Fulltext search in archive

Thisarticledeals withanalysis ofthemagazineDabiq.Thismagazineis published by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and it serves to Jihadist propaganda in English language. The content analysis is used. Thematic fields (with qualitative analysis) and important terms (with term freqency analysis). Authors identified tree main themes of the Dabiq magazine - religion, establishing of the Caliphate and its functions and military operations of the ISIS. The conceptualization of the enemies from the point of view of the ISIS.

The following thesis focuses on the issues regarding deployment of medical forces within the shifting operational environment. It analyzes its development stages and considers their meaning and influence on current and forecasted developments of military health capabilities in the long run. The authors' fundamental research question is to be whether the changes to the operational environment's dynamics and scope will substantiate as the defining factors for ensuring interoperability with Alliance partners, for the purposes of developing new type of medical capabilities needed. Moreover, the importance of a rarely emphasized role of operational art in military medicine is discussed. Such tool seems to be a key element for the harmonization of strategic objectives with long-term tactical activities.

One of the objectives of the project for organization development titled "Trends in development the Armed Forces of Czech Republic in relation to the development of the security environment", is to identify trends in career management and life-long education in the MoD. The article presents partial findings of the substudy focused at proper use of management methods to execute primary data collection and to construct complete problem formulation for both preparation and implementation of Career Order as a part of human resources management in the Ministry of Defense. There is summary of methods and tools used for problems formulation in the first part, the second part shows how these methods are applied in practice. Based on results, the conclusion is then formulated depicting the primary problem of preparation and implementation of the career system.

Infantry company urban operations training experience shows that effective training requires interaction of doctrine with equipment and structure of units. NATO standards must be further developed at the national level to match the technology and organization of own units. Training requires elaboration of training manuals that contain specific tactical exercises for standardized training facilities. Experienced training instructors should focus on the preparation of organic units. Transferring experience from instructors directly to organic units is more efficient than preparing individuals in professional courses.

The article brings outcomes from the critical analysis of interaction between planning by objectives and capability planning. The analysis is based on the assumption that the strategic decision-making process should be assisted by a systemic tool, enabling a financial assessment of capabilities, identified as a prerequisite for accomplishing politico-military ambitions. Taking into account the current planning system, as implemented within the Ministry of Defence, the planning by objectives might become this tool. However, for providing an efficient planning by objectives, it is necessary to derive relevant findings from the capability planning, which basically includes data on capability assessment, identified capability shortfalls and their prioritisation. Therefore, findings from capability planning process are a keystone for conceiving objectives for the area of capability development. Both capability planning and planning by objectives are to be seen as communicating conveyances, where a level of mutual interactions significantly influences effectiveness of defence performance management.
The analysis is aimed at identification and description of discrepancies hampering an efficient interconnection between planning by objectives and capability planning and, as a conclusion, the analysis proposes a definition of the core problem which causes respective discrepancies.

This paper aims to enrich professional discussion on future shape of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic (AFCR) and is linked to the preceding research and publishing activities of members of the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies (CBVSS) at the University of Defence. In its first part, it performs a historical tour to the year 2012 and highlights the reasons that the former leadership of the ACR led to the start of construction work on the concept of AFCR (KVAČR). Briefly describes the interconnection and the hierarchy of individual conceptual and strategic documents, the procedure works on them and summarizes the arguments supporting the need of KVAČR as such. The next section brings potential methodological approaches to the preparation of this document, using the method of the "9S", including practical examples, it renumbers basic strategic assumptions and priorities in various stages, bordered by years 2020 and 2025 as a prerequisite for formulating strategies for achieving this specific goal. Within the document, there is a short excursion into the field of long-term planning for major areas of skills, using their description of DOTMLPFI functional areas, including an example of using this methodology in project preparation of program funding. The recommendations formulated in the article are based on the authors' best experiences with the preparation of documents of a similar type in the years 2003-2013, the recommendations of experts from the broader security community of the Czech Republic, and recommendations of the Alliance. As such, it has been passed to the KVAČR processors at level of the General Staff of AFCR over the years 2013-2014.

Presented analysis of interviews with officers at various level of command from 2004 - 2008 is aimed on their view of the process of command. On the basis of qualitative research we consider the recent way of command of the Czech officers intuitive and individual. It characterizes most common way to command, based just on experience. We consider differentiation in the way of leading and motivation of subordinates among types of forces and military specializations. The reflection of the professionalization, the training system, the perception of learned/natural ability to command and their career is offered to discussion in the context of changes in direction of education of Czech officers and commanders.

The fire support is an inevitable prerequisite for the success of combat forces in land military operations and artillery is its key provider. Will it be even in a future complex and uncertain operating environment? The article recalls high requirements on the current ACR artillery and with the use of the Alliance partner's findings, it points to selected aspects that might influence its capabilities development towards the future operations. The article defines artillery as an indirect fire system and clarifies its role and tasks in the framework of joint fire support. It proposes measures to increase the quality of its training and management. It discusses the issue of an operational concept and its importance for the future ACR artillery, together with introducing main trends in areas of its potential development.

Defense planning and research has to engage with questions about future developments quite often. Solutions to these questions tend to be hazy due to (I) the missing data, or due to (II) the necessity to build long-term prognoses, which are - by their very nature - only remotely related to any current or historical empirical cases. Under these conditions counterfactuals and their specific - future- oriented - form: scenarios, offer a valuable tool. Nevertheless, counterfactuals and scenarios, due to their limited empirical embeddedness, demand explicit and rigorous application of a theory. The article highlights often overlooked resemblance of scenarios and counterfactuals and derives from this fact some methodological implications for scenario building enterprise. Beyond that, it aims at demonstrating possible contributions as well as obstacles inherent for the use of scenarios and counterfactuals in our defense policy debates.

The article defines extremisms and terrorism as eventual destabilizing moments in society. The paper decomposes possible reasons and grounds of their manifestation, the authors point out that certain signs indicate the penetration of extremisms and terrorism into armed forces structures and civil service, by means of concrete persons. At the end they propose general rules and approaches to keep up this topical phenomenon of the present day.

The article deals with the contemporary form of terrorism, introduces selected issues and discusses the psychology of terrorism. Various forms and typologies of contemporary terrorism which occurs in different geographical and cultural areas and uses large scale of methods and tactical and strategic approaches are introduced as well.The main goal of this article is to describe psychological aspects of terrorism with the emphasis on the motivation and group dynamics of terrorist organizations. The staircase metaphor which allows thinking about the process of recruitment of terrorists is introduced as well. The article derives especially from theoretical socio-psychological and political findings.

There has never been so much primary data on al-Qa'ida publicly available. Nevertheless primary data are still not used enough, despite the fact that their omission had a clearly detrimental effect on the quality of research on al-Qa'ida. The article's goal is twofold: to lay out an overview of the publicly available sources of primary data on al-Qa'ida and by highlighting interesting aspects of their content to demonstrate their usefulness for the research in general. The article deals particularly with outputs of public institutions, al-Qa'ida's members' publications, al-Qa'ida's members' communication that has been made public and leaked classified information. The topic how to use the sources of primary data will be discussed briefly. The article aims at encouraging the academic and expert community to use primary data more broadly when researching al-Qa'ida.

Intelligence services collect data from various sources: SIGINT (intelligence obtained by listening to the enemy's radio transmissions), HUMINT (information about the enemy obtained from people, e.g. friendly forces, agents, civilians, prisons of war), and the very latest it is the so-called OSINT - Open Sources Intelligence. Its description is not unequivocal. In the intelligence community, the term "open" refers to overt, publicly available sources, as opposed to covert or classified sources. OSINT includes a wide variety of information and sources: media, public data, observation and reporting. It is defined as produced from publicly available information that is collected, exploited, and disseminated in a timely manner to an appropriate audience for the purpose of addressing a specific intelligence requirement.

The authors analyze the implementation of militant democracy concept in Central Europe, i.e. Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, as those are nations having experiences both with Nazi and communist regimes. The opening part covers a short history of this concepts and mechanisms used to suppress extremist subjects; subsequently the book compares practical instruments of counter-extremist policies, their individual principles and arrangements. This is the comparison that constitutes the main asset to the problem.
MAREŠ, Miroslav - VÝBORNÝ, Štěpán. Militantní demokracie ve střední Evropě. 1. vyd. Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury (CDK), 2013. 249 s. Politologická řada. ISBN 978-80-7325-326-4.

The Czech Armed Forces' professionalization is an underlying qualitative change and its realization is not without risks. This paper outlines the political origin of this phenomenon, characterises the coherence with the transformation of the Alliance and illustrates overseas experience with some recruitment problems, namely the NCOs, the limits of women in the armed forces, the role of voluntary reserve force, and the substantiations for compulsory military service generally. The purpose of this essay is to draw attention to less known pitfalls of this process, with wide connexions, going beyond regular professionalization frames, defined as a task carried out by the military personnel department.

The article deals with contemporary security situation in the Sinai Peninsula. Attention is paid to certain aspects that form the local negative trends in security developments and their mutual interconnection, as a part of social movements after the events of the so-called Arab Spring and the consequences of the Egyptian Lotus Revolution that have a cardinal influence for both the deployments of Egyptian Army and the security sector in this territory. The opening part of this article is a brief historical excursion into the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel that arranges the special status of the Sinai as a demilitarized area and the adjustment of social-economic reality of the Bedouin population performing decisive influence for described situation.

Career education of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) personnel is a key component to meet requirements for qualifications. As these requirements are career growth conditions for career personnel, they are inherently connected with further promotion in rank. The MoD Concept of Personnel Development for 2012-2018 sets the direction of the educational development to achieve these qualification requirements. During the process of preparation of the career courses it was revealed that some system changes should be made due to implemented or planned changes within the legislative and source framework of the Ministry of Defence.This article describes the proposal of a new concept for training of personnel in the career courses. It was prepared by a project team headed by the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies at the Defence University. The article also shows the development of the situation since 2004, when the professionalization of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic occurred.

The article is freely connected with the article United Nation Military Observer published in this Military Revue No 3, 2013, where the role of UN military observer was specified, i.e. as a member of an international peace support operation and military peace engagement. This following article mainly deals with UN military observer training procedures and concentrates on the classification of this training category. The lager part of the article is focused on military observers´ general preparation and its subjects and contents. In respective chapters, there are individual items of this training and their implementation explained, partly in the ACR. Finally, the author opens the question of chances to implement some neglected types of military observer's schooling, specific mission training, in-place training, and refresh training.

The ability to deliver information about an incident, long time before it has happened, puts intelligence analysts into the very first line of fight against the threat of terrorism, extremism, proliferation, or activities of alien services. The article deals with some aspects of intelligence research that often influence the value of final reports, presented to their consumers. It analyses intelligence database designated for its end users. It simultaneously reflects the question of indications and warnings against opponent's surprise attacks. Last but not least, the purpose of this article is both to attract the readers´ attention to this theme and also to start debate on the methods of predictions of future threats, drawn up by analysts´ teams, as their reports are not always suitably recognized by their end users.

This study deals with the responses to recent Syrian conflict in the Czech Republic. The authors introduce particularly activities inside Syrian diaspora, actually formed during the time of communism. Syrians citizens living in the Czech Republic are not homogeneous, which is similar to the situation in Syria. In our country we can find both people loyal to the regime of Ba'ath Party and Bashar al-Assad, and also members of opposition that in fact has divided into two groups, since the mid-2012. The authors introduce reactions of various subjects from the Czech Republic.

Methodically, presented study comes out of a book by Martin Potůček at al. Studying the Future as a Challenge. Its author offers a comprehensive characteristic of several fundamental challenges to social forecasting. It begins by defining forecasting as the formulation of conditional accounts of possible futures. The main forecasting theme to be solved are as follows: ageing Czech population as a security problem, corruption, criminality, organized crime as a tool of political and economy instability, the marginalization of Czech Armed Forces in context of globalization and overall European defence, possible threat of the collapse of Czech defence system.

The purpose of this article is to inform on elements of military deception in NATO armies and overarching principles that make military deception successful. Deception Planning is an iterative process that should be considered as an inextricable part of the operational planning. The knowledge in the field of military deception in the Czech military is low; no operational deception plan has been prepared for foreign operations or any military exercise. Deception is widely appreciated as a powerful instrument of military operations, yet it is surprisingly neglected by both the Czech Army and Military Educational System. The author tries to encourage officers and members of higher staffs to study this subject.

Each officer is obligated to meet his or her qualification requirements, identified in the job description. In order to obtain a required military qualification, officers are usually send to a training course, which is either provided or organized under the auspice of the Ministry of Defence. The discussion within the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic about the system of military courses has been ongoing for the last two decades. Although the system of officers´ development is periodically reviewed, a certain economic paradox still remains. While the number of officers without adequate qualification is not diminishing, at the same time there is a segment of officers who exceed their qualification requirements, but they do not make any progress in their military careers. Despite the situation, these officers are required to take additional training and educational activities.

The purpose of this article is to deal with Course of Actions development (COA). Attention is paid to ensure a common understanding of COA process. The article broadens the vision and offers deep insights for its readers. Moreover, the war game was described as a method of refining or modifying the COA. It has also been emphasized the commander and staff consider each COA advantages and disadvantages. The Czech Army personnel training and preparation should steadily and deliberately bring improvements into the field of operational planning capability within forces´ command levels. In order to improve operational planning knowledge, it is recommended to study AJP-5 Operational Planning Doctrine and ACO Comprehensive Operations Planning Directive.

The article deals with particularly topical problem, the riots with ethnic background. The present situation is compared with history illustrations and with similar recent events abroad. Author's reflections and scenarios outline a variant of state failure and its institutions, with the exception of army. He identifies respective incoming risks, among others tied with the so-called Roma question. Actually, his hypothetical solutions are not backed by the current laws of the Czech Republic. The author comes to the conclusion that army deployment might be used only as an instrument of last resort, "ultima ratio".

The article deals with some aspects of long-term planning in the sector of theMinistry of Defence. Its aim is to stimulate discussion about the methods and processes of long-term planning, to point out some shortcomings in the development of strategic documents in the past. The text also describes the basis for long-term planning process and particularly the role of long-term foresight. The author analyses lessons learned from the developing and implementation of Long-Term Vision of the Ministry of Defence document (2008) and tries to aply them in drafting a new document, The Long-Term Vision for Defence in 2030, is now being prepared under the leadership of the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic. He also highlights some of the theoretical principles for developing documents in the process of strategic management.

Russia's actions in the Ukraine have changed the security situation in the Baltic region, which makes NATO's long-term presence in Latvia essential for the Latvian Republic. The impacts of Russian actions on Latvian defence policy are discussed in the paper by Mr Janis Berzinš,Managing Director of the Centre for Security and Defence Research, National Defence Academy of Latvia, in Policy Paper, No. 2, 2014. It is a new way of intervention, new-generation warfare, without the employment of armed combats, using mostly influence and coercion, by means of covert operations. Abridged and adapted. The original English text is available at http://www.naa.mil.lv/~/media/NAA/AZPC/Publikacijas/PP%2002-2014.ashx. Even though the study came into being in April 2014, the editors regard it worthy to be published, being timeless and with general validity.