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The primary mission of commanders and staffs is a skillful realization of all measures related to preparation, planning, conduct and control of military operations. Ability to implement these measures originates from their professional knowledge of the theory of operational art and capability to execute it in practice. Based on a feedback from the courses participants, the authors of the article propose a set of measures which may contribute not only to improvement of the level of knowledge, skills and competences of military personal, but also to increase interest in the overall development of operational art in the Czech Armed Forces.

This study deals with selected aspects of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine in Luhansk and Donetsk region in period of April 2014 - to February 2015. Study is divided in two subsequent articles. The first article consists of introduction, theoretic-methodological part, analytical part and short summary, which defines main features of Russians engagement in the conflict. Theoretic-methodological part deals with terminological, theoretical and methodological background of analysis, including generally approach of Russian federation to security policy. Analytical part is divided in to the two partial chapters. The first deals with main Russian objective in the conflict. The second deals with the phases of Russian engagement.

This text focuses on process of armament policy of the Armed Forces of Georgia and how it was influenced by country's effort to join NATO. Authors argue that Georgia's proclaimed pro-western ambitions should have also been reflected in the process of materiel procurement. Authors investigate the time period from 2003 to 2008 when growing military expenditures reached it's top. Text shows that only few major acquisitions in that period were focused on western military equipment and that Georgia's military acquisitions did not reflect countrys inclination towards west and NATO.

The article identifies specific attributes which have influenced duality of training for urban area operations. There are mentioned only the crucial ones. The author was inspired his own experience as infantry unit commander. He used his knowledge gained from military assignments. The article could be considered as topic for future discussion not only on academic but also on specialized level.

The term of "growing complex of threats" covers higher and higher probability of concatenation of various intercommoned, mutually tied factors reflecting structured technological and informational reality of global society, making their solving by traditional means of security system extremely difficult. "Crisis situation" represents more general problem of natural disasters or technology breakdowns that are influencing one another, that cause great distress or destruction, in an unexpected manner, activating subsequent threats of so far unforeseen threats. For that reason we must adapt Czech security system to new liquid, instant and indivisible complex threats.

The new ten-year defence strategy of the Czech Republic has been approved. The document stresses that despite the continuing recession, our state should not allow the military being weakened by further reduction of resources. This could worsen the quality of the military and weaken the Czech Republic's credibility in the international community. There is also the risk of the financial, organisational and personnel destabilisation of the Czech defence system that would bring about a loss of the quality of military personnel, a decayed prestige of the military service, an erosion of the state military capabilities. The new defence strategy is not a cure-all medicine. By its adoption the real

The main goal of the article is to present the activities of members of the Slovak Armed Forces in the military operation ISAF and familiarize the reader with the main facts involving the Slovak Republic as a member of the Alliance in this operation. The text outlines the genesis of the ISAF and structure of the components of the Slovak contingent. SAF members during their tenure at ISAF gain valuable experiences that make up their professional competence and achieve greater compatibility with other members of the Alliance. In conclusion, the most important awards are presented by the coalition partners for professional use, so competence and commitment of the SAF to assist and defend basic human rights and freedom of the Afghan people, to help them take responsibility for themselves and their country.

The article deals with the development of the security system since the November 1989 events. Special attention is paid to the situation near the year 2005, when the last opportunity to update a comprehensive concept of security system occurred. The text deals with the comprehensive management of the security system issue. The authors of the article present key events and strategic documents forming the current shape of the Czech security system. In the final part of article, you can find the proposal of the strategic document management system within the security development system. Article results in the knowledge that the modern security system concept is still challenge for us.

Chinese test shows that the Chinese military can threaten the imaging reconnaissance satellites operated by the U. S., Japan, Russia, Israel and Europe. Among others, Aviation Week, Defence Technology etc. report that the test signifies a major new Chinese military capability. China's growing military space capability is one major reason why the US is going to develop a new space policy. Such a policy is to be designed to ensure that US space capabilities are protected in a time of increasing challenges and threats. remove nuclear weapons from Europe. As the alternative to American nuclear weapons they offer forming European nuclear forces, consisting mostly or exclusively of Britain and France potentials. Nevertheless, most of European states ask the US to keep nuclear weapons on European continent. NATO nuclear strategy is still valid: atomic arsenals represent an effective deterrence against the weapons of mass destruction, whoever might use them. fl Potential Deployment of Snipers in ACR Operations by Maj. Ing. Josef Ručka, Ph.D. The article deals with duties of a sniper and a military observer, sharp shooting at long distances, movement at areas in which operations are being carried out. Snipers are trained marksmen who are specialized in sniping the enemy. They are usually sited away form the main force, so that they can concentrate on shooting at selected targets instead of being drawn into general firefight. They are also less likely to be affected when the main force comes under artillery fire. The modern sniper is not alone, he is usually employed in team of two. The author also describes rifles and other weapons and equipments snipers are armed. The article is supplemented by graphs and tablets.

Islamist territorially anchored violent non-state actors (ITAVNSAs) seeking to change the status quo of the current international system constitute one of the greatest challenges the international order based on mutual respect of equal sovereign states. These actors in areas without the presence of power states use explicit cross-border violence to achieve their objective in accordance with universal Islamist ideology - the construction of a caliphate. The paper presents in the theoretical and modern historical perspectives methods of reduction of anarchy in the international system - power, economic, legalistic and normative - and highlights the reasons why face to face of these actors, these heretofore functional ways, be it on a regional or system level of analysis, fail.

The article deals with a strategic document that currently represents understanding of trends, which form the future security and operational environment,and that sets up the vectors for building-up and development of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic. The first aim is to assess the Long Term Perspective for Defence 2030 and its significance in context of other strategic documents adopted in the Czech Republic. Another aim is to confront its contents with a structured analysis of large quantity of the state-of-the-art foresight studies,differentiated in geographical and thematic scope. The comparison allows identifying convergence and divergence between the Czech document and relevant findings from the foreign foresight documents. This approach enables the judgement whether the Long Term Perspective for Defence 2030 provides a relevant guideline for the defence sector development, and whether it does or does not miss some of the issues found significant in the foresight documents in the outer world.

This text presents development of the Ukrainian conflict in the context of contemporary discussion about the extent of Russian intervention in crisis regions. The author explores thesis about application of hybrid war by Russian side, use of new military and strategic methods. He also presents and evaluates the arguments which oppose the idea of considerable changes in character of military conflicts, which were demonstrated during the occupation of Crimea and during the combat clashes in Eastern Ukraine having in mind the state and possibilities of the involved actors.

Israeli Defence Forces currently evaluates information collected during recent fighting in Lebanon. Although the war was assessed as successful, there are some deficiencies that are to be improved. (a) Aviation and air defence systems. Israel is prepared against ballistic missiles, it was not prepared against short distance ones. Attack helicopters AH-64 were for the first time deployed for tactical (close) combat support of ground forces. One of them crashed down, other two collided in the air; (b) Armour. Also Israel's Merkava Mk4 was used for the first time in combat. More than 50 of the 350 Merkava Mk2, 3 and 4 tanks used in the military operations in Lebanon were damaged by Hezbollah, resulting in the death of 23 crewmen. During the last year the IDF was constantly engaged in high-intensity urban counterterrorist warfare. The regular forces, including tank crews, were retrained for small unit infantry policing activities. As a result, among others, several tanks lost tracks due to driver's inexperience. The article widely drew from several reputable magazines and reviews: Aviation Week, No. 12/2006, Jane's Defence Weekly, No. 41/2006, Defense News, No. 38, 39/2006.

During the Arab Spring Revolution, when the protests against the Syrian government began in 2011, Russia was one of the strongest backers of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, backing its right to use force if necessary to prevent or put down an uprising. Currently, the Russian Federation is the power which has most prominently provided a diplomaticshieldforthe Syrian state and bolstered it witharms supplies, although Moscow talks about the need to "balance" between the warring parties in Syria. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the motives of the foreign and security policy of the Russian Federation in support of Syrian President BasharAssad in the background of Russian interests and influence of norms. At the theoretical level, the paper builds upon a combination of conventional constructivism and rationalism approaches, which in relation to the motives of Russian protection and defense of the ruling regime in Syria reflects a number of fundamental knowledge.

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.

The article aims at highlighting the dangers of long underestimating the need to permanently improve the defense capabilities to deal with current and future security threats. Authors suggest propositions on where to direct the efforts to improve the competence of the Defense to meet the Act Of Defense Requirements. The first part of the article describes, after brief analysis, the options of collective defense and explains the need to solve demanding tasks on own territory under national responsibility in parallel. The second part of the article describes the main thoughts of the theory of "territorial defense", which is missing in current Doctrine of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic. Theory of territorial defense makes a foundation, upon which the preparedness of the Armed forces of the Czech Republic should be built. In the third part of the article the authors discuss the alternative of implementing the collective defense principle by building multinational joint forces, independent of national armed forces, in transnational responsibility of the coalition of member states, dedicated to the territorial defense of member states and to crisis response expeditionary operations.

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.

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 period of the beginning of the 21st century is typical for the situation characterized by minimization of a global conflict and by decreasing risks of a direct aggression among neighbouring countries. Nonetheless, the occurrence and permanent existence of mass destruction weapons and industrial accidents caused by human beings, natural disasters produced by leakages of toxic industrial materials, are considered as a global problem that determinates not only the activities of national armies, but also activities of civil population. The danger of WMD deployment is especially high at time of danger, when forces are to be used or misused, and terrorist activities might multiply in some world's regions, even in technologically underdeveloped countries.

The article deals with the use of military police in combat operations during dominance phase.Itdescribes the place androleofmilitarypoliceas combat support units, analyzes experience from previous and ongoing operations and specifies the possible activities of military police during this phase. In conclusion it gives recommendations for the development of capabilities in terms of the activities performed and possible changes in organizational structures. The content of the article is based on thesis prepared by the participant of the 27th General Staff Course at the University of Defence.

The article deals with correlation of strategy and operational art. The aim of the article is to point on deficit of relationship between political decision-making and military planning. The first part of the article simply introduces doctrinal tools of operational art, applicable at both the operational and strategic level. The second part refers to the fact that application of some standard elements of operational art in terms of overall strategic framework loses partly importance because of their use in the context of unconventional conflict has been less appropriate. The third part deals with criticism of the mutual undesirable separation of politicians and military professionals involved in operations planning. Conclusion of the article offers possible solutions of this deficit.

The paper offers new looks at the system of railroad reconstruction in crisis and emergency situations. It originates from The Operational Plan of State Territory Preparation that is implemented in harmony with The Plan of Technology Protection of Railroad. This article is a free sequel to information published in this Military Revue No. 4/2005 dealing with drafting the plan of railroad technology protection. The authors´ main purpose is to give readers basic knowledge on key changes in railroad security system and main security measurements till 2013. The protection system is intended to be more flexible and economic.

This article presents a letter of introduction for the book by the recent director of Brno Institute for Strategic Studies, Josef Janošec, "Security and Defence of the Czech Republic 2015-2025", composed together with other authors from this institute. This deed is even more rewarding owning to the fact that in our country we lack an advanced cultivation of military sciences. Since the beginning of our pre-war Republic, we've only taken over ready-made military doctrines: at first it was the French doctrine of defensive lines of fortresses and forts, after WWII it used to be the Soviet Offensive Doctrine. Only in 1968 there was an attempt to draw up Czech national military doctrine in the so-called Memorandum of Military Political Academy (a military school of university type), but after the invasion of Soviet Army in the same year all such efforts faded in vain. The book by Ing. Janošec and his team is a brave attempt to establish the starting point for our own genuine Czech security policy, based upon broadly conceived security analyses ...190

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.

The article presents the theory of information operations on the background of contemporary armed conflicts in Ukraine, Iraq and Syria. In the introduction, information is presented as a phenomenon and the accelerator of social development. It outlines basic information channels that deliver security information to their recipients. Furthermore, the article discusses security and operational environment and also vulnerabilities being caused by increasing dependence on information. The core of the article are information operations presented in theory with the author's commentary on real application in military practice and in terms of the Czech Armed Forces. As part of information operations are subsequently introduced psychological operations, computer network operations and electronic warfare. The article ends with real examples of information and psychological operations in modern warfare, and conditions of their management in the Czech Armed Forces. The conclusion summarizes the general idea of the security environment and information operations, and stresses the importance of information operations in current and future conflicts.

This polemics is written by Prof. Fr. Ochrana, both reader and author of the Military Review quarterly. It is a response to the article in No 4, 2013, by Vl. Karaffa, editorial board chairman. Prof. Ochrana generally supports his conclusions concerning the further survival of this Czech Military Review. According to him, the review has indispensable role in the spectrum of both civilian and military professional journals. He recommends to evaluate the problem of its existence upon the principles of cost/benefit analysis, with regard to the so-called socials costs, the key steps of which he enumerates.