Naval Postgraduate School

The purpose of this book was to perform a conceptual study of using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in amphibious operations. It focused on the command relations, tasking and critical problems in UAV amphibious operations. This work investigated the question of whether using UAVs at sea is a feasible complement to current amphibious operational doctrine and, if so, then what expense is incurred to assets on which it is embarked and assigned to the Amphibious Ready Group. This work concluded that UAVs were a feasible complement to current amphibious doctrine, but several critical issues to include EMI, video distribution and air space management, had to be investigated further. Additionally, topics for future research were detailed in chapter VII.

This book analyzes the state of civil-military relations and militarization in El Salvador under the leadership of President Mauricio Funes (2009-2014). Civil-military relations are examined using the Center for Civil-Military Relations "trinity" framework-first proposed by Thomas C. Bruneau in the journal Revista Fuerzas Armadas y Sociedad in 2005-which considers effectiveness, efficiency, and democratic civilian control. Militarization is presented in terms of Salvadoran troops in the streets. This book presents the linkage of these two phenomena as domestic security policy formation and implementation. The analysis demonstrates that informal civil-military relations have resulted in a largely undemocratic response to El Salvador's sizeable security challenges. Two cases, in particular, are studied more closely: 1) President Funes' unique relationship with General David Mungu a Pay s and the government's secret design of the 2012 gang truce. This work concludes that security policy formation under the Funes administration was haphazardly conducted as an expedient to El Salvador's security dilemma and resulted in at least a partial democratic breakdown in the processes envisioned by the 1992 peace accords.

This book examines the role of Brazil's military in counter-drug operations. Drug trafficking in Brazil poses a growing threat to the country's national security, but Brazil's physical size and limited resources have hindered the government's counter-drug efforts. The Brazilian military has been reluctant to assume a more significant role in counter-drug operations. The book argues that external, internal, and institutional pressures are driving the Brazilian military to expand its counter-drug role. The book recommends that the Brazilian-military expand its current support role in counter-drug operations, but that it avoid a direct role in law enforcement operations. The United States should support this expanded role, but only to the extent that such a role does not threaten the further consolidation of democracy in Brazil.