intelligence analysis include the selection of structured techniques from the point of view of the analytical task and the use of the analytical spectrum. Basic structured analytical techniques ensure transparency and reduce personality bias. Taxonomy is the basis for quality analysis. There are 55 types of techniques that complement expert judgment and intuition. A properly structured analysis contains twelve questions supplemented by a number of analytical techniques. The method of analytical spectrum in strategy leads to the split of the process into the phase of analysis, synthesis, selection of information and argumentation, and the analysis itself consists of four sub-stages. The basic parameters that negatively affect the use of structured analytical techniques by intelligence analysts are the analytical and collective approach, the patterns and the level of education.

The establishment of the Permanent Structured Co-operation (PESCO) in defence in 2017 is one of the most important European initiatives of recent years, aiming at enhancing effectiveness in addressing security challenges and advancing towards further integrating defence cooperation within the EU framework. The article describes the genesis of PESCO and explains its functioning, including its legal framework, objectives, the role of the main actors and the dynamics of the whole process. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the scope and strength of the more binding commitments that the participating Member States have decided to fulfil in the name of strengthening Europe's defence under the umbrella of the Common Security and Defence Policy.

The article examines the different approaches of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States Armed Forces towards Electronic Warfare, the military activity in the Electromagnetic Environment. All reference materials used for this analysis, including the specifics of the Army of the Czech Republic's approach toward the subject area, were obtained from unclassified military sources. It describes, explains and visualizes the individual approaches, and by their comparison it identifies and subsequently emphasizes cases of divergence, including non-compliance in established Czech terms, definitions and abbreviations. It highlights the obsolescence of the still valid military publication Electronic Warfare in the Army of the Czech Republic, the use of which, in its current form, has already been deemed as unfounded and counterproductive. It presents proposals and recommendations for unification of approach towards the Electronic Warfare issues within the Army of the Czech Republic, in order to ensure consistency with the current North Atlantic Treaty Organization policy related to activities in the Electromagnetic Environment. It contributes to better understanding of doctrinal views on the role of Electronic Warfare in execution of combat support tasks in contemporary military operations, thus creating preconditions for elimination of associated misunderstandings in terms of the Army of the Czech Republic.

The retraining courses of the Ministry of Defence aim to prepare soldiers for the civilian environment and to enable them to acquire the knowledge and skills that are applicable in the labour market. In the years 2008-2017 11 605 soldiers of the Czech Armed Forces terminated their service. The application for retraining was submitted by 3 644 persons, of whom 2 769 were retrained. The prevalence of retraining is in technical professions (1 342 persons) and in managerial and business training (832 persons). The research question and the statistical evaluation of the data obtained confirms the hypothesis that most soldiers were not retrained. The results of sociological research carried out among 313 former soldiers of the Czech Armed Forces show that more than three fifths of soldiers did not apply for retraining (64%), especially among higher positions and college graduates, because of no information about the data of termination of service (25%), no need for retraining (20 %) and not completing the retraining course (30 %) mostly because of the refusal of the superiors. The shortcomings of the retraining system of professional soldiers are summarized.

This article deals with the Czech defence industry and its role in the defense policy of the Czech Republic. The basic goal of the text is a short introduction to abilities of the Czech defence industry and answering the question if and how it is able to fulfil the demand of the Czech defence sector for an armament and a military gear. Basic items needed for a military capability of soldiers on a field and the ability to develop and produce them at the Czech territory is mainly examined.

The article deals with the evaluation of the state of oil security in the Czech Republic and measures, which should be taken to increase it. The attention is payed to the importance of the crude oil in the energy mix of the Czech Republic, its oil dependency and international cooperation in the area of oil security. Further, it focuses on the emergency stocks of the crude oil and petroleum products and to their use and to the oil demand restraint measures.

The aim of the article is to make the general public acquainted with a new view of the state service issue and to offer the author´s observations and conclusions relating to state service issues. The article briefly explains the public service and defines the relationship between the public service and the state service. It describes the organization of the state service and the entities of service relationships in the Czech Republic. It deals with the employment relationship - its origin, non acceptance for employment relationship and its termination. It presents important milestones of the employment relationship, such as an oath of service, a clerical exam and a service evaluation. It characterizes the state service within the Ministry of Defence, clarifies the role and responsibilities of the Secretary of State within the Ministry of Defence, state employees and other categories of the staff in the service office.

The article deals with the use and future prospects of the international cooperation for the development some of Czech Armed Forces capabilities in the field of military medicine. It has no ambition to address this issue in its entirety, but only contains an analysis of some of the current formats and initiatives of international cooperation in the field of military medicine, with the justification of their origins and a brief evaluation of their contribution. Part of the article is also a proposal for possible measures to improve the development of medical capabilities in the framework of international cooperation.

The authors present the results of the research on the Lessons Learned process applied within the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic. The main purpose of the article is to introduce the proposal of the process optimization to readers. The paper describes the process in detail, and this description is used to identify procedural shortcomings exploiting the process analysis method in terms of factual and logical accuracy of the process. The following part of the article presents the results of the comparative analysis of the chosen Lessons Learned processes. The result of the comparative analysis allows authors to make in an innovative way suitable recommendations for optimizing the current state of the whole process of Lessons Learned. Based on the analysis of the educational programs, the paper proposes to include the subject of the Lessons Learned process into the learning outcomes, especially from the perspective of competency based approach to education.