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.

Lanchester’s law serves as a deterministic mathematical model of a battle between two or more opponents. We build a new model that incorporates both variable offense and variable defense, as well as the commander’s ability to focus fire on a selected enemy. We show that in a situation where an army fights two allies, the correct strategy of focusing on the weaker enemy leads to an eventual win, whereas the incorrect decision to split the fire equally leads to the army’s annihilation.