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Inventory

Inventory (American English) or stock (British English) refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation.

Inventory management is a discipline primarily about specifying the shape and placement of stocked goods. It is required at different locations within a facility or within many locations of a supply network to precede the regular and planned course of production and stock of materials.

The concept of inventory, stock or work in process (or work in progress) has been extended from manufacturing systems to service businesses  and projects, by generalizing the definition to be "all work within the process of production—all work that is or has occurred prior to the completion of production". In the context of a manufacturing production system, inventory refers to all work that has occurred—raw materials, partially finished products, finished products prior to sale and departure from the manufacturing system. In the context of services, inventory refers to all work done prior to sale, including partially process information.

Reasons for keeping stock
There are five basic reasons for keeping an inventory:
 * 1) Time: The time lags present in the supply chain, from supplier to user at every stage, requires that you maintain certain amounts of inventory to use in this lead time. However, in practice, inventory is to be maintained for consumption during 'variations in lead time'. Lead time itself can be addressed by ordering that many days in advance.
 * 2) Seasonal demand: Demands varies periodically, but producers capacity is fixed. This can lead to stock accumulation, consider for example how goods consumed only in holidays can lead to accumulation of large stocks on the anticipation of future consumption.
 * 3) Uncertainty: Inventories are maintained as buffers to meet uncertainties in demand, supply and movements of goods.
 * 4) Economies of scale: Ideal condition of "one unit at a time at a place where a user needs it, when he needs it" principle tends to incur lots of costs in terms of logistics. So bulk buying, movement and storing brings in economies of scale, thus inventory.
 * 5) Appreciation in value: In some situations, some stock gains the required value when it is kept for some time to allow it reach the desired standard for consumption, or for production. For example, beer in the brewing industry.

All these stock reasons can apply to any owner or product.

Special terms used in dealing with inventory management

 * Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) SKUs are clear, internal identification numbers assigned to each of the products and their variants. SKUs can be any combination of letters and numbers chosen, just as long as the system is consistent and used for all the products in the inventory. An SKU code may also be referred to as product code, barcode, part number or MPN (Manufacturer's Part Number).
 * "New old stock" (sometimes abbreviated NOS) is a term used in business to refer to merchandise being offered for sale that was manufactured long ago but that has never been used. Such merchandise may not be produced anymore, and the new old stock may represent the only market source of a particular item at the present time.
 * ABC analysis (also known as Pareto analysis) is a method of classifying inventory items based on their contribution to total sales revenue. This can be used to prioritize inventory management efforts and ensure that businesses are focusing on the most important items.

Typology

 * 1) Buffer/safety stock: Safety stock is the additional inventory that a company keeps on hand to mitigate the risk of stockouts or delays in supply chain. It is the extra stock that is kept in reserve above and beyond the regular inventory levels. The purpose of safety stock is to provide a buffer against fluctuations in demand or supply that could otherwise result in stockouts.
 * 2) Reorder level: Reorder level refers to the point when a company place an order to re-fill the stocks. Reorder point depends on the inventory policy of a company. Some companies place orders when the inventory level is lower than a certain quantity. Some companies place orders periodically.
 * 3) Cycle stock: Used in batch processes, cycle stock is the available inventory, excluding buffer stock.
 * 4) De-coupling: Buffer stock held between the machines in a single process which serves as a buffer for the next one allowing smooth flow of work instead of waiting the previous or next machine in the same process.
 * 5) Anticipation stock: Building up extra stock for periods of increased demand—e.g., ice cream for summer.
 * 6) Pipeline stock: Goods still in transit or in the process of distribution; e.g., they have left the factory but not arrived at the customer yet. Often calculated as: Average Daily / Weekly usage quantity X Lead time in days + Safety stock.

Inventory examples
While accountants often discuss inventory in terms of goods for sale, organizations—manufacturers, service-providers and not-for-profits—also have inventories (fixtures, equipment, furniture, supplies, parts, etc.) that they do not intend to sell. Manufacturers', distributors', and wholesalers' inventory tends to cluster in warehouses. Retailers' inventory may exist in a warehouse or in a shop or store accessible to customers. Inventories not intended for sale to customers or to clients may be held in any premises an organization uses. Stock ties up cash and, if uncontrolled, it will be impossible to know the actual level of stocks and therefore difficult to keep the costs associated with holding too much or too little inventory under control.

While the reasons for holding stock were covered earlier, most manufacturing organizations usually divide their "goods for sale" inventory into:
 * Raw materials: Materials and components scheduled for use in making a product.
 * Work in process (WIP): Materials and components that have begun their transformation to finished goods. These are used in process of manufacture and as such these are neither raw material nor finished goods.
 * Finished goods: Goods ready for sale to customers.
 * Goods for resale: Returned goods that are salable.
 * Stocks in transit: The materials which are not at the seller's location or buyers' location but in between are "stocks in transit". Or we could say, the stocks which left the seller's plant but have not reached the buyer, and are in transit.
 * Consignment stocks: The inventories where goods are with the buyer, but the actual ownership of goods remains with the seller until the goods are sold. Though the goods were transported to the buyer, payment of goods is done once the goods are sold. Hence such stocks are known as consignment stocks.
 * Maintenance supply.

For example:

Manufacturing
A canned food manufacturer's materials inventory includes the ingredients to form the foods to be canned, empty cans and their lids (or coils of steel or aluminum for constructing those components), labels, and anything else (solder, glue, etc.) that will form part of a finished can. The firm's work in process includes those materials from the time of release to the work floor until they become complete and ready for sale to wholesale or retail customers. This may be vats of prepared food, filled cans not yet labeled or sub-assemblies of food components. It may also include finished cans that are not yet packaged into cartons or pallets. Its finished good inventory consists of all the filled and labeled cans of food in its warehouse that it has manufactured and wishes to sell to food distributors (wholesalers), to grocery stores (retailers), and even perhaps to consumers through arrangements like factory stores and outlet centers.

Capital projects
The partially completed work (or work in process) is a measure of inventory built during the work execution of a capital project,  such as encountered in civilian infrastructure construction or oil and gas. Inventory may not only reflect physical items (such as materials, parts, partially-finished sub-assemblies) but also knowledge work-in-process (such as partially completed engineering designs of components and assemblies to be fabricated).

Virtual inventory
A "virtual inventory" (also known as a "bank inventory") enables a group of users to share common parts, especially where their availability at short notice may be critical but they are unlikely to required by more than a few bank members at any one time. Virtual inventory also allows distributors and fulfilment houses to ship goods to retailers direct from stock, regardless of whether the stock is held in a retail store, stock room or warehouse. Virtual inventories allow participants to access a wider mix of products and to reduce the risks involved in carrying inventory for which expected demand does not materialise.

Costs associated with inventory
There are several costs associated with inventory:
 * Ordering cost
 * Setup cost
 * Holding Cost
 * Shortage Cost

Purpose
Inventory proportionality is the goal of demand-driven inventory management. The primary optimal outcome is to have the same number of days' (or hours', etc.) worth of inventory on hand across all products so that the time of runout of all products would be simultaneous. In such a case, there is no "excess inventory", that is, inventory that would be left over of another product when the first product runs out. Holding excess inventory is sub-optimal because the money spent to obtain and the cost of holding it could have been utilized better elsewhere, i.e. to the product that just ran out.

The secondary goal of inventory proportionality is inventory minimization. By integrating accurate demand forecasting with inventory management, rather than only looking at past averages, a much more accurate and optimal outcome is expected. Integrating demand forecasting into inventory management in this way also allows for the prediction of the "can fit" point when inventory storage is limited on a per-product basis.

Applications
The technique of inventory proportionality is most appropriate for inventories that remain unseen by the consumer, as opposed to "keep full" systems where a retail consumer would like to see full shelves of the product they are buying so as not to think they are buying something old, unwanted or stale; and differentiated from the "trigger point" systems where product is reordered when it hits a certain level; inventory proportionality is used effectively by just-in-time manufacturing processes and retail applications where the product is hidden from view.

One early example of inventory proportionality used in a retail application in the United States was for motor fuel. Motor fuel (e.g. gasoline) is generally stored in underground storage tanks. The motorists do not know whether they are buying gasoline off the top or bottom of the tank, nor need they care. Additionally, these storage tanks have a maximum capacity and cannot be overfilled. Finally, the product is expensive. Inventory proportionality is used to balance the inventories of the different grades of motor fuel, each stored in dedicated tanks, in proportion to the sales of each grade. Excess inventory is not seen or valued by the consumer, so it is simply cash sunk (literally) into the ground. Inventory proportionality minimizes the amount of excess inventory carried in underground storage tanks. This application for motor fuel was first developed and implemented by Petrolsoft Corporation in 1990 for Chevron Products Company. Most major oil companies use such systems today.

Roots
The use of inventory proportionality in the United States is thought to have been inspired by Japanese just-in-time parts inventory management made famous by Toyota Motors in the 1980s.

High-level inventory management
It seems that around 1880 there was a change in manufacturing practice from companies with relatively homogeneous lines of products to horizontally integrated companies with unprecedented diversity in processes and products. Those companies (especially in metalworking) attempted to achieve success through economies of scope—the gains of jointly producing two or more products in one facility. The managers now needed information on the effect of product-mix decisions on overall profits and therefore needed accurate product-cost information. A variety of attempts to achieve this were unsuccessful due to the huge overhead of the information processing of the time. However, the burgeoning need for financial reporting after 1900 created unavoidable pressure for financial accounting of stock and the management need to cost manage products became overshadowed. In particular, it was the need for audited accounts that sealed the fate of managerial cost accounting. The dominance of financial reporting accounting over management accounting remains to this day with few exceptions, and the financial reporting definitions of 'cost' have distorted effective management 'cost' accounting since that time. This is particularly true of inventory.

Hence, high-level financial inventory has these two basic formulas, which relate to the accounting period:

 * 1) Cost of Beginning Inventory at the start of the period + inventory purchases within the period + cost of production within the period =  cost of goods available
 * 2) Cost of goods available − cost of ending inventory at the end of the period = cost of goods sold

The benefit of these formulas is that the first absorbs all overheads of production and raw material costs into a value of inventory for reporting. The second formula then creates the new start point for the next period and gives a figure to be subtracted from the sales price to determine some form of sales-margin figure.

Manufacturing management is more interested in inventory turnover ratio or average days to sell inventory since it tells them something about relative inventory levels.

 * Inventory turnover ratio (also known as inventory turns) = cost of goods sold / Average Inventory = Cost of Goods Sold / ((Beginning Inventory + Ending Inventory) / 2)

and its inverse

 * Average Days to Sell Inventory = Number of Days a Year / Inventory Turnover Ratio = 365 days a year / Inventory Turnover Ratio

This ratio estimates how many times the inventory turns over a year. This number tells how much cash/goods are tied up waiting for the process and is a critical measure of process reliability and effectiveness. So a factory with two inventory turns has six months stock on hand, which is generally not a good figure (depending upon the industry), whereas a factory that moves from six turns to twelve turns has probably improved effectiveness by 100%. This improvement will have some negative results in the financial reporting, since the 'value' now stored in the factory as inventory is reduced.

While these accounting measures of inventory are very useful because of their simplicity, they are also fraught with the danger of their own assumptions. There are, in fact, so many things that can vary hidden under this appearance of simplicity that a variety of 'adjusting' assumptions may be used. These include:
 * Specific Identification
 * Lower of cost or market
 * Weighted Average Cost
 * Moving-Average Cost
 * FIFO and LIFO.
 * Queueing theory.

Inventory Turn is a financial accounting tool for evaluating inventory and it is not necessarily a management tool. Inventory management should be forward looking. The methodology applied is based on historical cost of goods sold. The ratio may not be able to reflect the usability of future production demand, as well as customer demand.

Business models, including Just in Time (JIT) Inventory, Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) and Customer Managed Inventory (CMI), attempt to minimize on-hand inventory and increase inventory turns. VMI and CMI have gained considerable attention due to the success of third-party vendors who offer added expertise and knowledge that organizations may not possess.

Inventory management also involves risk which varies depending upon a firm's position in the distribution channel. Some typical measures of inventory exposure are width of commitment, time of duration and depth.

Inventory management in modern days is online oriented and more viable in digital. This type of dynamics order management will require end-to-end visibility, collaboration across fulfillment processes, real-time data automation among different companies, and integration among multiple systems.

Accounting for inventory
Each country has its own rules about accounting for inventory that fit with their financial-reporting rules.

For example, organizations in the U.S. define inventory to suit their needs within US Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP), the rules defined by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) (and others) and enforced by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other federal and state agencies. Other countries often have similar arrangements but with their own accounting standards and national agencies instead.

It is intentional that financial accounting uses standards that allow the public to compare firms' performance, cost accounting functions internally to an organization and potentially with much greater flexibility. A discussion of inventory from standard and Theory of Constraints-based (throughput) cost accounting perspective follows some examples and a discussion of inventory from a financial accounting perspective.

The internal costing/valuation of inventory can be complex. Whereas in the past most enterprises ran simple, one-process factories, such enterprises are quite probably in the minority in the 21st century. Where 'one process' factories exist, there is a market for the goods created, which establishes an independent market value for the good. Today, with multistage-process companies, there is much inventory that would once have been finished goods which is now held as 'work in process' (WIP). This needs to be valued in the accounts, but the valuation is a management decision since there is no market for the partially finished product. This somewhat arbitrary 'valuation' of WIP combined with the allocation of overheads to it has led to some unintended and undesirable results.

Financial accounting
An organization's inventory can appear a mixed blessing, since it counts as an asset on the balance sheet, but it also ties up money that could serve for other purposes and requires additional expense for its protection. Inventory may also cause significant tax expenses, depending on particular countries' laws regarding depreciation of inventory, as in Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner.

Inventory appears as a current asset on an organization's balance sheet because the organization can, in principle, turn it into cash by selling it. Some organizations hold larger inventories than their operations require in order to inflate their apparent asset value and their perceived profitability.

In addition to the money tied up by acquiring inventory, inventory also brings associated costs for warehouse space, for utilities, and for insurance to cover staff to handle and protect it from fire and other disasters, obsolescence, shrinkage (theft and errors), and others. Such holding costs can mount up: between a third and a half of its acquisition value per year.

Businesses that stock too little inventory cannot take advantage of large orders from customers if they cannot deliver. The conflicting objectives of cost control and customer service often put an organization's financial and operating managers against its sales and marketing departments. Salespeople, in particular, often receive sales-commission payments, so unavailable goods may reduce their potential personal income. This conflict can be minimised by reducing production time to being near or less than customers' expected delivery time. This effort, known as "Lean production" will significantly reduce working capital tied up in inventory and reduce manufacturing costs (See the Toyota Production System).

Role of inventory accounting
By helping the organization to make better decisions, the accountants can help the public sector to change in a very positive way that delivers increased value for the taxpayer's investment. It can also help to incentive's progress and to ensure that reforms are sustainable and effective in the long term, by ensuring that success is appropriately recognized in both the formal and informal reward systems of the organization.

To say that they have a key role to play is an understatement. Finance is connected to most, if not all, of the key business processes within the organization. It should be steering the stewardship and accountability systems that ensure that the organization is conducting its business in an appropriate, ethical manner. It is critical that these foundations are firmly laid. So often they are the litmus test by which public confidence in the institution is either won or lost.

Finance should also be providing the information, analysis and advice to enable the organizations' service managers to operate effectively. This goes beyond the traditional preoccupation with budgets—how much have we spent so far, how much do we have left to spend? It is about helping the organization to better understand its own performance. That means making the connections and understanding the relationships between given inputs—the resources brought to bear—and the outputs and outcomes that they achieve. It is also about understanding and actively managing risks within the organization and its activities.

FIFO vs. LIFO accounting
When a merchant buys goods from inventory, the value of the inventory account is reduced by the cost of goods sold (COGS). This is simple where the cost has not varied across those held in stock; but where it has, then an agreed method must be derived to evaluate it. For commodity items that one cannot track individually, accountants must choose a method that fits the nature of the sale. Two popular methods in use are: FIFO (first in, first out) and LIFO (last in, first out).

FIFO treats the first unit that arrived in inventory as the first one sold. LIFO considers the last unit arriving in inventory as the first one sold. Which method an accountant selects can have a significant effect on net income and book value and, in turn, on taxation. Using LIFO accounting for inventory, a company generally reports lower net income and lower book value, due to the effects of inflation. This generally results in lower taxation. Due to LIFO's potential to skew inventory value, UK GAAP and IAS have effectively banned LIFO inventory accounting. LIFO accounting is permitted in the United States subject to section 472 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Standard cost accounting
Standard cost accounting uses ratios called efficiencies that compare the labour and materials actually used to produce a good with those that the same goods would have required under "standard" conditions. As long as actual and standard conditions are similar, few problems arise. Unfortunately, standard cost accounting methods developed about 100 years ago, when labor comprised the most important cost in manufactured goods. Standard methods continue to emphasize labor efficiency even though that resource now constitutes a (very) small part of cost in most cases.

Standard cost accounting can hurt managers, workers, and firms in several ways. For example, a policy decision to increase inventory can harm a manufacturing manager's performance evaluation. Increasing inventory requires increased production, which means that processes must operate at higher rates. When (not if) something goes wrong, the process takes longer and uses more than the standard labor time. The manager appears responsible for the excess, even though s/he has no control over the production requirement or the problem.

In adverse economic times, firms use the same efficiencies to downsize, rightsize, or otherwise reduce their labor force. Workers laid off under those circumstances have even less control over excess inventory and cost efficiencies than their managers.

Many financial and cost accountants have agreed for many years on the desirability of replacing standard cost accounting. They have not, however, found a successor.

Theory of constraints cost accounting
Eliyahu M. Goldratt developed the Theory of Constraints in part to address the cost-accounting problems in what he calls the "cost world." He offers a substitute, called throughput accounting, that uses throughput (money for goods sold to customers) in place of output (goods produced that may sell or may boost inventory) and considers labor as a fixed rather than as a variable cost. He defines inventory simply as everything the organization owns that it plans to sell, including buildings, machinery, and many other things in addition to the categories listed here. Throughput accounting recognizes only one class of variable costs: the truly variable costs, like materials and components, which vary directly with the quantity produced

Finished goods inventories remain balance-sheet assets, but labor-efficiency ratios no longer evaluate managers and workers. Instead of an incentive to reduce labor cost, throughput accounting focuses attention on the relationships between throughput (revenue or income) on one hand and controllable operating expenses and changes in inventory on the other.

National accounts
Inventories also play an important role in national accounts and the analysis of the business cycle. Some short-term macroeconomic fluctuations are attributed to the inventory cycle.

Distressed inventory
Also known as distressed or expired stock, distressed inventory is inventory whose potential to be sold at a normal cost has passed or will soon pass. In certain industries it could also mean that the stock is or will soon be impossible to sell. Examples of distressed inventory include products which have reached their expiry date, or have reached a date in advance of expiry at which the planned market will no longer purchase them (e.g. 3 months left to expiry), clothing which is out of fashion, music which is no longer popular and old newspapers or magazines. It also includes computer or consumer-electronic equipment which is obsolete or discontinued and whose manufacturer is unable to support it, along with products which use that type of equipment e.g. VHS format equipment and videos.

In 2001, Cisco wrote off inventory worth US$2.25 billion due to duplicate orders. This is considered one of the biggest inventory write-offs in business history.

Stock rotation
Stock rotation is the practice of changing the way inventory is displayed on a regular basis. This is most commonly used in hospitality and retail - particularity where food products are sold. For example, in the case of supermarkets that a customer frequents on a regular basis, the customer may know exactly what they want and where it is. This results in many customers going straight to the product they seek and do not look at other items on sale. To discourage this practice, stores will rotate the location of stock to encourage customers to look through the entire store. This is in hopes the customer will pick up items they would not normally see.

Inventory credit
Inventory credit refers to the use of stock, or inventory, as collateral to raise finance. Where banks may be reluctant to accept traditional collateral, for example in developing countries where land title may be lacking, inventory credit is a potentially important way of overcoming financing constraints. This is not a new concept; archaeological evidence suggests that it was practiced in Ancient Rome. Obtaining finance against stocks of a wide range of products held in a bonded warehouse is common in much of the world. It is, for example, used with Parmesan cheese in Italy. Inventory credit on the basis of stored agricultural produce is widely used in Latin American countries and in some Asian countries. A precondition for such credit is that banks must be confident that the stored product will be available if they need to call on the collateral; this implies the existence of a reliable network of certified warehouses. Banks also face problems in valuing the inventory. The possibility of sudden falls in commodity prices means that they are usually reluctant to lend more than about 60% of the value of the inventory at the time of the loan.

Journal

 * International Journal of Inventory Research
 * Omega - The International Journal of Management Science

title: Inventory


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Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson (, ; 8 December 1832 – 26 April 1910) was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit". The first Norwegian Nobel laureate, he was a prolific polemicist and extremely influential in Norwegian public life and Scandinavian cultural debate. Bjørnson is considered to be one of the four great Norwegian writers, alongside Ibsen, Lie, and Kielland. He is also celebrated for his lyrics to the Norwegian national anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet". The composer Fredrikke Waaler based a composition for voice and piano (Spinnersken) on a text by Bjørnson, as did Anna Teichmüller (Die Prinzessin).

Childhood and education
Bjørnson was born at the farmstead of Bjørgan in Kvikne, a secluded village in the Østerdalen district, some sixty miles south of Trondheim. In 1837 Bjørnson's father Peder Bjørnson, who was the pastor of Kvikne, was transferred to the parish of Nesset, outside Molde in Romsdal. It was in this scenic district that Bjørnson spent his childhood, living at the Nesset Parsonage.

After a few years studying in the neighbouring city Molde, Bjørnson was sent at the age of 17 to Heltberg Latin School (Heltbergs Studentfabrik) in Christiania to prepare for university. This was the same school that trained Ibsen, Lie, and Vinje.

Bjørnson had realized that he wanted to pursue his talent for poetry (he had written verses since age eleven). He matriculated at the University of Oslo in 1852, soon embarking upon a career as a journalist, focusing on criticism of drama.

Early production
In 1857, Bjørnson published Synnøve Solbakken, the first of his peasant novels. In 1858, this was followed by Arne, in 1860 by En glad Gut (A Happy Boy), and in 1868 by Fiskerjenten (The Fisher Girl). These are the most important specimens of his bonde-fortellinger or peasant tales. At least seven Danish composers wrote music based on Arne: Morten Eskesen, C. J. Frydensberg, Peter Heise, Anton Nielsen, Oluf Ring, Henrik Rung, and Sigrid Henriette Wienecke.

Bjørnson was anxious "to create a new saga in the light of the peasant," as he put it, and he thought this should be done, not merely in prose fiction, but in national dramas or folke-stykker. The earliest of these was a one-act piece set in the 12th century, Mellem Slagene (Between the Battles), written in 1855 and produced in 1857. He was especially influenced at this time by the study of Jens Immanuel Baggesen and Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger, during a visit to Copenhagen. Mellem Slagene was followed by Halte-Hulda (Lame Hulda) in 1858, and Kong Sverre (King Sverre) in 1861. His most important work to date was the poetic trilogy of Sigurd Slembe (Sigurd the Bad), which Bjørnson published in 1862.

The mature author
At the close of 1857 Bjørnson had been appointed director of the theatre at Bergen, a post which he held for two years, when he returned to Christiania. From 1860 to 1863 he travelled widely throughout Europe. Early in 1865 he undertook the management of the Christiania Theatre, and brought out his popular comedy of De Nygifte (The Newly Married) and his romantic tragedy of Mary Stuart in Scotland. In 1870 he published Poems and Songs and the epic cycle Arnljot Gelline; the latter volume contains the ode Bergliot, one of Bjørnson's finest contributions to lyrical poetry.

Between 1864 and 1874, Bjørnson displayed a slackening of the intellectual forces very remarkable in a man of his energy; he was mainly occupied with politics and with his business as a theatrical manager. This was the period of Bjørnson's most fiery propaganda as a radical agitator. In 1871 he began to supplement his journalistic work by delivering lectures throughout Scandinavia.

From 1874 to 1876, Bjørnson was absent from Norway, and in the peace of voluntary exile he recovered his imaginative powers. His new departure as a dramatic author began with En fallit (A Bankruptcy) and Redaktøren (The Editor) in 1874, social dramas of an extremely modern and realistic cast.

Collaborations with Grieg
In the 1870's Bjørnson and the composer Edvard Grieg, who shared his interests in Norwegian self-government, became friends. Grieg set several of his poems to music, including Landkjenning and Sigurd Jorsalfar. Eventually they decided on an opera based on King Olav Trygvason, but a dispute as to whether music or lyrics should be created first led to Grieg being diverted to working on incidental music for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, which naturally offended Bjørnson. Eventually their friendship was resumed.

The "national poet"
Bjørnson settled on his estate of Aulestad in Gausdal. In 1877 he published another novel, Magnhild, in which his ideas on social questions were seen to be in a state of fermentation, and gave expression to his republican sentiments in the polemical play Kongen (The King). In a later edition of the play, he prefixed an essay on "Intellectual Freedom" in further explanation of his position. Kaptejn Mansana (Captain Mansana), an episode of the war of Italian independence, was written in to 1878.

Extremely anxious to obtain full success on the stage, Bjørnson concentrated his powers on a drama of social life, Leonarda (1879), which raised a violent controversy. A satirical play, Det nye System (The New System), was produced a few weeks later. Although these plays of Bjørnson's second period were greatly discussed, few were financially successful.

Bjørnson produced a social drama, En Handske (A Gauntlet), in 1883, but was unable to persuade any manager to stage it except in a modified form. In the autumn of the same year, Bjørnson published a mystical or symbolic drama, Over Ævne (Beyond Powers), dealing with the abnormal features of religious excitement with extraordinary force; this was not acted until 1899, when it achieved a great success.

Political interests
From his youth and forwards, Bjørnson admired Henrik Wergeland, and became a vivid spokesman for the Norwegian left-wing movement. In this respect, he supported Ivar Aasen, and joined forces in the political struggles in the 1860s and 1870s. When the great monument over Henrik Wergeland was to be erected in 1881, it came to political struggle between left and right, and the left wing got the upper hand. Bjørnson presented the speech on behalf of Wergeland, and also honouring the constitution and the farmers.

Bjørnson's political opinions had brought upon him a charge of high treason, and he took refuge for a time in Germany, returning to Norway in 1882. Convinced that the theatre was practically closed to him, he turned back to the novel, and published in 1884 Det flager i Byen og paa Havnen (Flags are Flying in Town and Port), embodying his theories on heredity and education. In 1889 he printed another long and still more remarkable novel, Paa Guds Veje (On God's Path), which is chiefly concerned with the same problems. The same year saw the publication of a comedy, Geografi og Kærlighed (Geography and Love), which met with success.

A number of short stories, of a more or less didactic character, dealing with startling points of emotional experience, were collected and published 1894. Later plays were a political tragedy called Paul Lange og Tora Parsberg (1898), a second part of Over Ævne (Beyond Powers II) (1895), Laboremus (1901), På Storhove (At Storhove) (1902), and Daglannet (Dag's Farm) (1904). In 1899, at the opening of the National Theatre, Bjørnson received an ovation, and his saga-drama of King Sigurd the Crusader was performed at the opening of Nationaltheatret in Oslo.

Bjørnson was one of the contributors of the anti-Union magazine Ringeren, edited by Sigurd Ibsen in 1898.

A subject which interested him greatly was the question of the bondemaal, the adopting of a national language for Norway distinct from the dansk-norsk (Dano-Norwegian), in which most Norwegian literature had hitherto been written. At an early stage, before 1860, Bjørnson had himself experimented with at least one short story written in landsmål. The interest, however, did not last, and he soon abandoned this enterprise altogether. Afterwards, he regretted that he never felt he gained the mastery of this language. Bjørnson's strong and sometimes rather narrow patriotism did not blind him to what he considered the fatal folly of such a proposal, and his lectures and pamphlets against the målstræv 'language strife' in its extreme form were very effective.

His attitude towards this must have changed sometime after 1881, as he still spoke on behalf of the farmers at this point. Although he seems to have been supportive of Ivar Aasen and friendly towards farmers (in the peasant novels), he later denounced this, and stated in 1899 that there was limits to a farmer's cultivation. "I can draw a line on the wall. The farmer can cultivate himself to this level, and no more", he wrote in 1899. Rumour has it that he had been insulted by a farmer at some point, and uttered the statement in sheer anger. In 1881, he spoke of the farmer's clothing borne by Henrik Wergeland, and his opinion then states that this garment, worn by Wergeland, was "of the most influential things" in the initiation of the national day. Bjørnson's attitude towards the farmers remain ambiguous. His father himself was a farmer's son. During the last twenty years of his life he wrote hundreds of articles in major European papers. He attacked the French justice in the Dreyfus Affair, and he fought for the rights of children in Slovakia to learn their own mother tongue. "To detach children from their mother tongue is identical to tearing them away from their mothers breasts," he wrote.

Bjørnson wrote in multiple newspapers about the Černová massacre under the title The greatest industry of Hungary – which was supposedly "to produce Magyars".

He took part in the sexual morality debate (sedelighetsdebatten) of the time, arguing that free love did not allow for the development of positive traits such as self-restraint and a focus on virtue. Bjørnson held some 60 lectures in the Nordic countries on the issue; his strongly held views led to a rift with Georg Brandes.

Last years
Bjørnson was, from the beginning of the Dreyfus Affair, a staunch supporter of Alfred Dreyfus, and, according to a contemporary, wrote "article after article in the papers and proclaimed in every manner his belief in his innocence".

Bjørnson was one of the original members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, that awards the Nobel Peace Prize, where he sat from 1901 to 1906. In 1903 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 1901, Bjørnson proclaimed, "I'm a Pan-Germanist, I'm a Teuton, and the greatest dream of my life is for the South Germanic peoples and the North Germanic peoples and their brothers in diaspora to unite in a fellow confederation."

Bjørnson had done as much as any other man to rouse Norwegian nationalistic feeling, but in 1903, on the verge of the rupture between Norway and Sweden, he preached conciliation and moderation to the Norwegians. However, in 1905 he largely remained silent.

When Norway was attempting to dissolve the forced union with Sweden, Bjørnson sent a telegram to the Norwegian Prime minister stating, "Now is the time to unite." The minister replied, "Now is the time to shut up."

This was in fact a satirical illustration published in Vikingen, but the story got so popular and widespread that Bjørnson had to deny it, claiming that "Michelsen has never asked me to shut up; it would not help if he did".

He died on 26 April 1910 in Paris, where for some years he had spent his winters, and was buried at home with every mark of honour. The Norwegian coastal defence ship HNOMS Norge was sent to convey his remains back to his own land.

Bjørnson's family
Bjørnson was the son of the Reverend Mr. Peder Bjørnson and Inger Elise Nordraach. He married Karoline Reimers (1835–1934) in 1858. They had six children, five of whom lived to adulthood:
 * Bjørn Bjørnson (1859–1942)
 * Einar Bjørnson (1864–1942)
 * Erling Bjørnson (1868–1959)
 * Bergliot Bjørnson (1869–1953)
 * Dagny Bjørnson (1871–1872)
 * Dagny Bjørnson (1876–1974)

Karoline Bjørnson remained at Aulestad until her death in 1934.

In his early fifties, Bjørnson had an affair with 17-year-old Guri Andersdotter (died 1949), which resulted in the birth of their son, Anders Underdal (1880–1973). The affair was kept a secret, though early on Anders Underdal, a poet, would talk about his origins with his children. Later in life he stopped discussing the matter, no reason was given. Anders was the father of Norwegian-Swedish author Margit Sandemo. Audun Thorsen has written a book about Bjørnson's affair, Bjørnsons kvinne og Margit Sandemos "familiehemmelighet" (lit. 'Bjørnson's woman and Margit Sandemo's 'family secret'') (Genesis forlag, Oslo 1999).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson


text:
Excel (disambiguation)

Excel is a spreadsheet program by Microsoft Corporation.

Excel may also refer to:

Companies

 * Excel Airways
 * Excel Communications, a telephone company in Irving, Texas
 * Excel Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., a film studio based in Mumbai, India
 * Excel mobile phones
 * Excel Records, a record label
 * Excel, a division of Cargill Meat Solutions

Places

 * Excel, Alabama, a town in the United States
 * EXCEL High School, a public secondary school in Oakland, California
 * ExCeL London (Exhibition Centre London), England
 * Excel, Alberta, a locality in Canada
 * Excel No. 71, Saskatchewan, a rural municipality in Saskatchewan, Canada
 * Excel Township, Marshall County, Minnesota

Aircraft

 * Cessna Citation Excel, an American midsize business jet
 * Edel Excel, a South Korean paraglider design
 * Europe Sails Excel, an Austrian hang glider

Road vehicles

 * Excel (automobile), a 1914 American cyclecar
 * Hyundai Excel, a 1985–1999 South Korean subcompact car
 * Lotus Excel, a 1982–1992 British sports car
 * Optare Excel, a 1995–2004 British low-floor single-decker bus

Ships

 * USS Excel (AM-94), a minesweeper launched in 1942
 * USS Excel (AM-439), a minesweeper launched in 1953

Other uses

 * Excel (gum), a brand of chewing gum produced by Wrigley's
 * Excel (band), a thrash-punk band from Venice, California
 * Excel (Excel Saga), a character in Excel Saga
 * Excel, a 6-row malting barley variety

title: Excel (disambiguation)


text:
Anselm

Anselm may refer to:

Saints

 * Anselm, Duke of Friuli (fl. 700s), Benedictine monk and abbot Nonantula
 * Anselm of Canterbury (c.  1033–1109), philosopher, Abbot of Bec, and Archbishop of Canterbury
 * Anselm of Lucca (1036–1086), better known as Saint Anselm of Lucca

Bishops

 * Anselm I (bishop of Milan) (r. 813–818), bishop of Milan
 * Anselm II (archbishop of Milan) (died 896), also known as Anselm II Capra
 * Anselm I of Aosta (994–1026), the last bishop to serve as count of Aosta, and brother-in-law of Burchard, bishop of Aosta
 * Anselm I of Lucca (died 1073), better known as Pope Alexander II
 * Anselm II (1070s x 1090s), bishop of Aosta
 * Anselm III (archbishop of Milan) (Anselmo da Rho; r. 1086–1093)
 * Anselm IV (archbishop of Milan) (Anselmo da Bovisio; r. 1097–1101)
 * Anselm of Havelberg (c. 1100–1158), Premonstratensian canon and archbishop of Ravenna
 * Anselm V (Archbishop of Milan) (r. 1126–1136), also known as Anselmo della Pusterla
 * Anselm of Meissen (13th century), bishop of Warmia
 * Anselmo Guido Pecorari (born 1946), Roman Catholic cardinal

Clerics

 * Anselm of Farfa (died 883), also known as Zelmo
 * Anselm of Besate, 11th-century churchman and rhetorician
 * Anselm Grün (born 1945), German Benedictine monk and religious writer
 * Anselm of Liège (1008–1056), chronicler of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège
 * Anselm of Laon (died 1117), French biblical scholar, properly known as Ansel
 * Anselm of Gembloux (died 1136), abbot of Gembloux Abbey in Namur, Belgium
 * Anselm of St Saba and of Bury (died 1148), Benedictine monk elected bishop of London but refused consecration by Innocent II

Other people

 * Anselm of Capraia, 13th-century Pisan count
 * Anselm Feuerbach (1829–1880), German painter
 * Anselm Kiefer (born 1945), German painter and sculptor
 * Anslem de Silva (born 1940), Sri Lankan Sinhala biologist and herpetologist

Other uses

 * Anselm (film), a 2023 documentary film
 * Saint Anselm College, a liberal arts college in the US
 * List of ships named Anselm

title: Anselm


text:
Talk:Rumi

Balkh City
Balkh City was much larger in 13th century. Mevlana was born in Balkhi, currently located in Afghanistan.

His surname was Balkhi, which in Persian means "from Balkh", how come we still keep playing with his origin?

Some people running on Wikipedia mis-information agenda. 84.251.64.121 (talk) 08:45, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

 * Reliable sources make clear that he was born in Vakhsh, not Balkh (where his family was from) - so this should just be removed the infobox and the like. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:12, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

 * Honestly do not care where Rumi was born, but...

 * "DJALAL AL-DIN RUMI B. BAHA' AL-DIN SULTAN AL-'ULAMA'WALAD B. HUSAYN B. AHMAD KHATIBI, known by the sobriquet Mawlana (Mevlana), Persian poet and founder of the Mawlawiyya order of dervishes, which was named after him, was born on Rabi'I 604/30 September 1207 in Balkh, and died on 5 Djumada II 672/1273 in Konya." --The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. II:C-G, Brill, 1991, page 393, H. Ritter.
 * "Rumi's birth in Balkh..." -- The Masnavi, Book Five, Jalal al-Din Rumi, page xxvii, transl. Jawid Mojaddedi, Oxford University Press.
 * "Afghanistan vigorously claims Rumi on ground of "jus soli" because he was born in Balkh..."-- Rapture and Revolution: Essays on Turkish Literature, Talat S. Halman. Syracuse University Press, page 263.
 * "Rumi, was born in Balkh on the 6th of Rabi' alawwal 604 A.H...." --Islamic Art and Spirituality, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, page 115, State University of New York Press
 * "Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi was one of the greatest poets and mystics of the Islamic world. He was born in Balkh (Korasan) in AD 1207.." --Poetry and Mysticism in Islam: The Heritage of Rumi, ed. Amin Banani, Richard Hovannisian, Georges Sabagh, page 3, Cambridge University Press.
 * "Perhaps the greatest Sufi poet of all, Jalal al-Din Molavi Rumi, was born near Balkh.. --Iran: What Everyone Needs to Know, Michael Axworthy, page 35, Oxford University Press.
 * These are just a few I found searching for only university published sources. --Kansas Bear (talk) 18:15, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
 * In-depth works on Rumi, such as those by Franklin Lewis, and including the books and articles already cited in the note on the page, explain the residence of Rumi's father in Vakhsh at the time of Rumi's birth in some depth, led by the early scholarship of Fritz Meier. We also have Annemarie Schimmel attesting this scholarship. That's already three eminent subject-matter experts. The above works by contrast appear to be mainly more generalist sources, which one might forgive for being looser on the finer biographical detail. Hellmut Ritter is also an expert, but his 1991 EoI entry is dated. Jawid Mojaddedi is an Afghan scholar who might be forgiven for leaning into the POV identified by Talât Sait Halman: "Afghanistan vigorously claims...". The works by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Richard G. Hovannisian are again generalist, while Michael Axworthy says "near Balkh", not "in Balkh", which in a very broad sense Vakhsh could be considered to be. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:43, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
 * A Wikipedia article should be objective and honest. It should be mentioned that there is debate over his birthplace, with Balkh also being a probable origin. Why do you think he is called Rumi e Balkhi? 2607:FEA8:A4E0:D000:F4B9:3DF1:1A8D:9D4B (talk) 13:31, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Very True, He is from Afghanistan. No doubt. 2603:8000:E600:C03E:4117:4563:E620:BA15 (talk) 08:14, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Currently located in afghanistan, since neither the country or concept of afghanistan existed back. He was a native persian speaker from current Afghanistan is more correct. 83.254.160.80 (talk) 17:42, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

The city of Vaksh or any city in that region (or Tajikistan) didn’t exist before the 17th century- Afghanistan was far more developed along with Iran, Tajikistan being a more rural and agricultural land mass- hence the vast evidence of art, cultural, scientific and learned centers in the Herat and Balkh regions- it would have been improbable that he was born and raised in Tajikistan. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C50:1A40:8932:442D:A096:162F:56DB (talk) 03:58, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Ethnicity Removed
Why has Kansas Bear removed the Persian ethnicity of Rumi from being Persian? He cites, MOS:Ethnicity, but it claims it shouldn't be apart of the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability. Consensus has been reached on the talk page about this tiring topic already. Please reintroduce Persian.

The lead in for Socrates is that he is a Greek Philosopher, Rumi is no different here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FEA8:55DF:FC8A:8C6D:42C2:1616:4D24 (talk) 01:39, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

 * I'd like to mention instead of addressing or explaining his reasoning he simply deleted my comments as an IP user from his talk page. MOS:Ethnicity has not been proved to apply here. unsigned comment added by 2607:FEA8:55DF:FC8A:8C6D:42C2:1616:4D24 (talk) 02:59, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Can someone do that please? 103.73.57.133 (talk) 06:27, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 November 2023
Eaditor 2.0 (talk) 22:16, 18 November 2023 (UTC) Maulana jalaluddin was NOT from Iran. He have also never been there. Maulana is from Balkh, a province in AFGHANISTAN.
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. We don't say he's from Iran. Greater Iran is not the same thing. We already say "Rumi was born to Persian parents,[33][10][11][34] in Balkh[35], modern-day Afghanistan or Wakhsh,[3] a village on the East bank of the Wakhsh River known as Sangtuda in present-day Tajikistan.[3]" in the #Life section as well. Not sure what you're complaining about Cannolis (talk) 22:30, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

174.76.251.66 (talk) 16:46, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

 * Even if this is the case, Afghanistan was a part of Greater Iran at that time, which is still the case culturally and linguistically.Rumlu (talk) 06:01, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Afghanistan didn’t exist as a country before 1700’s.

Semi-protected edit request on 24 February 2024
I would like to ask to "change Rumi to Molavi", as his original name is Molavi. He is born in Balkh (currently part of Afghanistan - seperated in 1857 from Iran by Treaty of Paris). His peoms are in Persian and the name of Rumi is not representative of neither his origin nor his name. The name Rumi is a huge misrepresenting for an international poem like Molavi. Farzaneh gholami (talk) 16:28, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Rumi is his WP:COMMONNAME; regardless of any alleged 'misrepresentation'. The name you characterize as 'not representative' also reflects the geography (see Rûm) he arguably had the most direct impact on. Uness232 (talk) 17:59, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

An interesting fact about Meulana
An interesting and perhaps less widely known fact about Rumi is his deep and transformative friendship with Shams of Tabriz. This meeting is often credited with changing Rumi's life and turning him towards the path of Sufi mysticism. Before meeting Shams, Rumi was a respected but relatively conventional Islamic scholar. The intensity of their relationship sparked an outpouring of poetic longing and spiritual depth in Rumi's work, which previously had not been as evident. Their friendship is a central theme in many of Rumi's poems, illustrating the transformative power of human connection and love. This relationship also led to the creation of many of Rumi's most beloved poems, collected in the "Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi" (The Collected Poems of Shams of Tabriz). The profound impact of Shams on Rumi's life and work underscores the importance of companionship, love, and the mentor-mentee relationship in the journey of spiritual and personal growth, a theme that resonates across cultures and eras. FatemeHashemi1992 (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

 * The Shams friendship is mentioned quite a bit in the article. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 18:37, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Rumi


text:
Lazare Hoche

Louis Lazare Hoche (24 June 1768 – 19 September 1797) was a French military leader of the French Revolutionary Wars. He won a victory over Royalist forces in Brittany. His surname is one of the names inscribed under the Arc de Triomphe, on Column 3. Richard Holmes describes him as "quick-thinking, stern, and ruthless... a general of real talent whose early death was a loss to France."

Early life

Hoche was born on 24 June 1768 in the village of Montreuil, today part of Versailles, to Anne Merlière and Louis Hoche, a groom at the royal hunting grounds. His mother died when he was two years old, and Hoche was mostly raised by an aunt, who was a fruit-seller in Montreuil, and was educated by his maternal uncle, the parish priest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, who arranged for Hoche to become a choirboy at his church.

Early career
In 1782, Hoche began working as an aide at the royal stables, but soon left in order to join the Army. He entered the French Guards regiment as a fusilier in October 1784, although he originally intended to serve with the colonial troops in the East Indies. He was promoted to grenadier in November 1785 then to corporal in May 1789, just before the outbreak of the French Revolution.

After the French Guards were disbanded at the start of the Revolution, Hoche joined the new National Guard in September 1789. During the October Days protests, he was among the Guardsmen under the command of La Fayette who escorted King Louis XVI and his family out of the Palace of Versailles. He thereafter served in various line infantry regiments up to the time of his receiving a commission in 1792.

Flanders campaign

Hoche first saw action in the defence of Thionville in 1792, as a lieutenant, in the early stages of the Flanders campaign of the Revolutionary Wars, and took part in the Siege of Namur at the end of the year. After serving with distinction in the Siege of Maastricht, Hoche became an aide-de-camp to General Le Veneur in March 1793, and further distinguished himself later that month at the Battle of Neerwinden.

When Charles Dumouriez defected to the Austrians, Hoche, along with Le Veneur and others, fell under suspicion of treason. After being kept under arrest from 8 to 20 August, he took part in the successful defence of Dunkirk, for which he was promoted successively to colonel and brigade general in September, and to general of division in October 1793. In November, Hoche was provisionally appointed to command the Army of the Moselle, and within a few weeks he was in the field at the head of his army in Lorraine. His first battle was that of Kaiserslautern during 28–30 November 1793 against the Prussians. The French were defeated, but even in the midst of the Reign of Terror the Committee of Public Safety retained Hoche in his command. In their eyes, pertinacity and fiery energy outweighed everything else, and Hoche soon showed that he possessed these qualities.

On 22 December 1793 he won the Battle of Froeschwiller, and the representatives on mission with his army at once added the Army of the Rhine to his sphere of command. In the Second Battle of Wissembourg on 26 December 1793, the French under his command drove Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser's Austrian army from Alsace. Hoche pursued his success, sweeping the enemy before him to the middle Rhine in four days. He then put his troops into winter quarters at Bouzonville.

Arrest
Before the next campaign opened, Hoche married Anne Adelaïde Dechaux at Thionville on 11 March 1794. The day before his marriage, he had been invited to command the Army of Italy. However, upon arriving in Nice to receive the assignment, he was arrested on orders of the Committee of Public Safety, charges of treason having been proffered by Charles Pichegru, the displaced commander of the Army of the Rhine. He was sent to Paris' Carmes Prison on 11 April, was later transferred to the Conciergerie, and was only released on 4 August, after the fall of Maximilien Robespierre and the end of the Reign of Terror.

War in the Vendée and Chouannerie
Shortly after his release, Hoche was given the command of the Army of the Coasts of Cherbourg with the mission of suppressing the Royalist Revolt in the Vendée. He set up his headquarters at Rennes, Brittany, and put his initial effort into reorganizing the troops. In addition, he received the command of the Army of the Coasts of Brest in November 1794. Hoche completed the work of his predecessors in a few months by the Treaty of La Jaunaye (15 February 1795), but soon afterwards the war was renewed by the rebel leadership.

Between June and July 1795, Hoche led the defense against the Quiberon Expedition by Royalist émigrés assisted by the British Royal Navy, which he decisively defeated at Fort Penthièvre on 21 July. In late August, he was appointed commander of the Army of the West with the order to "act offensively against Charette's army". In December 1795, when the three armies previously under his command (Armies of the West, of the Coasts of Brest and of the Coasts of Cherbourg) merged to form the new Army of the Coasts of the Ocean, Hoche became the supreme commander of all Republican forces in Western France.

Thereafter, by means of mobile columns (which he kept under good discipline), he gradually eliminated the Catholic and Royal Armies. Hoche directed the operations that led to the capture (and subsequent execution) of rebel leaders Jean-Nicolas Stofflet (24 February 1796) and François de Charette (23 March), bringing an end to the War in the Vendée. With the surrender of the leaders of the Chouannerie, in May and June 1796, Hoche concluded the pacification of Western France, which had for more than three years been the scene of civil war.

Expedition to Ireland

On 20 July 1796, Hoche was rewarded by the French Directory for his immense service. That same day, he was appointed to organize and command the Expedition to Ireland, to assist the United Irishmen in a rebellion against British rule. He survived an assassination attempt in Rennes on 16 October, when a worker at the local arsenal fired at him but missed.

In Brest, Hoche gathered and army and forty-eight vessels for the expedition, under the command of Vice Admiral Justin Bonaventure Morard de Galles. The fleet set sail for Ireland on 15 December 1796, with Hoche and Morard de Galles aboard the frigate Fraternité. Due to a gale, however, the frigate was separated from the expedition the day after its departure, and was afterwards chased by a British ship. By the time it reached the Irish coast, on 30 December, the rest of expedition had already dispersed after a failed landing attempt. The Fraternité re-entered France through the Île de Ré on 11 January 1797 without having effected its purpose.

With the United Irish leader, Wolfe Tone, who was to have landed with him in Ireland, Hoche reflected critically on the violent course of the Revolution. Tone, "heartily glad" to find Hoche of "a humane temperament", wrote in his memoirs: "Hoche mentioned, also, that great mischief had been done to the principles of liberty and additional difficulties thrown in the way of the French Revolution, by the quantity of blood spilled: 'for', he added, 'if you guillotine a man, you get rid of an individual, it is true, but then you make all his friends and connections enemies for ever of the government'."

Later career
On his return, Hoche was at once transferred to the Rhine frontier as commander of the Army of Sambre and Meuse, where he defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Neuwied on 18 April 1797, though operations were soon afterwards brought to an end by the Preliminaries of Leoben.

In July 1797, Hoche was appointed Minister of War by the Directory. In this position he was surrounded by obscure political intrigues, and, finding himself the dupe of Paul Barras and technically guilty of violating the constitution, he resigned after less than month in office, and returned to his command on the Rhine frontier. It was his denunciation during that time that had led to Kléber's removal from command. The compromising letter was found by Jean Baptiste Alexandre Strolz in Hoche's papers.

Death and funeral

On 2 September, Hoche received the command of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle and set up his headquarters at Wetzlar, near Koblenz. Following his return from Frankfurt, on 13 September, his health grew rapidly worse, and he died at Wetzlar on 19 September of consumption (tuberculosis), aged 29. The belief spread that he had been poisoned, but the suspicion seems to have been unfounded. He was buried four days later next to his friend François Marceau at Fort Petersberg in Koblenz.

A funeral procession to Hoche was held on the Champ de Mars, Paris on 1 October. In 1919, the French Army in occupied Rhineland reburied his mortal remains into the 1797-built Monument General Hoche in Weißenthurm, near Neuwied, where he had started his last campaign against the Austrians.

Memorials

Hoche is commemorated by a statue on Place Hoche, a gardened square not far from the main entrance to the Palace of Versailles, and another in the Louvre Palace. Another statue, the last major work by Jules Dalou, is in Quiberon, Brittany. In Les Invalides there is also a memorial to Hoche. A station on the Paris Metro is also called Hoche.

Hoche's motto was Res non verba, which is Latin for "Deeds, not words".

In popular culture

 * Brown, Leah Marie, Silence in the Mist: A Novel of the French Revolution, Eternal Press, 2011

title: Lazare Hoche


text:
Verdens Gang

Verdens Gang ("The course of the world"), generally known under the abbreviation VG, is a Norwegian tabloid newspaper. In 2016, circulation numbers stood at 93,883, declining from a peak circulation of 390,510 in 2002. Nevertheless, VG is the most-read online newspaper in Norway, with about 2 million daily readers.

Verdens Gang AS is a private company wholly owned by the public company Schibsted ASA.

History and profile
VG was established by members of the Norwegian resistance movement shortly after the country was liberated from German occupation in 1945. The first issue of the paper was published on 23 June 1945. Christian A. R. Christensen was the first editor-in-chief of VG from its start in 1945 to 1967, when he died.

VG is based in Oslo. The paper is published in tabloid format. The owner is the media conglomerate Schibsted, which also owns Norway's largest newspaper, Aftenposten, as well as newspapers in Sweden, Estonia, and shares in some of Norway's larger regional newspapers. Schibsted took over the paper following the death of Christensen in 1967. Just before the change in ownership VG was mostly sold in the Oslo area and had a circulation of 34,000 copies.

The editor-in-chief is Gard Steiro. VG is not affiliated with any political party.

For many years, VG was the largest newspaper in Norway by circulation, which reached a peak of 390,000 in 2002. As its readers moved from traditional newspapers to internet newspapers, the circulation has collapsed to 94,000 in 2016. VG is now the second – largest print newspaper in Norway. It was overtaken by Aftenposten in 2010. The online newspaper vg.no is, however, by far the most visited in Norway, with 2 million daily readers.

VG Nett
VG Nett is VG's news site online. It was started in 1995. VG Nett made a net operating profit of 40 percent in 2006, making it an unusually successful online media operation. According to figures from TNG Gallup, it had approximately 2 million daily readers in 2016.

VG's web pages also include a discussion forum, VG Debatt.

Circulation
Numbers from the Norwegian Media Businesses' Association, Mediebedriftenes Landsforening.

 * 1980: 200,536
 * 1981: 227,191
 * 1982: 240,302
 * 1983: 256,747
 * 1984: 269,140
 * 1985: 290,705
 * 1986: 317,049
 * 1987: 333,698
 * 1988: 345,636
 * 1989: 360,331
 * 1990: 367,036
 * 1991: 365,318
 * 1992: 374,092
 * 1993: 377,575
 * 1994: 386,137
 * 1995: 371,238
 * 1996: 356,861
 * 1997: 370,115
 * 1998: 364,619
 * 1999: 373,552
 * 2000: 375,983
 * 2001: 387,508
 * 2002: 390,510
 * 2003: 380,190
 * 2004: 365,266
 * 2005: 343,703
 * 2006: 315,549
 * 2007: 309,610
 * 2008: 284,414
 * 2009: 262,374
 * 2010: 233,295
 * 2011: 211,588
 * 2012: 188,345
 * 2013: 164,430
 * 2014: 138,188
 * 2015: 112,716
 * 2016: 93,883
 * 2017: 82,015
 * 2018: 96,405

VGTV
VGTV, sometimes unofficially called VG TV, is the name of two different video services run by VG: One on their websites, and one on basic cable TV. The two of them have some differences, but contain similarities to one another.

The web service contains free of charge news reports and clips; documentaries and comedy shows through the VG+ subscription; and sports matches through the additional VG+ Sport tier.

The TV channel focuses mostly on documentaries at no extra cost, interspersed with short news and weather reports. The channel is available from Norwegian cable TV and satellite providers, but not from RiksTV.

title: Verdens Gang


text:
Sudbury Valley School

The Sudbury Valley School was founded in 1968 by a community of people in Framingham, Massachusetts, United States. In 2019, several schools stated that they were based on the Sudbury Model in the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan and Switzerland.

The model has three basic tenets: educational freedom, democratic governance and personal responsibility. It is a private school, attended by children from the ages of 4 to 19.

History
Sudbury Valley School was founded in 1968 by a community of people including Daniel Greenberg, Joan Rubin, Mimsy Sadofsky and Hanna Greenberg in Framingham. Greenberg aimed to create a school system that was just, psychologically comfortable, and self-governing with real-life being the primary source of learning. The school started the summer of 1968 with 130 students enrolled in a trial summer session before the school year start in September. During the summer session, there were two notable flaws: the smorgasbord plan in offering a variety of ways of information that the students could access if they wished; and the staffing. Of the initial 130 students, about half enrolled in the school year, ages 4 to 17. The 1990s saw a spread of the Sudbury Model throughout the US and abroad and there are now many schools based on Sudbury.

Facilities
There are no traditional classrooms and no traditional classes; instead children are free to do what they wish with their time. This may or may not include formally exploring academia or speaking with staff members or other students about academic interests, as part of educating themselves.

Curriculum
The school has no required academic activities and no academic expectations for completion of one's time at the school. Students are free to spend their time as they wish.

Government
Students are given complete responsibility for their own education and the school is run by a direct democracy in which students and staff are equals. The corporation is wholly owned and operated by the School Meeting, in which each student and each elected member of the staff has one vote.

Staff
There is no tenure at Sudbury Valley School. The School Meeting, with each participant receiving one vote, hires staff, as part of its duties in running the school. Every year, in the spring, elections are held for next year's staff. School Meeting members (staff and students) may nominate people to the role of staff. The School Meeting debates the school's staff needs, and discusses each candidate in turn. There is an election with secret paper ballots which is open to all students and staff. Staff who have received more yes votes than no votes in this election are eligible to receive contracts negotiated on the floor of the School Meeting.

Alumni
Sudbury Valley School has published two studies of their alumni over the past forty years. There have, as yet, been no formal studies of graduates of other Sudbury schools, but, anecdotally, they seem to have similar results. Laura Poitras is an alumna.

Officers
Officers of the corporation are elected by the School Meeting, meeting as the corporation, at its annual meeting.
 * Chairperson: Maia Warren, student
 * Secretary: Luna Ekendiz, student
 * Treasurer: Scott Gray, staff member

title: Sudbury Valley School


text:
Surface-to-air missile

A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground or the sea to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft system; in modern armed forces, missiles have replaced most other forms of dedicated anti-aircraft weapons, with anti-aircraft guns pushed into specialized roles.

The first attempt at SAM development took place during World War II, but no operational systems were introduced. Further development in the 1940s and 1950s led to operational systems being introduced by most major forces during the second half of the 1950s. Smaller systems, suitable for close-range work, evolved through the 1960s and 1970s, to modern systems that are man-portable. Shipborne systems followed the evolution of land-based models, starting with long-range weapons and steadily evolving toward smaller designs to provide a layered defence. This evolution of design increasingly pushed gun-based systems into the shortest-range roles.

The American Nike Ajax was the first operational SAM system, and the Soviet Union's S-75 Dvina was the most-produced SAM system. Widely used modern examples include the Patriot and S-300 wide-area systems, SM-6 and MBDA Aster Missile naval missiles, and short-range man-portable systems like the Stinger and Strela-3.

History
The first known idea for a guided surface-to-air missile was in 1925, when a beam riding system was proposed whereby a rocket would follow a searchlight beam onto a target. A selenium cell was mounted on the tip of each of the rocket's four tail fins, with the cells facing backwards. When one selenium cell was no longer in the light beam, it would be steered in the opposite direction back into the beam. The first historical mention of a concept and design of a surface-to-air missile in which a drawing was presented, was by inventor Gustav Rasmus in 1931, who proposed a design that would home in on the sound of an aircraft's engines.

World War II
During World War II, efforts were started to develop surface-to-air missiles as it was generally considered that flak was of little use against bombers of ever-increasing performance. The lethal radius of a flak shell is fairly small, and the chance of delivering a "hit" is essentially a fixed percentage per round. In order to attack a target, guns fire continually while the aircraft are in range in order to launch as many shells as possible, increasing the chance that one of these will end up within the lethal range. Against the Boeing B-17, which operated just within the range of the numerous German eighty-eights, an average of 2,805 rounds had to be fired per bomber destroyed.

Bombers flying at higher altitudes require larger guns and shells to reach them. This greatly increases the cost of the system, and (generally) slows the rate of fire. Faster aircraft fly out of range more quickly, reducing the number of rounds fired against them. Against late-war designs like the Boeing B-29 Superfortress or jet-powered designs like the Arado Ar 234, flak would be essentially useless. This potential was already obvious by 1942, when Walther von Axthelm outlined the growing problems with flak defences that he predicted would soon be dealing with "aircraft speeds and flight altitudes [that] will gradually reach 1000 km/h and between 10000 - 15000 m." This was seen generally; in November 1943 the Director of Gunnery Division of the Royal Navy concluded that guns would be useless against jets, stating "No projectile of which control is lost when it leaves the ship can be of any use to us in this matter."

German efforts

The first serious consideration of a SAM development project was a series of conversations that took place in Germany during 1941. In February, Friederich Halder proposed a "flak rocket" concept, which led Walter Dornberger to ask Wernher von Braun to prepare a study on a guided missile able to reach between 15000 and 18000 m altitude. Von Braun became convinced a better solution was a manned rocket interceptor, and said as much to the director of the T-Amt, Roluf Lucht, in July. The directors of the Luftwaffe flak arm were not interested in manned aircraft, and the resulting disagreements between the teams delayed serious consideration of a SAM for two years.

Von Axthelm published his concerns in 1942, and the subject saw serious consideration for the first time; initial development programs for liquid- and solid-fuel rockets became part of the Flak Development Program of 1942. By this point serious studies by the Peenemünde team had been prepared, and several rocket designs had been proposed, including 1940's Feuerlilie, and 1941's Wasserfall and Henschel Hs 117 Schmetterling. None of these projects saw any real development until 1943, when the first large-scale raids by the Allied air forces started. As the urgency of the problem grew, new designs were added, including Enzian and Rheintochter, as well as the unguided Taifun which was designed to be launched in waves.

In general, these designs could be split into two groups. One set of designs would be boosted to altitude in front of the bombers and then flown towards them on a head-on approach at low speeds comparable to manned aircraft. These designs included the Feuerlilie, Schmetterling and Enzian. The second group were high-speed missiles, typically supersonic, that flew directly towards their targets from below. These included Wasserfall and Rheintochter. Both types used radio control for guidance, either by eye, or by comparing the returns of the missile and target on a single radar screen. Development of all these systems was carried out at the same time, and the war ended before any of them was ready for combat use. The infighting between various groups in the military also delayed development. Some extreme fighter designs, like the Komet and Natter, also overlapped with SAMs in their intended uses.

Albert Speer was especially supportive of missile development. In his opinion, had they been consistently developed from the start, the large scale bomber raids of 1944 would have been impossible.

Allied efforts

The British developed unguided antiaircraft rockets (operated under the name Z Battery) close to the start of World War II, but the air superiority usually held by the Allies meant that the demand for similar weapons was not as acute.

When several Allied ships were sunk in 1943 by Henschel Hs 293 and Fritz X glide bombs, Allied interest changed. These weapons were released from stand-off distances, with the bomber remaining outside the range of the ship's antiaircraft guns, and the missiles themselves were too small and fast to be attacked effectively.

To combat this threat, the U.S. Navy launched Operation Bumblebee to develop a ramjet-powered missile to destroy the launching aircraft at long range. The initial performance goal was to target an intercept at a horizontal range of 10 miles and 30,000 ft altitude, with a 300 to 600 lb warhead for a 30 to 60 percent kill probability. This weapon did not emerge for 16 years, when it entered operation as the RIM-8 Talos.

Heavy shipping losses to kamikaze attacks during the Liberation of the Philippines and the Battle of Okinawa provided additional incentive for guided missile development. This led to the British Fairey Stooge and Brakemine efforts, and the U.S. Navy's SAM-N-2 Lark. The Lark ran into considerable difficulty and it never entered operational use. The end of the war led to the British efforts being used strictly for research and development throughout their lifetime.

Post-war deployments

In the immediate post-war era, SAM developments were under way around the world, with several of these entering service in the early- and mid-1950s.

Coming to the same conclusions as the Germans regarding flak, the U.S. Army started its Project Nike developments in 1944. Led by Bell Labs, the Nike Ajax was tested in production form in 1952, becoming the first operational SAM system when it was activated in March 1954. Concerns about Ajax's ability to deal with formations of aircraft led to greatly updated version of the same basic design entering service in 1958 as the Nike Hercules, the first nuclear-armed SAM. The U.S. Army Air Forces had also considered collision-course weapons (like the German radio-controlled concepts) and launched Project Thumper in 1946. This was merged with another project, Wizard, and emerged as the CIM-10 Bomarc in 1959. The Bomarc had a range of over 500 km, but it was quite expensive and somewhat unreliable. Development of Oerlikon's RSD 58 started in 1947, and was a closely held secret until 1955. Early versions of the missile were available for purchase as early as 1952, but never entered operational service. The RSD 58 used beam riding guidance, which has limited performance against high-speed aircraft, as the missile is unable to "lead" the target to a collision point. Examples were purchased by several nations for testing and training purposes, but no operational sales were made.

The Soviet Union began development of a SAM system in earnest with the opening of the Cold War. Joseph Stalin was worried that Moscow would be subjected to American and British air raids, like those against Berlin, and, in 1951, he demanded that a missile system to counter a 900 bomber raid be built as quickly as possible. This led to the S-25 Berkut system (NATO reporting name: SA-1 "Guild"), which was designed, developed and deployed in a rush program. Early units entered operational service on 7 May 1955, and the entire system ringing Moscow was completely activated by June 1956. The system failed, however, to detect, track, and intercept the only overflight of the Soviet capital Moscow by a U-2 reconnaissance plane on July 5, 1956. The S-25 was a static system, but efforts were also put into a smaller design that would be much more mobile. This emerged in 1957 as the famous S-75 Dvina (SA-2 "Guideline"), a portable system, with very high performance, that remained in operation into the 2000s. The Soviet Union remained at the forefront of SAM development throughout its history; and Russia has followed suit.

The early British developments with Stooge and Brakemine were successful, but further development was curtailed in the post-war era. These efforts picked up again with the opening of the Cold War, following the "Stage Plan" of improving UK air defences with new radars, fighters and missiles. Two competing designs were proposed for "Stage 1", based on common radar and control units, and these emerged as the RAF's Bristol Bloodhound in 1958, and the Army's English Electric Thunderbird in 1959. A third design followed the American Bumblebee efforts in terms of role and timeline, and entered service in 1961 as the Sea Slug.

War in Vietnam

The Vietnam War was the first modern war in which guided antiaircraft missiles seriously challenged highly advanced supersonic jet aircraft. It would also be the first and only time that the latest and most modern air defense technologies of the Soviet Union and the most modern jet fighter planes and bombers of the United States confronted each other in combat (if one does not count the Yom Kippur War wherein IAF was challenged by Syrian SA-3s).

The USAF responded to this threat with increasingly effective means. Early efforts to directly attack the missiles sites as part of Operation Spring High and Operation Iron Hand were generally unsuccessful, but the introduction of Wild Weasel aircraft carrying Shrike missiles and the Standard ARM missile changed the situation dramatically. Feint and counterfeint followed as each side introduced new tactics to try to gain the upper hand. By the time of Operation Linebacker II in 1972, the Americans had gained critical information about the performance and operations of the S-75 (via Arab S-75 systems captured by Israel), and used these missions as a way to demonstrate the capability of strategic bombers to operate in a SAM saturated environment. Their first missions appeared to demonstrate the exact opposite, with the loss of three B-52s and several others damaged in a single mission. Dramatic changes followed, and by the end of the series, missions were carried out with additional chaff, ECM, Iron Hand, and other changes that dramatically changed the score. By the conclusion of the Linebacker II campaign, the shootdown rate of the S-75 against the B-52s was 7.52% (15 B-52s were shot down, 5 B-52s were heavily damaged for 266 missiles)

During the war, The Soviet Union supplied 7,658 SAMs to North Vietnam, and their defense forces conducted about 5,800 launches, usually in multiples of three. By the war's end, the U.S lost a total of 3,374 aircraft in combat operations. According to the North Vietnamese, 31% were shot down by S-75 missiles (1,046 aircraft, or 5.6 missiles per one kill); 60% were shot down by anti-aircraft guns; and 9% were shot down by MiG fighters. The S-75 missile system significantly improved the effectiveness of North Vietnamese anti-aircraft artillery, which used data from S-75 radar stations However, the U.S states only 205 of those aircraft were lost to North Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles.

Smaller, faster

All of these early systems were "heavyweight" designs with limited mobility and requiring considerable set-up time. However, they were also increasingly effective. By the early 1960s, the deployment of SAMs had rendered high-speed high-altitude flight in combat practically suicidal. The way to avoid this was to fly lower, below the line-of-sight of missile's radar systems. This demanded very different aircraft, like the F-111, TSR-2, and Panavia Tornado.

Consequently, SAMs evolved rapidly in the 1960s. As their targets were now being forced to fly lower due to the presence of the larger missiles, engagements would necessarily be at short ranges, and occur quickly. Shorter ranges meant the missiles could be much smaller, which aided them in terms of mobility. By the mid-1960s, almost all modern armed forces had short-range missiles mounted on trucks or light armour that could move with the armed forces they protected. Examples include the 2K12 Kub (SA-6) and 9K33 Osa (SA-8), MIM-23 Hawk, Rapier, Roland and Crotale.

The introduction of sea-skimming missiles in the late 1960s and 1970s led to additional mid- and short-range designs for defence against these targets. The UK's Sea Cat was an early example that was designed specifically to replace the Bofors 40 mm gun on its mount, and became the first operational point-defense SAM. The American RIM-7 Sea Sparrow quickly proliferated into a wide variety of designs fielded by most navies. Many of these are adapted from earlier mobile designs, but the special needs of the naval role has resulted in the continued existence of many custom missiles.

MANPADS

As aircraft moved ever lower, and missile performance continued to improve, eventually it became possible to build an effective man-portable anti-aircraft missile. Known as MANPADS, the first example was a Royal Navy system known as the Holman Projector, used as a last-ditch weapon on smaller ships. The Germans also produced a similar short-range weapon known as Fliegerfaust, but it entered operation only on a very limited scale. The performance gap between this weapon and jet fighters of the post-war era was so great that such designs would not be effective.

By the 1960s, technology had closed this gap to a degree, leading to the introduction of the FIM-43 Redeye, SA-7 Grail and Blowpipe. Rapid improvement in the 1980s led to second generation designs, like the FIM-92 Stinger, 9K34 Strela-3 (SA-14), Igla-1 and Starstreak, with dramatically improved performance. By the 1990s to the 2010s, the Chinese had developed designs drawing influence from these, notably the FN-6 and the QW series.

Through the evolution of SAMs, improvements were also being made to anti-aircraft artillery, but the missiles pushed them into ever shorter-range roles. By the 1980s, the only remaining widespread use was point-defense of airfields and ships, especially against cruise missiles. By the 1990s, even these roles were being encroached on by new MANPADS and similar short-range weapons, like the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile.

General information
Surface-to-air missiles are classified by their guidance, mobility, altitude and range.

Mobility, maneuverability and range

Missiles able to fly longer distances are generally heavier, and therefore less mobile. This leads to three "natural" classes of SAM systems; heavy long-range systems that are fixed or semi-mobile, medium-range vehicle-mounted systems that can fire on the move, and short-range man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS).

Modern long-range weapons include the MIM-104 Patriot and S-300 systems, which have effective ranges on the order of 150 km and offer relatively good mobility and short unlimbering times. These compare with older systems with similar or less range, like the MIM-14 Nike Hercules or S-75 Dvina, which required fixed sites of considerable size. Much of this performance increase is due to improved rocket fuels and ever-smaller electronics in the guidance systems. Some very long-range systems remain, notably the Russian S-400, which has a range of 400 km.

Medium-range designs, like the Rapier and 2K12 Kub, are specifically designed to be highly mobile with very fast, or zero, setup times. Many of these designs were mounted on armoured vehicles, allowing them to keep pace with mobile operations in a conventional war. Once a major group unto itself, medium-range designs have seen less development since the 1990s, as the focus has changed to unconventional warfare.

Developments have also been made in onboard maneuverability. Israel's David's Sling Stunner missile is designed to intercept the newest generation of tactical ballistic missiles at low altitude. The multi-stage interceptor consists of a solid-fuel, rocket motor booster, followed by an asymmetrical kill vehicle with advanced steering for super-maneuverability during the kill-stage. A three-pulse motor provides additional acceleration and maneuverability during the terminal phase.

MANPAD systems first developed in the 1960s and proved themselves in battle during the 1970s. MANPADS normally have ranges on the order of 3 km and are effective against attack helicopters and aircraft making ground attacks. Against fixed wing aircraft, they can be very effective, forcing them to fly outside the missile's envelope and thereby greatly reducing their effectiveness in ground-attack roles. MANPAD systems are sometimes used with vehicle mounts to improve maneuverability, like the Avenger system. These systems have encroached on the performance niche formerly filled by dedicated mid-range systems.

Ship-based anti-aircraft missiles are also considered to be SAMs, although in practice it is expected that they would be more widely used against sea skimming missiles rather than aircraft. Virtually all surface warships can be armed with SAMs, and naval SAMs are a necessity for all front-line surface warships. Some warship types specialize in anti-air warfare e.g. Ticonderoga-class cruiser cruisers equipped with the Aegis combat system or Kirov-class battlecruiser cruisers with the S-300F Fort missile system. Modern Warships may carry all three types (from long-range to short-range) of SAMs as a part of their multi-layered air defence.

Guidance systems
SAM systems generally fall into two broad groups based on their guidance systems, those using radar and those using some other means.

Longer range missiles generally use radar for early detection and guidance. Early SAM systems generally used tracking radars and fed guidance information to the missile using radio control concepts, referred to in the field as command guidance. Through the 1960s, the semi-active radar homing (SARH) concept became much more common. In SARH, the reflections of the tracking radar's broadcasts are picked up by a receiver in the missile, which homes in on this signal. SARH has the advantage of leaving most of the equipment on the ground, while also eliminating the need for the ground station to communicate with the missile after launch.

Smaller missiles, especially MANPADS, generally use infrared homing guidance systems. These have the advantage of being "fire-and-forget", once launched they will home on the target on their own with no external signals needed. In comparison, SARH systems require the tracking radar to illuminate the target, which may require them to be exposed through the attack. Systems combining an infrared seeker as a terminal guidance system on a missile using SARH are also known, like the MIM-46 Mauler, but these are generally rare.

Some newer short-range systems use a variation of the SARH technique, but based on laser illumination instead of radar. These have the advantage of being small and very fast acting, as well as highly accurate. A few older designs use purely optical tracking and command guidance, perhaps the best known example of this is the British Rapier system, which was initially an all-optical system with high accuracy.

All SAM systems from the smallest to the largest generally include identified as friend or foe (IFF) systems to help identify the target before being engaged. While IFF is not as important with MANPADs, as the target is almost always visually identified prior to launch, most modern MANPADs do include it.

Target acquisition

Long-range systems generally use radar systems for target detection, and depending on the generation of system, may "hand off" to a separate tracking radar for attack. Short range systems are more likely to be entirely visual for detection.

Hybrid systems are also common. The MIM-72 Chaparral was fired optically, but normally operated with a short range early warning radar that displayed targets to the operator. This radar, the FAAR, was taken into the field with a Gama Goat and set up behind the lines. Information was passed to the Chaparral via a data link. Likewise, the UK's Rapier system included a simple radar that displayed the rough direction of a target on a series of lamps arranged in a circle. The missile operator would point his telescope in that rough direction and then hunt for the target visually.

title: Surface-to-air missile