Challenges to national defence in contemporary geopolitical situation

This paper examines how uncrewed platforms and contemporary sensor suites may extend engineer reconnaissance of water obstacles in support of river-crossing planning. The paper combines a structured review of Czech doctrinal practice and candidate sensor-platform combinations with a field experiment carried out on a selected section of the River Svratka, using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-borne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), UAV-borne ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) control points. The combined evaluation indicates that LiDAR is highly effective for bank geometry and approach assessment, whereas GPR can complement it by indicating the longitudinal bed profile and sediment interfaces, albeit with greater interpretative uncertainty.

This paper evaluates how the distance between air defence sensors and the command and control (C2) element influences fire-control effectiveness. Three deployment variants at 1, 7 and 20 km were assessed by means of operational analysis and the TOPSIS multi-criteria method using latency, connection reliability, situational awareness (SA), probability of kill (𝑃𝑘𝑖𝑙𝑙), survivability and logistical complexity. The baseline model favours the short-distance configuration, but sensitivity analysis shows that greater emphasis on survivability shifts the optimum towards the medium-distance variant. A separation of approximately 5-10 km provides the most robust operational compromise for contemporary air defence employment.

Geographical distance between locations plays a crucial role in establishing healthcare accessibility in Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) models. In this article, we analyze three sets of distances: a straight-line distance and two network-based distances to determine how the distance calculation affects the models. We empirically examine the distances across several 2SFCA models and several input parameters. We find that the accessibilities derived from network-based distances correlate with each other, whereas the accessibility derived from straight-line distance does not correlate with them. The study is based on the data from the South Moravian region.