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Many Royal Marine recruits are plagued by physical injuries during the arduous 32 week training course at Commando Training Centre. Not all recruits recover from their injuries; some choose to leave the rehabilitation unit prematurely. Furthermore, some recruits experience unnecessarily lengthened recovery times that are unexplained by physical factors. As such, it seemed plausible that psychological theory might explain variance in rehabilitation outcome and recovery time. A number of empirically well-tested and validated psychological theories were reviewed and protection motivation theory was selected as the over-arching theoretical framework to guide this programme of research. The model was extended to include the constructs fear-avoidance, athletic identity (modified to measure marine identity) and organisational commitment. Measures of the intensity and impact of pain were also incorporated into the extended model. These constructs were identified as being potentially important in the prediction of behaviour, as well as being complementary to the model as a whole. The primary purpose of this research programme was to establish the effectiveness of the extended model of protection motivation theory. This was achieved through a large-scale, prospective study. The secondary purpose was to develop and test measures of implicit attitude in order to combat some of the difficulties associated with traditional methods of attitude measurement such as social desirability response bias. This was achieved through three method development studies, a cross-sectional study, and a prospective study. Analysis of the longitudinal data revealed that each of the components of the extended model of protection motivation theory predicted outcome of rehabilitation. Self-efficacy and perceived severity of the injury explained 16.1% of the variance in outcome of rehabilitation. Furthermore, 10.4% of the variance in extended recovery time was explained by a combination of age and perceived severity. The implicit measure of organisational commitment explained 69% of successful training outcome in the cross-sectional study, which is remarkable in implicit attitudinal research. Despite the vast literature linking attitudes and rehabilitation adherence behaviours, until now, the psychological effects of injury on rehabilitation outcome and recovery time have rarely been investigated, and have never been examined in the context of Royal Marines’ training. In addition, implicit measures have never been applied in a specific health psychology context, nor have they ever been developed in such a bespoke way. Thus it is concluded that this thesis has made a theoretical as well as applied contribution to the study of psychology, injury and rehabilitation.

The thesis focuses on military crisis management and strategy.

This portfolio thesis describes work undertaken by the author under the Engineering Doctorate program of the Institute for System Level Integration. It was carried out in conjunction with the sponsor company Teledyne Defence Limited. A radar warning receiver is a device used to detect and identify the emissions of radars. They were originally developed during the Second World War and are found today on a variety of military platforms as part of the platform’s defensive systems. Teledyne Defence has designed and built components and electronic subsystems for the defence industry since the 1970s. This thesis documents part of the work carried out to create Phobos, Teledyne Defence’s first complete radar warning receiver. Phobos was designed to be the first low cost radar warning receiver. This was made possible by the reuse of existing Teledyne Defence products, commercial off the shelf hardware and advanced UK government algorithms. The challenges of this integration are described and discussed, with detail given of the software architecture and the development of the embedded application. Performance of the embedded system as a whole is described and qualified within the context of a low cost system.

In recent years, the most technologically advanced militaries in the world have toiled against guerrilla forces. Counterinsurgent doctrine focuses on a government’s lack of popular support to explain this. Academic literature, however, currently treats popular mobilisation as a dependent variable, rather than using it as a framework for understanding the dynamics and outcomes of civil wars. This thesis represents a first step to address this disparity and incorporate popular support into the comparative study of civil war outcomes. I explore what popular support provides conflict actors, what determines population behaviour and how the ability of conflict actors to generate support determines the dynamics and outcome of a conflict. I conclude that popular support, or the battle for ‘hearts and minds’, is crucial to the power of conflict actors, but only when it is understood as a contribution, not shared preferences. Based on this analysis I propose a framework for studying civil conflict that focuses on the regenerative capacity of the two belligerents. The key battleground in any civil war is rebel efforts to degrade the sovereign structures the government uses to generate support from the population. If rebels can achieve this, the government collapses and the rebels can win the war even if they are smaller or fail to score any battlefield successes. I test this model using a quantitative analysis of 65 civil wars and four in-depth cases studies. Overall there is strong empirical support for the model of conflict developed in this thesis, raising a number of theoretical and practical implications. Most importantly, I find that strengthening institutions of governance, be they formal or informal, is the best method for governments to defeat rebel groups, while rebels win by undermining socioeconomic activity.

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Master of Science

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / This thesis presents a historical analysis of the evolution of US Army Special Forces operations from 1995 to 2004, focusing specifically on operations conducted in the Balkans (Bosnia and Kosovo), Afghanistan and Iraq, answering the research question: How have the operations conducted by US Army Special Forces evolved from the Balkans in 1995 through Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF)? The thesis examines the progression of Special Forces operations during each of the aforementioned campaigns, analyzing their evolution in the areas of intelligence operations, unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense, close air support, integration with conventional forces and the institutionalization of lessons learned. The thesis concludes by examining future roles of US Army Special Forces with respect to employment. Tracing the progression of Special Forces employment from the Balkans to OIF is critical to understanding the factors contributing to the success of Special Forces operations in both the decisive operations and stability and support (SASO) phases of OEF and OIF. / Major, United States Army

Thesis (M.A.Sc.)--Naval Postgraduate School, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-159). Also available in electronic format via the Defense Technical Information Center website.