The Effectiveness of Drones, Air Power, and Modern Coercion

在不需要部署大量地面部队的情况下，各国在打击威胁其或其盟友的国家和非国家对手方面有着令人信服的利益。大规模的地面承诺是缓慢的，会产生政治成本，并可能限制灵活应对或威慑近邻竞争对手的能力。离岸强制——从(b)不占有领土的偏远基地发射的空中/导弹打击——提供了一种低成本的方式来推进这些利益。不幸的是，现有的研究工作几乎没有理由对其效用持乐观态度：空中力量被视为一种廉价的信号，只有在用于支持有能力的地面部队时才有效。然而，这项工作研究的是旧技术，并且经常依赖于很少案例的推断。新的跨国数据、理论和可概括的实证结果的发展为武装胁迫的现代手段和策略提供了新的见解。关于战斗人员如何产生、应对和减轻胁迫的新数据和发现也推动了对武装冲突的研究，包括其持续时间、严重程度和结果，以及对平民造成伤害的情况。本项目研究：(a)在州际争端中发展、威胁和/或部署离岸军事能力的影响；(b)在国内冲突期间对非国家武装活动进行离岸导弹打击。该研究产生了离岸胁迫的跨国数据，离岸胁迫理论及其对冲突动态的影响，以及新的定量和定性结果。这些数据涵盖2001年至2021年，包括六个国家在州际争端期间使用的离岸强制手段的两个月信息，以及15个国家在国内冲突期间使用的离岸打击的网格月信息。PI使用匹配、固定效应、安慰剂和敏感性测试来解释观察到的和未观察到的混淆。此外，PI使用过程追踪来检查在离岸强制过程中起作用的因果机制。项目产出推进了武装胁迫的研究：(1)通过对不断变化的军事战术和技术如何影响武装胁迫的使用和效用的研究议程做出贡献，(2)通过推进对反叛乱的理解，以及(3)通过区分与非领土胁迫活动、叛军领土控制和平民目标相关的战术与战略效果。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Countries have a compelling interest in combatting state and nonstate opponents who threaten them or their allies without the need to deploy significant ground forces. Large ground commitments are slow, generate political costs, and can limit the ability to respond flexibly to or deter near-peer competitors. Offshore coercion—air/missile strikes (a) launched from remote bases that (b) do not hold territory—provides a lower-cost way to advance these interests. Unfortunately, existing work provides little reason to be optimistic about its utility: airpower is viewed as a cheap signal that is effective only when used to support capable ground forces. This work, however, studies old technology and frequently relies on inferences from very few cases. The development of new cross-country data, theory, and generalizable empirical results provide new insights on modern means and strategies of armed coercion. New data and findings on how combatants produce, respond to, and mitigate coercion also advance the study of armed conflict, including its duration, severity, and outcome, and the occurrence of harm to civilian populations. This project studies the effect of: (a) the development, threat, and/or deployment of offshore military capabilities in interstate disputes; and (b) offshore missile strikes on non-state armed activity during intrastate conflicts. The study generates cross-country data of offshore coercion, theory on offshore coercion and its impact on conflict dynamics, and new quantitative and qualitative results. These data, covering 2001-2021, include dyad-month information on offshore coercion used during interstate disputes by six countries, and grid-month information on offshore strikes used during intrastate conflicts by fifteen states. The PI uses matching, fixed effects, and placebo and sensitivity tests to account for observed and unobserved confounding. Furthermore, the PI uses process tracing to examine the causal mechanisms at work in offshore coercion processes. Project outputs advance research on armed coercion (1) by contributing to a research agenda on how changing military tactics and technology affect the use and utility of armed coercion, (2) by advancing understanding of counterinsurgency, and (3) by distinguishing tactical vs. strategic effects associated with non-territorial coercive activity, rebel territorial control, and civilian targeting.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.