USMA Digital Commons (United States Military Academy, West Point)
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The Future of Extremism and Extremist Narratives in America
No full textThis report shares the findings and conclusions of a study on the future of extremism in America. We use the Threatcasting methodology of inquiry and look at how extremism will manifest itself and how extremist ideologies, manifestos, and actions will motivate people towards violence in the year 2031, a decade away. The Threatcasting Lab used a repository of futures models from previous threatcasting events that we mined for markers of extremism in America and hosted a workshop to generate additional models and insights
A Celebration of West Point Authors, July - December 2020
Get PDFHighlighting the 308 collected works of scholarship published and presented between July - December 2020.https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/books/1045/thumbnail.jp
New Defenses for the Hybrid Battlefield
No full textThe modern battlefield is continuing to evolve as new threats emerge that create what has been coined ‘hybrid warfare.’ In conflicts such as those in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Armenia, and the Ukraine, weapons are being introduced or used in novel ways. Drones are performing attacks en masse or individually as munition delivery systems or flying bombs [1]–[3]. Electronic warfare is experiencing a resurgence with signal jamming and Position Location System (PLS) spoofing [4], [5]. Information warfare is gaining prominence as botnets spread misinformation and cyber-attacks target critical infrastructure [6]. Given these threats, NATO forces must rethink their defenses to protect their combat power and maintain their freedom to maneuver
Reception Optimization Strategies for UHF Mobile Beacons
No full textReception optimization strategies seek to improve performance of directional signals to a receiver location. When performance improves, transmitters may operate with a lower power requirement and significantly reduce detectability through direction-finding attempts. Combined with Direction-of-Arrival estimation, a uniform linear array is used to optimize reception of mobile telemetry signals in the 466 MHz range. A time-delay beamsteering algorithm is implemented on a dipole antenna array to receive in the direction of an estimated signal with an overall gain of 3 dBi. A similar approach is simulated using diversity analysis with a signal-to-noise improvement of 7dBi. This study validates the aforementioned methods for directional selectivity using commercial-off-the-shelf configurations with the popular RTL-SDR dongle
Urban Warfare Project Case Study #2 – Mosul
No full textThis Battle of Mosul provided governments and military forces valuable lessons on how future urban warfare will be conducted—and demonstrated many of its challenges. Large-scale combat operations in dense urban environments using diverse forces in multiple domains over a long period of time—this will more than likely become the norm in the future. It is only through studying major battles such as Mosul that a window can be opened to provide a picture of the next fight
Bye bye, cyber Pearl Harbor
Get PDFThe repeated cyber analogy from the US historical past invokes the concept of a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” a story of a pot massive cyber-attack that, with no warning, would knock out American infrastructure and leave the U.S. vulnerable a response. The concept of a cyber Pearl Harbor assumes a surprise attack by a prepared and determined adversary lau premeditated sneak attack that has a systematic and crippling impact on the United States
The long-term cost of cyber overreaction
Get PDFThe default modus operandi when facing negative cyber events is to overreact. It is essential to highlight the cost of overreaction, which needs to be a part of calculating when to engage and how. For an adversary probing cyber defenses, reactions provide information that can aggregate a clear picture of the defendant’s capabilities and preauthorization thresholds.
Ideally, potential adversaries cannot assess our strategic and tactical cyber capacities, but over time and numerous responses, the information advantage evaporates. A reactive culture triggered by cyberattacks provides significant information to a probing adversary, which seeks to understand underlying authorities and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP).
The more we act, the more the potential adversary understands our capacity, ability, techniques and limitations. I am not advocating a passive stance, but I want to highlight the price of acting against a potential adversary. With each reaction, that competitor gainscertainty about what we can do and how. The political scientist Kenneth N. Waltz said that the power of nuclear arms resides with what you could do and not within what you do. A large part of the cyber force strength resides in the uncertainty in what it can do, which should be difficult for a potential adversary to assess and gauge.
Why does it matter? In an operational environment where the adversaries operate under the threshold for open conflict, in sub-threshold cyber campaigns, an adversary will seek to probe in order to determine the threshold, and to ensure that it can operate effectively in the space below the threshold. If a potential adversary cannot gauge the threshold, it will curb its activities as its cyber operations must remain adequately distanced to a potential, unknown threshold to avoid unwanted escalation
Undergraduate Heat Exchanger Laboratory
Get PDFHeat exchangers are a fundamental part of many industrial and household devices, and a focus in the United States Military Academy at West Point’s undergraduate heat transfer course within the school’s Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering. Recently, the department expanded laboratory capabilities to enhance student learning through hands-on experimentation. Prior to this project, a heat exchanger laboratory did not exist for student use, so a new apparatus was designed, developed, built, tested, and will be implemented as a laboratory experience in West Point’s heat transfer course. The experimental apparatus includes a fan-cooled heat sink, a high-efficiency water heater, two pumps for water circulation, and numerous valves to change both the direction and route of the flows. This design allows students to test three types of heat exchangers: shell-in-tube, concentric, and flat plate. These devices allow students to evaluate parallel-flow, counter-flow, and cross-flow heat exchangers. The test section is instrumented with flow meters for the hot and cold flows as well as thermocouples at the entrance and exit of each heat exchanger. As part of this laboratory experience, students measure, collect, and analyze data, compare experimental results to theory, and assess error and uncertainty. This heat exchanger laboratory provide realistic, hands-on experience with experimental apparatus, laboratory procedure, instrumentation, and engineering technicians, all of which help students gain physical understanding of the thermal-fluids concepts