Preparing for the operational environment is a fundamental principle of military doctrine. This thesis looks at current and historical military practice and aims to determine future training initiatives to help better prepare the soldier for conflict conditions. Whilst the future of military conflict will always be determined by politics, the potential reaction time can be very short, so we must be in a position of continuous training for operations, with optimum ramp up opportunities for readiness. During operations in Afghanistan the campaign Formation Operational Readiness Mechanism (FORM) Fitness Doctrine (CFFD) provided guidance for the physical preparation of all ranks, tailored to the specific requirements for Operation HERRICK. Building on the success of CFFD, we must re-analyse our physical preparation for operations philosophies to align them with the requirements of contingency. Whilst the exact physical requirements for future operations are inherently unknown, it is essential that we derive appropriate physical training (PT) philosophies and methodologies to efficiently and effectively promote physical fitness and injury resilience.

Le mésusage de l’alcool a des répercussions nocives sur la sphère sociale et sanitaire d’une population. En termes de risques professionnels, certaines spécificités liées au métier des armes ne sont pas compatibles avec le fait de consommer de l’alcool. Les militaires français doivent donc être particulièrement vigilants vis-à-vis de leur consommation d’alcool. L’objectif de notre travail de thèse est de proposer une nouvelle démarche méthodologique dans les armées françaises, afin de prioriser des axes de prévention des mésusages d’alcool. Pour répondre à cet objectif, nous nous sommes appuyés d’une part sur une méthodologie mixte, alliant des méthodes de nature qualitative et quantitative et privilégiant une approche pragmatique et d’autre part sur la théorie des représentations sociales, outil robuste pour étudier des comportements à risque pour la santé. Des entretiens exploratoires semi-directifs ont été menés afin d’identifier les représentations sociales de l’alcool auprès d’un échantillon de militaires. A partir des résultats émanant des entretiens, un questionnaire a été mis en œuvre. En se focalisant notamment sur le contenu et l’organisation des discours concernant l’alcool, nous avons pu mieux définir les pratiques d’alcoolisation à risque d’une population de militaires français et ainsi proposer des mesures préventives plus adaptées à cette population spécifique. Notre démarche méthodologique s’avère donc être utile pour la prévention mais elle est également innovante pour appréhender une problématique de santé publique, car jusqu’à présent elle n’a pas fait l’objet de recherches au sein du Service de Santé des Armées. / Alcohol misuses can have negative social and health repercussions on a given population. In terms of professional risk, members of the French military must be particularly vigilant about alcohol, given some of the specificities of the profession of arms. This thesis was designed to propose a new methodological approach within French military in order to prioritize prevention focuses on alcohol misuses. To reach this objective, we relied on the one hand on a mixed methodology associating qualitative and quantitative methods which emphasizes on a pragmatic approach. On the other hand we relied on the theory of social representations, a robust tool for studying risky health behaviors. First, semi-structured exploratory interviews were conducted to identify the social representations of alcohol with a sample of military. In a second step, a questionnaire was implemented based on the results of the interviews. By focusing on the content and the organization of the discourses relating to alcohol, we were able to better define risky drinking practices of a French military population, and thus to propose preventive measures adapted to this specific population. Our methodological approach proves to be useful for the prevention and to be also innovative to understand a public health issue, as no researches on this subject have so far been carried out within the French Army Health Service.

The cartographic exploration of US Army fort and personnel variation in the contiguous United States has been well developed in the past, but not nearly enough to capture the essence of this interesting historical geography. In order to address this shortcoming in the geographical literature it was necessary to establish some rational points of reference to compare fort and personnel attributes of significant timeframes from 1800 to 1900. More specifically, once the distributional patterns were revealed, they were compared by using center of population, geographic means, point pattern analyses, base age, population, and historical backgrounds to definitively classify each periods Army fort attributes and to illustrate their distributional trends. The central results indicated that the distances between military presence and the US population during the one-hundred years were variable, but closely related to the social, political, and military atmospheres of those times. Furthermore, the trends discovered concerning the collective establishment of forts on the landscape show that base construction, during many periods, coincided strongly with well known concepts in US history: westward expansion, Indian Wars, and international conflict. Using the stated metrics for understanding the establishment trajectories over time, one can identify some concrete geographical relationships between not only Army bases and personnel, but also the US population as a result of this research. Since the literature regarding Army bases and personnel in the past has focused predominately upon emphasizing the historical or qualitative aspects of this topic, this research likely introduces an appealing, yet needed, spatiotemporal perspective on the historical geography of these forts in the contiguous United States.

Thesis (LL. M.)--Judge Advocate General's School, 1956. / "April 1956." Typescript. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in microfiche.

Thesis (LL. M.)--Judge Advocate General's School, 1962. / "April 1962." Typescript. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in microfiche.

This study compared the life satisfaction of early retirement military officers with several comparison groups on the basis of Retirement Descriptive Index (RDI) scale scores. The RDI is a self-report instrument that assesses life satisfaction across four scales: Activities, Finances, Health, and People (associations). ??Early?? retirement from the military, after as few as 15 years of service, was possible between 1993 and 1999 under the Temporary Early Retirement Authority Program (TERA), enacted by Section 4403 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993 to reduce post-Cold War U.S. military personnel strength. This was a departure from the traditional 20 to 30 year military career length referred to in this study as ??regular?? military retirement. A total of 57,693 personnel from the five military service branches, including 12,790 officers, retired early under this legislation. Previous research has revealed that many military retirees experienced adjustment difficulties during their post-retirement midlife military-to-civilian transition. A long-existing problem has been the inability to predict or prevent these adjustment difficulties. To examine one aspect of the adjustment of military retirees, the RDI was electronically administered via the internet to 122 early retirement military officers and 824 regular retirement military officers with retirement dates from the same period. RDI scale scores for the early retirement military officers were compared to those of the regular retirees. Additionally, comparisons were made with the RDI scale scores of other groups, including regular retirement military officers from previous studies, and early retirement civilians from a previous study. Analysis of RDI scale scores, using inferential statistical procedures including One-Way Analysis of Variance, chi-square tests of independence, and independent-samples t tests, revealed that early retirement military officers experienced slightly lower measures of life satisfaction in general than all comparison groups, and specifically experienced lower levels of satisfaction with their financial situations. Qualitative (anecdotal) data was included to complement the statistical analysis. Recommendations for research and practice were made regarding early retirement military officers.

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