Download or read book Terrorist Innovations in Weapons of Mass Effect written by The Defense Threat Reduction Agency and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation is a constant feature of terrorism, yet little is known about how terrorists innovate, the factors that drive them to innovate, and the indicators that could help predict their trajectory toward innovation. On August 5-6, 2010, experts gathered for a workshop sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (DTRA-ASCO), to discuss the preconditions, causes, and predictive indicators associated with terrorist innovation in weapons of mass effect (WMEs).1 They presented their research findings on seven historical and contemporary cases of terrorist innovation, ranging from airplane hijackings by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to the current threat emanating from Al-Qaeda's mass casualty attacks. These case studies generated a number of generalizations about what motivates innovation, how terrorists come to innovate, and whether it is possible to anticipate innovations in WME terrorism. The experts assessed three categories of terrorist innovation: tactical, strategic, and organizational, with emphasis placed on the first two. Tactical innovation usually involves inventing or adopting new techniques or technologies to achieve unchanging objectives. Strategic innovation entails formulating new objectives, which necessitate the adoption of new operations, targets, or technologies to advance those objectives. Organizational innovation involves new ways of structuring the terrorist group or inventive methods of drawing recruits.
Download or read book Terrorist Innovations in Weapons of Mass Effect written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On October 6-7, 2011, experts gathered for a workshop at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland to discuss the factors that both facilitate and hinder terrorist innovations. This workshop is part of a two-year Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) sponsored research project that aims to shed light on the preconditions, causes, and predictive indicators associated with terrorist innovation in weapons of mass effect (WMEs). Organized jointly by the Center on Contemporary Conflict at the Naval Postgraduate School, and the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews, the workshop brought together specialists from academia and government who presented their research findings on twelve historical and contemporary cases of terrorist innovation, ranging from the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis to the current use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also discussed major terrorist campaigns that exhibited multiple innovations in WME terrorism, including the cases of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and anti-Russian rebels in Chechnya. Participants also took on the challenge of explaining failed and foiled WME terrorist innovations, discussing a diverse set of cases that included Ramzi Yousef's 1995 Bojinka plot; the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan's 1997 conspiracy to blow up a natural gas facility in Texas; and Al-Qaeda's short-lived campaign to use chlorine bombs against Iraqis in 2006-2007. Lastly, specialists sought to explain the puzzle of absence of innovation in the cases of maritime terrorism, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.
Download or read book Terrorist Innovations in Weapons of Mass Effect written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation is a constant feature of terrorism, yet little is known about how terrorists innovate, the factors that drive them to innovate, and the indicators that could help predict their trajectory toward innovation. On August 5-6, 2010, experts gathered for a workshop sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (DTRA-ASCO), to discuss the preconditions, causes, and predictive indicators associated with terrorist innovation in weapons of mass effect (WMEs). They presented their research findings on seven historical and contemporary cases of terrorist innovation, ranging from airplane hijackings by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to the current threat emanating from Al-Qaeda's mass casualty attacks. These case studies generated a number of generalizations about what motivates innovation, how terrorists come to innovate, and whether it is possible to anticipate innovations in WME terrorism. The experts assessed three categories of terrorist innovation: tactical, strategic, and organizational, with emphasis placed on the first two. Tactical innovation usually involves inventing or adopting new techniques or technologies to achieve unchanging objectives. Strategic innovation entails formulating new objectives, which necessitate the adoption of new operations, targets, or technologies to advance those objectives. Organizational innovation involves new ways of structuring the terrorist group or inventive methods of drawing recruits.
Download or read book Understanding Terrorism Innovation and Learning written by Magnus Ranstorp and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of terrorist innovation and learning in theory and practice, and in the context of three specific EU case-studies. It is often said that terrorist groups are relatively conservative in character operating in a technological vacuum – relying almost exclusively on bombs and bullets. This observation masks increasing complexity and creativity and innovation within terrorist groups and one of the most distinguishing features of al-Qaeda’s terrorist operations is its propensity for remarkable innovation. This book examines how and why terrorist groups innovate more generally and al-Qaeda-related terrorist plots in Europe more specifically. The starting point for this book was twofold. Firstly to examine the issue of innovation and learning more generically both in theory, within specific themes and within the context of al-Qaeda’s influence on this process. Secondly, this book examines the evolution of specific al-Qaeda-related plots in three specific northern EU states – the United Kingdom, Denmark and Germany - where there has been a significant volume of planned, failed and executed terrorist plots. In particular, these case studies explore signs of innovation and learning. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism, political violence, security studies and IR in general.
Download or read book The Future of Weapons of Mass Destruction an Update written by John P. Caves and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction written by Ian Bellany and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-12-12 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically assesses the suggestion that strengthening existing international prohibitions against state-level acquisition of Weapons of Mass Destruction could safeguard against the possibility of their use by terrorists targeting civilians.
Download or read book How Terrorists Learn written by Carolin Görzig and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume helps us understand the transformations of terrorist organisations, and the conflicts they are involved in, by broadening the perspective on what is considered terrorist learning. Using a variety of methodological approaches and empirical data, the volume offers a look at the clandestine inner lives of groups from different continents and ideological backgrounds in order to explore from whom they learn and how, and what the outcomes are. Their internal and external interactions are examined within their socio-political contexts to illuminate how they adapt to challenges or fail to do so. Unpacking the question of ‘how do terrorists learn’ helps us to grasp not only changes of violent means of action but also of operational and strategic approaches and, ultimately, even transformations of the ends pursued. The chapters demonstrate that terrorist learning is not principally different from that of other human organisations. The contributors draw on conceptual frameworks of organizational learning, but also broaden the scope beyond the organizational framework to acknowledge the variety of forms of informal and decentralized learning characteristic of much contemporary terrorism. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, violent extremism, organisational studies and International Relations.
Download or read book The Nuclear Terrorism Threat written by Brecht Volders and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the threat of a terrorist organisation constructing and detonating a nuclear bomb. It explores the role and impact of the organisational design of a terrorist organisation in implementing a nuclear terrorism plot. In order to do so, the work builds on the organisational analogy between an assumed nuclear terrorism scenario and four case studies as follows: the construction of the first atomic bombs at Los Alamos; South Africa’s Peaceful Nuclear Explosives (PNE) program; Aum Shinrikyo’s chemical-biological armament activities; and Al Qaeda’s implementation of the 9/11 attacks. Extrapolating insights from these case studies, this book introduces the idea of an effectiveness-efficiency trade-off. On the one hand, it will be argued that a more organic organisational design is likely to benefit the effective implementation of a nuclear terrorism project. On the other hand, this type of organic organisational design is also likely to simultaneously constitute an inefficient way for a terrorist organisation to guarantee its operational and organisational security. It follows, then, that the implementation of a nuclear terrorism plot via an organic organisational design is also likely to be an inefficient strategy for a terrorist organisation to achieve its strategic and political goals. This idea of an effectiveness-efficiency trade-off provides us with a tool to strengthen the comprehensive nature of future nuclear terrorism threat assessments and sheds new light on the ongoing debates within the nuclear terrorism literature. This book will be of particular interest to students of nuclear proliferation, terrorism studies, international organisations, and security studies in general.
Download or read book Israel s Long War with Hezbollah written by Raphael D. Marcus and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ongoing conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is now in its fourth decade and shows no signs of ending. Raphael D. Marcus examines this conflict since the formation of Hezbollah during Israel’s occupation of Lebanon in the early 1980s. He critically evaluates events including Israel’s long counterguerrilla campaign throughout the 1990s, the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, the 2006 summer war, and concludes with an assessment of current tensions on the border between Israel and Lebanon related to the Syrian civil war. Israel’s Long War with Hezbollah is both the first complete military history of this decades-long conflict and an analysis of military innovation and adaptation. The book is based on unique fieldwork in Israel and Lebanon, extensive research into Hebrew and Arabic primary sources, and dozens of interviews Marcus conducted with Israeli defense officials, high-ranking military officers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), United Nations personnel, a Hezbollah official, and Western diplomats. As an expert on organizational learning, Marcus analyzes ongoing processes of strategic and operational innovation and adaptation by both the IDF and Hezbollah throughout the long guerrilla conflict. His conclusions illuminate the dynamics of the ongoing conflict and illustrate the complexity of military adaptation under fire. With Hezbollah playing an ongoing role in the civil war in Syria and the simmering hostilities on the Israel-Lebanon border, students, scholars, diplomats, and military practitioners with an interest in Middle Eastern security issues, Israeli military history, and military innovation and adaptation can ill afford to neglect this book.
Download or read book Hype Or Reality written by Brad Roberts and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a CBACI conference, this volume addresses the issue of the use of weapons of mass destruction in terrorism.
Download or read book Soldiers of End Times written by Ido Levy and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-04-17 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book provides an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the Islamic State in battle"--
Download or read book Rebel Streets written by Tom Molloy and published by Nortia Media Ltd. This book was released on 2012-10-21 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A cracked insurgent and a determined loyalist navigate the rough-and-tumble undercurrents of Belfast during the Troubles of Northern Ireland."
Download or read book Global Alert written by Boaz Ganor and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many associate terrorism with irrational behavior and believe only lunatics could perpetuate such horrific acts. Global Alert debunks this myth by anatomizing the rationale behind modern terrorism. It draws a distinct picture of its root and instrumental causes and plots the different stages of a terrorist attack, from indoctrination and recruitment to planning, preparation, and launch. Global Alert also exposes the measured exploitation of democratic institutions by terrorists to further their goals. Despite its strong capabilities and extensive resources, the modern liberal-democratic state is nevertheless subject to the rules of war, which partially restrict the state's ability to operate and maneuver. Boaz Ganor shows how terrorist organizations exploit these values to paralyze or neutralize the states they oppose. In outlining this new "hybrid" terrorist organization and its activity in both the military–terrorist arena and the political–welfare arena, Ganor advances an international doctrine for governing military operations between state and nonstate actors as part of a new type of armed conflict termed "multidimensional warfare."
Download or read book Terror in Transition written by Tricia Bacon and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the role of founding leaders in shaping terrorist organizations? What follows the loss of this formative leader? These questions are especially important to religious terrorist groups, in which leaders are particularly revered. Tricia L. Bacon and Elizabeth Grimm provide a groundbreaking analysis of how religious terrorist groups manage and adapt to major shifts in leadership. They demonstrate that founders create the base from which their successors operate. Founders establish and explain the group’s mission, and they determine and justify how it seeks to achieve its objectives. Bacon and Grimm argue that how successors position themselves in terms of the founder shapes a terrorist group’s future course. They examine how and why different types of successors choose to pursue incremental or discontinuous change. Bacon and Grimm emphasize that the instability surrounding succession can place a group at its most vulnerable—the precise time to explore options to weaken or defeat it. Bacon and Grimm highlight similarities between Islamic terrorist groups abroad and Christian white nationalist groups such as the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in the United States. Drawing on extensive field research in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Pakistan, Terror in Transition features detailed analysis of groups such as al-Shabaab, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and al-Qaeda in Iraq / the Islamic State in Iraq, as well as the KKK. Offering a rigorous theoretical perspective on terrorist leadership transition, this policy-relevant book provides actionable recommendations for counterterrorism practitioners.
Download or read book The Terrorism Lectures written by James Forest and published by Nortia Media Ltd. This book was released on 2013-12-13 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authoritative compendium for students of terrorism and counterterrorism.
Download or read book Knowledge Based Decision Making in Complex Environments written by Mara Gwen Cole and published by University of Bamberg Press. This book was released on 2015-11-11 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism Proliferation by Non State Actors written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Executive Order No. 1298 signed by President Clinton on November 14,1994 declared a national emergency with resect to the unusual and extraordinary threat that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (those weapons categorized as nuclear, chemical or biological) poses to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. In the wake of the Cold War, a new world disorder seen's to be emerging wherein the legitimacy of many states is being challenged from within by increasing non-state calls for self determination from the likes of religious cults, hate groups, isolationist movements, ethnic groups, and revivalist movements. These movements often prey on the insecurities of the population, offering to fill psychological, social, political, or religious security needs of those who would join them. Religious oriented groups appear to share a common ideology which rejects existing social, economic, and political structure demanding a drastic revision of the world - a world where they become the authoritarian, dominant influence. These are the Post-Modern Terrorists who possess a ripeness to threaten use of weapons of mass destruction. This study presents an argument suggesting that terrorist groups operating under the veneer of religion are truly the most likely candidates to threaten use of mass destruction in a mass casualty causing terrorist act.
