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This text sets its aim in analyzing the current state of active reserve in the Czech republic. The function, current state along with future plans as envisioned in the Concept of Active reserve from the year 2012 and relevant public anouncements of certain military and ministry officials will be described first. The ammendment to the conscription act will be briefly introduced along with its effects on the function of Active reserve, its perspectives and on the requirements on the recruits. Then the possible issues that may arise during the implementation of reforms will be analyzed. These lay mainly in the personal level and training. Several possible solutions for these issues will be put forward.

The article is based on the positions of neo-realism, namely in the works by S. Walt and J. Mearsheimer. It characterizes the key actors of the war in Ukraine, which is a result of a long-term geopolitical competition between the USA and RF in the Black Sea region. The NATO enlargement in the area is classified as a non-coercive Expansion by Invitation (articulated by the elites of the former member states of the USSR and Warsaw Pact), which has provoked growing irritation of Russian political and military elites and the following hybrid war with dramatic international consequences. Last but not least, the article analyses military incidents and resulting security threats and challenges.

The article presents possible approaches to solve problems of finding the optimum state of tactical activities within the level of small Engineer Units. The intention is, by elaborating of the partial engineer goal which is focussed on the area of engineer units' tactics, to develop input data/ information needed for further development of mathematical models of the tactical activities. Subsequently, with the judgement on modelling outputs (applicability within C2 activities of staffs' task force structures) from engineer unit tactics point of view, the article contributes to enhancing all of C2 processes effectiveness. The article also provides us with information about the range of facts relative with problems of selected engineer unit (counter-mobility task forces) deployment planning, and controlling. There can be also found inventory of activities appropriate for optimization.

The article deals with experience in closure of military bases in foreign operations. It follows in article Life cycle of military bases in foreign operations, published in Vojenské rozhledy Nr. 4/2009. The text of article presents current knowledge about the life cycle of military bases and general principles from the perspective of the latest NATO Handbook. The theoretical part of the article introduces weighting method of decision analysis, which compares current ways for the field bases closure. Authors describe findings from base closure Šajkovac that significantly influenced removal activities.

The article is linked with two articles from 2013 (United Nations military observer and Preparation of Military Observers of ACR before Dispatch for Operation) and describes command structure of military observer in MINUSCA operation in Central African Republic. The article also deals with description of basic duties of the military observer team sites as well as some specifics of their live within the operation. The goal of the article is to provide information concerning structure and responsibilities of military observers in this operation. The paper is determined for future military observers, military observers deployed in MINUSCA operation as well as training purposes.

The article deals with correlation of strategy and operational art. The aim of the article is to point on deficit of relationship between political decision-making and military planning. The first part of the article simply introduces doctrinal tools of operational art, applicable at both the operational and strategic level. The second part refers to the fact that application of some standard elements of operational art in terms of overall strategic framework loses partly importance because of their use in the context of unconventional conflict has been less appropriate. The third part deals with criticism of the mutual undesirable separation of politicians and military professionals involved in operations planning. Conclusion of the article offers possible solutions of this deficit.

The article elaborates local conditions that lead to the fundamental changes in recruitment and preparation system of new army officers. Traditionally, new career officers used to be graduates from military colleges (since 2004 University of Defence). Due to the changes aroused by the transition from conscription to all volunteer forces, Czech military is experiencing increased internal and external pressures on this traditional models of recruitment and preparation. At present, the most visible outcome of this development is severe shortage of junior officers. The combination of internal and external factors (competitive civilian job market) brings the need for expansion of the traditional recruitment models. One of the most promising ways of manning appears to be recruitment of graduates from civilian universities and their subsequent military training at Military Academy in Vyškov.

Physical condition and nutritional state of soldiers were monitored among members of KFOR mission by means of anthropometrical measurement of physical changes, defined above all by the so-called Mass Body Index, metabolic exchanges, and contents of fat in a body. The evaluation was done in picked-up clusters, formed on the base of physical activities of personnel. Verifying was carried out by means of the Wilcoxon test, non-parametric statistical test for the case of two related samples or repeated measurements on a single sample. The test involves comparisons of differences between measurements; the null hypothesis is specified. The alternative hypothesis assumes clusters, different in physical characteristics, with notable statistical differences. Among other results, in 2005, 57.10 per cent of military personnel between 25-35 years were overweight.

Military professional terminology is a special vocational vocabulary used within armed forces, usually only partially understood by outsiders. The author demonstrates several most notorious examples to draw attention of terminology specialists. They are special vocabularies of military and security affairs, such as human resources, integrated MoD, recruit, recruitment, air wing, air base, strategical/tactical levels, names of organizational military structures, battalion, company, regiment (in fact they differ from nation to nation) task force, defence planning and planning of defence, to name at least a few. In spite of several translated AAP publications, generally, those terms are used in a different way. The author calls for creating more cohesive terminology. He intentionally does not put his own proposals, he only appeals to leading military officials to enforce the unified and accurate military terminology. It is high time to solve this task, namely within the frame of a lifelong education of military personnel.

At the time of forming the team around a designated defence minister Alexander Vondra, in the early summer 2010, there was no doubt that we need a complex concept document, able to analyze and describe the then situation, to readjust directions and goals for defence department, so that it could stimulate the follow-up transformation of Czech Army. The author, who used to be one of the leading Defence Ministry officials, thus made use of his experiences he gained in NATO structures. He gives an apt, well-founded, and first hand description of key points of this very fresh military history.

The purpose of this text is not a systematic description of preparation, confirmation and implementation of Defence White Paper, nor overall evaluation of its assets or failures. It only wants to draw your attentions to several problem factors that have got complicated the preparing of strategical documents in the field of defence and security in the Czech Republic and in fact they do not allow to form predictable surroundings for defence planning.

Shortly after the Czech government gave its approval with conclusions and goals of White Paper on Defence, the Defence Ministry and the General Staff began to fulfil assigned objectives. The body that did not keep its word was the Czech government. Defence budget was reduced and military officials had to look for further emergency solutions. The author thinks that we are in a point when it is necessary to open a wide debate over the responsibility for country defence, the state of armed forces, defence capabilities. He concludes that this Military Review should be the best place to start with.

The defence of air area was always of vitally importance, both for fighting off an aggressor or enforcing our own goals in offensive operations. The article deals only with one of "pillars" of air defence (AD), namely by active means of its land elements. We do not deal with active elements of flying segments, reconnaissance means and command and control systems of Air Force. The authors not only recapitulate the development of active means of land AD elements on the territory of the Czech Republic with the emphasis on the past 20 years, but at the same time they would like to highlight the importance of this arms for effective country defence.

The article is a polemic reflection over the potential concept and vision of defence and EU combined armed forces, from the military point of view. It recalls previous efforts and present activities to implement common security and defence policy in practice. It is a short analysis of conditions under which the EU is situated, and in general contours it characterizes possible advantages of common European armed forces. It expresses author's opinion that by forming "European Pillar" in NATO, the transatlantic linkage between the EU and the USA will not be weakening, but on the contrary, it will be strengthen. The author uses the terms "European army" and "common armed forces of EU" that he takes as synonyms and therefore he asks the reader to take this fact in account.

The basic orientation in the field of military art demands at least elementary knowledge of military history and understanding to military strategy influence on the art of war. The questions tied to understanding military strategy and its influence on the preparation and conducting military operations are part of study programmes of all life education at the Defence University. The purpose of this article, dedicated to military strategy problems, is deeper understanding to its basic connections, understanding a direction the strategy took in a designated period and its development. I ought to explain in short its role and attitude towards the nature of military operations.

The White Paper on Defence is a frame document that only points out main directions of military activities that further must be worked up in detail at all levels of defence department. This study presents all possible themes in the field of public procurements. As he set principles in the Whiter Paper correspond to those set in governmental document Public Procurements, it depends only on MoD experts to what measure they meet governmental requirements and implement them into drafted concept materials, incorporating rules for placing, assignment, rating, examination and audit.

The article deals with the problem of a certain militarization of a society, supposing country's military establishment is expanding its scope of activities to government or economy. From this point of view, the military and their civilian counterparts could be seen as "imperium in imperio" and such a model of military as a state within a state. There are a military-governmental complex and a military-industrial one in each state and both ought to be under civilian authorities' control, in order to prevent the democratic state from being fallen under influence of this complex. Although the notion was sketched more than fifty years ago, the military-industrial complex theory has been still living, and author gives some examples of the evolution of military-governmental and military-industrial complex.

The article deals with nutritious conditions of professional soldiers of the army of the Czech Republic in foreign operations. The way of food subsistence in KFOR and ISAF missions was evaluated. Results reached of performed investigations were summarized; collected data of respective observations were used for processing. The article is supplied by the description of various methods used for above mentioned measurements and data processing. The second part of study also contains the interpretation of

It might be logical to occupy the main posts of enemy's command, but to take over the school? The Military Political Academy (MPA KG) constituted natural background of the so-called reformed forces, arising after the January 1968, at the beginning of the Prague's Spring. The MPA teachers and scholars outlined new prospects of European security development, among others with minor role of the Warsaw Pact, i.e. with the demand to rethink key principles of party's military policy, to reassess communist military doctrine. That's why the invaders regarded this university more dangerous then the then MoD. The review, eyewitness of those historic events, recollects prominent names not to be forget: Milan Ždímal, Vojtěch Mencl, Václav Prchlík, and shortly describes their following personal history.

Anti-ballistic missiles are missiles designed to counter enemy's ballistic missiles. First, the author compares strategic patterns reflecting various eras of the former bipolar world. Their mutual balance of that time could be described as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). As long as MAD was a fact of life, the ABM Treaty fulfilled its important function as a cornerstone of strategic stability. Keeping nuclear arsenals at a level which is not even justifiable is selfcontradictory, as the military strategy and targeting policy is based on the capability of the other side, not on its intentions. Today's Russian policy is shaped by the status-driven desire to deal with the United States from a position of power-related symmetry and strategic parity, by negating the unique position of the United States. The American ballistic missile defence policy used to be also a central element of their containment strategy towards China. However, at present, Ballistic Missile Defence (BDM) sets as a top-priory the defence against the so-called rough states, rather than against Moscow or Beijing.

This book written by Alain C. Enthoven, and K. Wayne Smith, was published some forty years ago, but its leading ideas do not grow old. It is a work of enduring value and listing relevance, this book is both a classic account of the application of powerful ideas to the problem of managing the U.S. Ministry of Defence (DoD) and a cautionary history of the controversies inspired by that successful effort ...206 Defence secretary Robert S. Namara's device was a new system for allocation defence resources, the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS). Most of those decisions are taken as bedrock defence policy today, and the methods have become embedded ad the DoD's approach to defining and resolving issues. According to the author of this article, this book ought to be the inspiration even for our Ministry of Defence in its effort to save restricted means and at the same time to increase Czech military capabilities.

The paper assesses the conceptual framework for Czech defence policy formulation in the wake of a rapid change in its security environment after Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and the subsequent Russian support for separatists in Ukraine's eastern provinces and growing instability in the Middle East and North Africa. The article examines key measures taken in the political, military, administrative, economical and societal domains in order to evaluate the overall effectiveness of Czech defence policy. Finally, the authors offer several strategic level recommendations to enhance responsiveness and preparedness of the Czech defence system and Armed Forces as one of its most significant components both in short- and long-term perspective.

Long-term cuts in military expenditures of European allied countries caused growing differences within the Alliance which can be seen in uneven sharing of military burden and in behaviour called free-riding. The aim of this contribution is to define possible approaches to the freeriding identification and to analyse military expenditure development in relation to conclusions and recommendations declared at the NATO Summit in 2014. The results of military expenditure analysis identify only a small group of countries which, from a long-term point of view, follow the recommendations of the Alliance in the form of allocating a corresponding amount as percentage of GDP and in the form of a recommended structure of military expenditures.

The article deals with the provisional bridging systems that are being used in the Czech Republic area. The main and mostly deployed bridge sets owned by one of the Czech agencies are covered. Every bridging systems is described, along with the way of construction, deployment and a list of main advantages and disadvantages. An evaluation of contemporary usability of the bridging sets is conducted at the end of the article.

The article is aimed on the identification of the tools of the international security organisations (NATO, European Union, Organisation for security and Cooperation in Europe) for de-escalation and resolution of the violent conflict in Ukraine. It is based on the liberal institucionalism. It characterizes and systematises tools and divides it into "soft power" and "hard power" tools. It is analysed the possibility of the use of armed forces as a coercive tool or in peacekeeping or monitoring missions. The NATO and the EU became involved in coercive diplomacy, the OSCE as a "soft power" becomes involved in mediation of the conflict in eastern Ukraine and dispatched long time missions. All three analysed organisations used the tools without placing of armed forces.

The fundamental regulation of governmental invests is Czech Act on Public Contracts. Its main objective is a financial saving in the procurement of goods and services by the state. In some specific cases, this objective may come into a conflict with other interests protected by a law. Several verdicts recently delivered by courts in criminal cases relating to a procurement of medical supplies bring a new and interesting insight into this issue. Some conflicts with social interest were identified on basis of these verdicts. These interests are the maintaining of the Czech Republic Armed Forces combat capability and its function in peace-time, fulfilment of international obligations of the Czech Republic and the requirement for the strict adherence to military orders. Some cases, in which different interests outweigh the interest protected by the Act on Public Contracts, were found.

This article discusses political and military issue of Islamic State, since establishment of the anti­IS alliance in summer 2014 until March 2016 in Iraq and Syria. The article describes each step made during this period separately or in alliance, while the terrorist attacks in Paris are considered as a turning point. That is the reason why the article is the comparison of French policy before and after the attacks. Furthermore, the crucial part is to resolve Syrian crisis in which France is actively involved in order to settle down the events in Syria and transform it into democratic country without President Assad.This article discusses political and military issue of Islamic State, since establishment of the anti­IS alliance in summer 2014 until March 2016 in Iraq and Syria. The article describes each step made during this period separately or in alliance, while the terrorist attacks in Paris are considered as a turning point. That is the reason why the article is the comparison of French policy before and after the attacks. Furthermore, the crucial part is to resolve Syrian crisis in which France is actively involved in order to settle down the events in Syria and transform it into democratic country without President Assad.

The paper solved changes in the legislation and the Analyse of continuance of the railway transport branch after the State of National Emergency announce or the State of War announce The analyse highlights on actual difference between documentation (the Operational Read- iness of National Territory) and real options. Long­time and gradual impacts in the entire domain decrease real possibilities of the system. The final step has been cancel of mobilization delivery for protecting and recovery of designated railway network without any measures. The paper offers possible solution of that situation.