Ash Rossiter
Biographic Data
| ID | 317940 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ash Rossiter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ash |
| FAMILY NAME | Rossiter |
| SIGNATURE | ROSSITER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Khalifa University of Science and Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5427-2229 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 29 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Beyond the Predator paradigm: What the Iraq and Afghan wars did (and did not) tell us about emergent drone warfare
Cable risk and resilience in the age of uncrewed undersea vehicles (UUVs)
Abu Dhabi’s drive for defence industrialization: Paramountcy of the economic diversification agenda
Defence industry policies of small and medium powers: An introduction to the challenges and prospects
Mitigating the Risks of Imported Soldiery: Britain, Dhofaris, and the Early Military of the Emirates
Various polities have imported soldiers to compensate for a lack of manpower, to reduce costs, or to avoid the risk of arming potentially disloyal citizenry. However, importing soldiery is not without dangers. Foreign soldiers may carry with them subversive ideas, continue homegrown conflicts in their employer’s territory, be unreliable, or, worse, revolt. How importers of foreign soldiers might mitigate these risks is little studied. This case s…
Rethinking and arresting Eurasian hegemony: The centrality of central Asia to Indo-Pacific strategies
Drawing on classical geopolitical theory, chiefly developed by Halford John Mackinder and Nicholas John Spykman, this article examines central Asia's significance for China's pursuit of Eurasian hegemony. Our theory-driven analysis suggests that de facto control of central Asia by China would provide several interlinking strategic advantages: aggregated critical resources, enhanced continental connectivity and, counterintuitively, seaward expansi…
A one-way attack drone revolution? Affordable mass precision in modern conflict
When considering drones' impact on modern conflict, strategic studies scholars typically focus on the most sophisticated systems in states' arsenals: costly and hard-to-acquire military drones, which are necessarily few in number. This article questions this conventional emphasis, proposing in its place that easy-to-produce and cheap(er) one-way attack (OWA) drones hold underappreciated war-shaping potential. Through analysis of recent and ongoin…
Looking under the hood of joint naval exercises: Motives and perceived benefits for Japan
Joint naval exercises (JNEs), an increasingly prominent sub-set of joint military exercises (JMEs) between states, vary across a range of dimensions. Yet insufficient attention has been given to comprehending their underlying purpose and the perceived advantages that states, along with their representatives, believe they gain from organizing or taking part in such exercises. This article delves into the objectives and perceived advantages of Japa…
Hyping emerging military technology: Probing the Causes and Consequences of Excessive Expectations
International relations scholars and military historians episodically observe that emerging military technology can generate 'hype', that is, excessive expectations about the near-term impact of emerging technologies. Yet there has been little attempt to conceptualize hype, enquire as to why it occurs, or study its impact on military innovation. As decisions concerning new military technologies are highly significant for states' military capabili…
Armies of Arabia: Military Politics and Effectiveness in the Gulf
In the sunset years of Britain’s imperial role in the Gulf, British officials—some on the ground in the area but more often than not penny-pinching planners back in the home country—increasingly toyed with the idea of establishing local militaries. Their desire was to replace thinly spread British troops with indigenous forces to provide the means of securing London’s interests in the area.1 By the 1950s, these interests, of course, were overwhel…
Locating the Quad: Informality, institutional flexibility, and future alignment in the Indo-Pacific
Britain and the Protection of the Gulf During the Second World War: The Ad hoc Defence of a Peripheral Theatre
The Gulf, a little-studied theatre of the Second World War, grew in importance to the area's leading power, Britain, as well as the Allies, as war progressed. All three Axis powers at one time or another tested Britain's ability to discharge its defence obligations, which included the protection of tiny Arab shaikhdoms and guarding nearby waters. With Britain's strategic imperatives lying elsewhere, British officials on the spot received scant re…
Unraveling Japan’s aircraft carrier puzzle: Leveraging carriers’ symbolic value
Japan's decision to convert two helicopter-carrying ships into fixed-wing aircraft carriers has generated criticism on two fronts. Military analysts question the military sense of carriers in the age of long-range precision missiles, while other domestic critics decry the move as a flagrant breach of Japan's constitutional constraints on possessing senryoku (war potential) and one likely to provoke Japan's neighbors, most notably China. Against t…
AI-enabled remote warfare: Sustaining the western Warfare paradigm
Military Assistance as Political Gimmickry? The Case of Britain and the Newly Federated United Arab Emirates after 1971
What motivates states to provide others with military assistance? Traditional explanations naturally focus on the security interests of the sender state. But could domestic considerations – intra-party politics, for example – also be a factor in some cases? This analysis, which examines the British decision to send a Military Advisory Team [MAT] to the newly federated United Arab Emirates [UAE] in 1971, answers in the affirmative. It demonstrates…
British naval assistance at the twilight of empire: The case of Abu Dhabi, 1966–1968
Britain long sought to establish, develop and utilise local military capabilities across its empire. In its informal empire among the Arab Gulf Sheikhdoms of Eastern Arabia, Britain increasingly encouraged – and often cajoled – its protégés to build up their own security forces as London's moment in the Middle East was coming to an end. The scholarly literature on imperial assistance to local forces is invariably army-centric; little attention is…
Security in the Gulf: Local Militaries before British Withdrawal
The British Empire employed a diverse range of strategies to establish and then maintain control over its overseas territories in the Middle East. This new interpretation of how Britain maintained order, protected its interests and carried out its defence obligations in the Gulf in the decades before its withdrawal from the region in 1971 looks at how the British government increasingly sought to achieve security with great economy of force by bu…
Intelligence collection in Arabia: Britain’s roaming information-gatherers in the Trucial States, 1956-1971
Imperial powers, facing considerable information challenges in far-flung territories, adapted intelligence practices and machinery to fit local conditions. In contrast to the attention placed on British intelligence activities in territories considered within the ‘formal empire’ (i.e. where Britain was in direct control), we know very little about intelligence arrangements in ‘informal empire,’ where external powers exerted influence and protecte…
Survival of the Kuwaiti statelet: Najd’s expansion and the question of British protection
For Kuwait in the 1920s, the most pressing problem was how to respond to the rising power of the neighbouring polity of Najd. Acting initially under the leadership of Ibn Saud, the future founder-king of Saudi Arabia, raiding Najdi tribes, many of whom followed the strict creed of Wahhabism and were referred to as Ikhwan (brotherhood), at one point threatened to conquer Kuwait. Moreover, Ibn Saud, who would later turn against recalcitrant element…
Forging a force: Rulers, professional expatriates, and the creation of Abu Dhabi’s Police
It has long been observed that the development of professional security institutions is a key stage in modern state formation. Leaders of many proto-states embarking on programs of rapid development – such as many of the rulers of the Arab Gulf States in the 1960s – have brought in foreign professional expertise to assist in building up fledgling state institutions, including militaries, police forces and intelligence services. We know little, ho…
Robotics Autonomous Systems and Contemporary International Security
Bots on the ground: An impending UGV revolution in military affairs
There has been speculation for some time that unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are poised to revolutionize military land operations. These expectations have amplified with recent developments, not least the reported deployment and testing of Russian weaponized UGVs in Syria. Yet when it comes to the operational use of mobile ground-based robots – armed or otherwise – the recent history of the technology can be described as one of promise so far un…
The impact of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) across the conflict spectrum
Technology is often held up to be a key – if not the key, for some at least – driver in shaping the character or even perhaps the nature of war. The introduction of new technologies has resulted in
Re-examining the “Base”: The Political and Security Dimensions of Turkey’s Military Presence in Somalia
In late 2017, Turkey opened a facility to train the Somali National Army. Routinely described as a military base since, the move has caused consternation within and beyond the region and is held up as proof that a new scramble for Africa is underway. By contextualizing this new military mission within Turkey's wider role in Somalia, this article demonstrates why the term "base" is misleading and how training the SNA is consistent with Turkey's fo…
Shifting Policies in Conflict Arenas: A Cosine Similarity and Text Mining Analysis of Turkey’s Syria Policy, 2012-2016
Turkish policy towards the Syrian civil war, as operationalized in relation to the implementation of no-fly zones, safe zones or buffer zones, has been the subject of much debate among scholars. As the number of foreign states acting in Syria has steadily increased since the onset of the crisis, Turkish policies have similarly shifted. In order to make sense of Turkey’s actions and reactions in the first five years of the Syrian civil war, this a…
AI-enabled remote warfare: Sustaining the western Warfare paradigm
Looking under the hood of joint naval exercises: Motives and perceived benefits for Japan
Joint naval exercises (JNEs), an increasingly prominent sub-set of joint military exercises (JMEs) between states, vary across a range of dimensions. Yet insufficient attention has been given to comprehending their underlying purpose and the perceived advantages that states, along with their representatives, believe they gain from organizing or taking part in such exercises. This article delves into the objectives and perceived advantages of Japa…
Locating the Quad: Informality, institutional flexibility, and future alignment in the Indo-Pacific
Military Assistance as Political Gimmickry? The Case of Britain and the Newly Federated United Arab Emirates after 1971
What motivates states to provide others with military assistance? Traditional explanations naturally focus on the security interests of the sender state. But could domestic considerations – intra-party politics, for example – also be a factor in some cases? This analysis, which examines the British decision to send a Military Advisory Team [MAT] to the newly federated United Arab Emirates [UAE] in 1971, answers in the affirmative. It demonstrates…
Hyping emerging military technology: Probing the Causes and Consequences of Excessive Expectations
International relations scholars and military historians episodically observe that emerging military technology can generate 'hype', that is, excessive expectations about the near-term impact of emerging technologies. Yet there has been little attempt to conceptualize hype, enquire as to why it occurs, or study its impact on military innovation. As decisions concerning new military technologies are highly significant for states' military capabili…
The impact of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) across the conflict spectrum
Technology is often held up to be a key – if not the key, for some at least – driver in shaping the character or even perhaps the nature of war. The introduction of new technologies has resulted in
Abu Dhabi’s drive for defence industrialization: Paramountcy of the economic diversification agenda
Rethinking and arresting Eurasian hegemony: The centrality of central Asia to Indo-Pacific strategies
Drawing on classical geopolitical theory, chiefly developed by Halford John Mackinder and Nicholas John Spykman, this article examines central Asia's significance for China's pursuit of Eurasian hegemony. Our theory-driven analysis suggests that de facto control of central Asia by China would provide several interlinking strategic advantages: aggregated critical resources, enhanced continental connectivity and, counterintuitively, seaward expansi…
A one-way attack drone revolution? Affordable mass precision in modern conflict
When considering drones' impact on modern conflict, strategic studies scholars typically focus on the most sophisticated systems in states' arsenals: costly and hard-to-acquire military drones, which are necessarily few in number. This article questions this conventional emphasis, proposing in its place that easy-to-produce and cheap(er) one-way attack (OWA) drones hold underappreciated war-shaping potential. Through analysis of recent and ongoin…
Unraveling Japan’s aircraft carrier puzzle: Leveraging carriers’ symbolic value
Japan's decision to convert two helicopter-carrying ships into fixed-wing aircraft carriers has generated criticism on two fronts. Military analysts question the military sense of carriers in the age of long-range precision missiles, while other domestic critics decry the move as a flagrant breach of Japan's constitutional constraints on possessing senryoku (war potential) and one likely to provoke Japan's neighbors, most notably China. Against t…
Survival of the Kuwaiti statelet: Najd’s expansion and the question of British protection
For Kuwait in the 1920s, the most pressing problem was how to respond to the rising power of the neighbouring polity of Najd. Acting initially under the leadership of Ibn Saud, the future founder-king of Saudi Arabia, raiding Najdi tribes, many of whom followed the strict creed of Wahhabism and were referred to as Ikhwan (brotherhood), at one point threatened to conquer Kuwait. Moreover, Ibn Saud, who would later turn against recalcitrant element…
Forging a force: Rulers, professional expatriates, and the creation of Abu Dhabi’s Police
It has long been observed that the development of professional security institutions is a key stage in modern state formation. Leaders of many proto-states embarking on programs of rapid development – such as many of the rulers of the Arab Gulf States in the 1960s – have brought in foreign professional expertise to assist in building up fledgling state institutions, including militaries, police forces and intelligence services. We know little, ho…
Bots on the ground: An impending UGV revolution in military affairs
There has been speculation for some time that unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are poised to revolutionize military land operations. These expectations have amplified with recent developments, not least the reported deployment and testing of Russian weaponized UGVs in Syria. Yet when it comes to the operational use of mobile ground-based robots – armed or otherwise – the recent history of the technology can be described as one of promise so far un…
Shifting Policies in Conflict Arenas: A Cosine Similarity and Text Mining Analysis of Turkey’s Syria Policy, 2012-2016
Turkish policy towards the Syrian civil war, as operationalized in relation to the implementation of no-fly zones, safe zones or buffer zones, has been the subject of much debate among scholars. As the number of foreign states acting in Syria has steadily increased since the onset of the crisis, Turkish policies have similarly shifted. In order to make sense of Turkey’s actions and reactions in the first five years of the Syrian civil war, this a…
Screening the Food from the Flies”: Britain, Kuwait, and the Dilemma of Protection, 1961-1971
This study looks at how the widening gap between Britain’s available military resources and its remaining overseas commitments in the 1960s affected its ability and willingness to protect Kuwait after the latter elected for independence in June 1961. It provides a fresh account of how successive British governments addressed the dilemma of providing adequate cover for the Kuwaiti commitment. Over the course of the decade, Britain found it increas…
Screening the Food from the Flies”: Britain, Kuwait, and the Dilemma of Protection, 1961-1971
This study looks at how the widening gap between Britain’s available military resources and its remaining overseas commitments in the 1960s affected its ability and willingness to protect Kuwait after the latter elected for independence in June 1961. It provides a fresh account of how successive British governments addressed the dilemma of providing adequate cover for the Kuwaiti commitment. Over the course of the decade, Britain found it increas…
High-Energy Laser Weapons: Overpromising Readiness
This article recounts some of the basic history of laser weapons in the context of the great-power rivalries of the United States, Russia, and China. The author then offers his perspective on the current escalation of investments in high-tech warfare
Getting Out of Belize: Britain’s Intractable Military Exit from Central America
With scant material interests at stake, and protection exacting a toll on military resources, Britain wanted out of Belize, its sole dependency in Central America. This desire became more pronounced by the 1970s as successive British governments sought to eliminate residual out-of-Europe political and military commitments. Exiting Belize, however, proved a three-decade challenge for Britain. Exploiting recently declassified British government doc…
Re-examining the “Base”: The Political and Security Dimensions of Turkey’s Military Presence in Somalia
In late 2017, Turkey opened a facility to train the Somali National Army. Routinely described as a military base since, the move has caused consternation within and beyond the region and is held up as proof that a new scramble for Africa is underway. By contextualizing this new military mission within Turkey's wider role in Somalia, this article demonstrates why the term "base" is misleading and how training the SNA is consistent with Turkey's fo…
Shifting Policies in Conflict Arenas: A Cosine Similarity and Text Mining Analysis of Turkey’s Syria Policy, 2012-2016
Turkish policy towards the Syrian civil war, as operationalized in relation to the implementation of no-fly zones, safe zones or buffer zones, has been the subject of much debate among scholars. As the number of foreign states acting in Syria has steadily increased since the onset of the crisis, Turkish policies have similarly shifted. In order to make sense of Turkey’s actions and reactions in the first five years of the Syrian civil war, this a…
Making arms in India? Examining New Delhi’s renewed drive for defence-industrial indigenization
When it comes to states arming themselves, it has become axiomatic among scholars of comparative defence industries that go-it-alone production is no longer an option for most. The processes associated with defence-industrial globalization combined with the ever-rising costs of producing leading-edge weapons systems present huge disincentives for autarky in armaments. Against these strong headwinds, however, India has recently launched, as part o…
Security in the Gulf: Local Militaries before British Withdrawal
The British Empire employed a diverse range of strategies to establish and then maintain control over its overseas territories in the Middle East. This new interpretation of how Britain maintained order, protected its interests and carried out its defence obligations in the Gulf in the decades before its withdrawal from the region in 1971 looks at how the British government increasingly sought to achieve security with great economy of force by bu…
Intelligence collection in Arabia: Britain’s roaming information-gatherers in the Trucial States, 1956-1971
Imperial powers, facing considerable information challenges in far-flung territories, adapted intelligence practices and machinery to fit local conditions. In contrast to the attention placed on British intelligence activities in territories considered within the ‘formal empire’ (i.e. where Britain was in direct control), we know very little about intelligence arrangements in ‘informal empire,’ where external powers exerted influence and protecte…
Survival of the Kuwaiti statelet: Najd’s expansion and the question of British protection
For Kuwait in the 1920s, the most pressing problem was how to respond to the rising power of the neighbouring polity of Najd. Acting initially under the leadership of Ibn Saud, the future founder-king of Saudi Arabia, raiding Najdi tribes, many of whom followed the strict creed of Wahhabism and were referred to as Ikhwan (brotherhood), at one point threatened to conquer Kuwait. Moreover, Ibn Saud, who would later turn against recalcitrant element…
Forging a force: Rulers, professional expatriates, and the creation of Abu Dhabi’s Police
It has long been observed that the development of professional security institutions is a key stage in modern state formation. Leaders of many proto-states embarking on programs of rapid development – such as many of the rulers of the Arab Gulf States in the 1960s – have brought in foreign professional expertise to assist in building up fledgling state institutions, including militaries, police forces and intelligence services. We know little, ho…
Robotics Autonomous Systems and Contemporary International Security
Bots on the ground: An impending UGV revolution in military affairs
There has been speculation for some time that unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are poised to revolutionize military land operations. These expectations have amplified with recent developments, not least the reported deployment and testing of Russian weaponized UGVs in Syria. Yet when it comes to the operational use of mobile ground-based robots – armed or otherwise – the recent history of the technology can be described as one of promise so far un…
The impact of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) across the conflict spectrum
Technology is often held up to be a key – if not the key, for some at least – driver in shaping the character or even perhaps the nature of war. The introduction of new technologies has resulted in
Unraveling Japan’s aircraft carrier puzzle: Leveraging carriers’ symbolic value
Japan's decision to convert two helicopter-carrying ships into fixed-wing aircraft carriers has generated criticism on two fronts. Military analysts question the military sense of carriers in the age of long-range precision missiles, while other domestic critics decry the move as a flagrant breach of Japan's constitutional constraints on possessing senryoku (war potential) and one likely to provoke Japan's neighbors, most notably China. Against t…
AI-enabled remote warfare: Sustaining the western Warfare paradigm
Military Assistance as Political Gimmickry? The Case of Britain and the Newly Federated United Arab Emirates after 1971
What motivates states to provide others with military assistance? Traditional explanations naturally focus on the security interests of the sender state. But could domestic considerations – intra-party politics, for example – also be a factor in some cases? This analysis, which examines the British decision to send a Military Advisory Team [MAT] to the newly federated United Arab Emirates [UAE] in 1971, answers in the affirmative. It demonstrates…
British naval assistance at the twilight of empire: The case of Abu Dhabi, 1966–1968
Britain long sought to establish, develop and utilise local military capabilities across its empire. In its informal empire among the Arab Gulf Sheikhdoms of Eastern Arabia, Britain increasingly encouraged – and often cajoled – its protégés to build up their own security forces as London's moment in the Middle East was coming to an end. The scholarly literature on imperial assistance to local forces is invariably army-centric; little attention is…
Armies of Arabia: Military Politics and Effectiveness in the Gulf
In the sunset years of Britain’s imperial role in the Gulf, British officials—some on the ground in the area but more often than not penny-pinching planners back in the home country—increasingly toyed with the idea of establishing local militaries. Their desire was to replace thinly spread British troops with indigenous forces to provide the means of securing London’s interests in the area.1 By the 1950s, these interests, of course, were overwhel…
Locating the Quad: Informality, institutional flexibility, and future alignment in the Indo-Pacific
Britain and the Protection of the Gulf During the Second World War: The Ad hoc Defence of a Peripheral Theatre
The Gulf, a little-studied theatre of the Second World War, grew in importance to the area's leading power, Britain, as well as the Allies, as war progressed. All three Axis powers at one time or another tested Britain's ability to discharge its defence obligations, which included the protection of tiny Arab shaikhdoms and guarding nearby waters. With Britain's strategic imperatives lying elsewhere, British officials on the spot received scant re…
Hyping emerging military technology: Probing the Causes and Consequences of Excessive Expectations
International relations scholars and military historians episodically observe that emerging military technology can generate 'hype', that is, excessive expectations about the near-term impact of emerging technologies. Yet there has been little attempt to conceptualize hype, enquire as to why it occurs, or study its impact on military innovation. As decisions concerning new military technologies are highly significant for states' military capabili…
A one-way attack drone revolution? Affordable mass precision in modern conflict
When considering drones' impact on modern conflict, strategic studies scholars typically focus on the most sophisticated systems in states' arsenals: costly and hard-to-acquire military drones, which are necessarily few in number. This article questions this conventional emphasis, proposing in its place that easy-to-produce and cheap(er) one-way attack (OWA) drones hold underappreciated war-shaping potential. Through analysis of recent and ongoin…
Looking under the hood of joint naval exercises: Motives and perceived benefits for Japan
Joint naval exercises (JNEs), an increasingly prominent sub-set of joint military exercises (JMEs) between states, vary across a range of dimensions. Yet insufficient attention has been given to comprehending their underlying purpose and the perceived advantages that states, along with their representatives, believe they gain from organizing or taking part in such exercises. This article delves into the objectives and perceived advantages of Japa…
Cable risk and resilience in the age of uncrewed undersea vehicles (UUVs)
Abu Dhabi’s drive for defence industrialization: Paramountcy of the economic diversification agenda
Political science (25 works) · Law (20 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (14 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (7 works)