Based on an empirical examination of all aspects of the Soviet military-technical establishment, this original study examines the de-tooling and conversion of the vast Soviet defence industry, following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, that was vital for Russian political, economic and social regeneration and stability, and had huge implications for international relations and the world economy. Grounded in political and social theory, this book explores the post-Soviet regeneration of Eastern Europe.

British Tank Production and the War Economy, 1934-1945 explores the under-researched experiences of the British tank industry in the context of the pressures of war. Benjamin Coombs explores the various demands placed on British industry during the Second World War, looking at the political, military and strategy pressures involved. By comparing the British tank programme with the Canadian, American, Russian and Australian equivalents, this study offers an international perspective on this aspect of the war economy. Topics covered include the premature contraction of the tank programme and dependence on American armour, the supply of the Valentine tank to the Russian authorities and the ongoing employment of the tank in the postwar peacetime markets.

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, he never would have dreamed that a single company could accumulate the kind of power and influence that is now wielded by Lockheed Martin. As a full-service weapons maker, Lockheed Martin receives over 29 billion a year in Pentagon contracts, or roughly one out of every ten dollars the Department of defence doles out to private contractors. Prophets of War recounts the fascinating and often-frightening history of America's largest military contractor as well as its role in the formation of foreign policy. The company has produced spy satellites helped the Pentagon collect personal data on U.S. citizens provided interrogators for employment at Guantanamo Bay manufactured our highest-tech aircraft and more. It has also been embroiled in numerous scandals , from bribing officials in the Netherlands, Italy, and Japan in exchange for the purchase of Lockheed airplanes in the 1970s, to the provision of 600 toilet covers and 7,000 coffee makers to the Pentagon in the 1980s. William D. Hartung's enthralling expose chronicles the growth of Lockheed Martin into one of the most influential corporations in the world, and examines the pivotal role the company has had in America's metastasizing military industrial complex. It asks: How has one company become the recipient of such a large portion of America's tax dollars through contracts with the Pentagon, NASA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the NSA, and even the U.S. Census and the IRS? Hartung's meticulous, hard-hitting history follows Lockheed Martin's meteoric growth and unravels how this arms industry giant has helped shape U.S. foreign policy for decades.

Birmingham has been a key innovator in the gun trade since the seventeenth century and the Birmingham Gun Barrel Proof house operates to this day. Between 1855 and 1861 six million arms were testing and proofed here - many of them destined for the USA. Those who worked in the Birmingham Gun Quarter were at the forefront of this incredible industry. This book tells the story of the technology and history of gun making. Covering the period 1720 to 1950, it sees the mechanical engineering technology of the 'lock, stock and barrel' firearm change significantly. David Williams, an engineer and academic, has studied the battle between the manual processes of manufacturing using the dexterity of many pople and the clumsy but tireless machine, and here examines this complex relationship in gunmaking, paying particular attention to interchangeable military firearms manufacture and the growth and decline of the Birmingham military and sporting gun trade. Accompanied by over 130 illustrations, The Birmingham Gun Trade is more than a narrative of gunmaking in Birmingham through the years: it is a thoughtful comment on craft skills, the use of machines and, most significant of all, the effect of having changing technologies on people's jobs, livelihoods and locations.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This book focuses on the lives, struggles, and contrasting perspectives of the 60,000 workers, military administrators, and technical staff employed in the largest, most strategic industry of the Nationalist government, the armaments industry based in the wartime capital, Chongqing. The author argues that China's arsenal workers participated in three interlocked conflicts between 1937 and 1953: a war of national liberation, a civil war, and a class war. The work adds to the scholarship on the Chinese revolution, which has previously focused primarily on rural China, showing how workers' alienation from the military officers directing the arsenals eroded the legitimacy of the Nationalist regime and how the Communists mobilized working-class support in Chongqing. Moreover, in emphasizing the urban, working-class, and nationalist components of the 1949 revolution, the author demonstrates the multiple sources of workers' identities and thus challenges previous studies that have exclusively stressed workers' particularistic or regional identities.

The Krupp industrial empire was one of Germany's wealthiest and most powerful corporations, and it contributed to the armaments used in several of its country's wars. British journalist Peter Batty tells the story of the Krupp family and the company they started during the industrial revolution, and how subsequent Krupps produced cannons used in the Franco-Prussian War, U-boats and shells for World War I, and the countless weapons and vehicles, including the biggest cannon ever made, for Hitler's army. The House of Krupp recounts the trial at Nuremberg of magnate Alfried Krupp, and the rebirth and astounding success of his company in the years after the war years that saw Alfried become one of the richest men in the world."

Based on fieldwork at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - the facility that designed the neutron bomb and the warhead for the MX missile - "Nuclear Rites" takes the reader deep inside the top-secret culture of a nuclear weapons lab. Exploring the scientists' world of dark humor, ritualized secrecy, and disciplined emotions, anthropologist Hugh Gusterson uncovers the beliefs and values that animate their work. He discovers that many of the scientists are Christians, deeply convinced of the morality of their work, and a number are liberals who opposed the Vietnam War and the Reagan-Bush agenda. Gusterson also examines the anti-nuclear movement, concluding that the scientists and protesters are alike in surprising ways, with both cultures reflecting the hopes and anxieties of an increasingly threatened middle class. In a lively, wide-ranging account, Gusterson analyzes the ethics and politics of laboratory employees, the effects of security regulations on the scientists' private lives, and the role of nuclear tests - beyond the obvious scientific one - as rituals of initiation and transcendence. He shows how the scientists learn to identify in an almost romantic way with the power of the machines they design - machines they do not fear. In the 1980s the 'world behind the fence' was thrown into crisis by massive anti-nuclear protests at the gates of the lab and by the end of the Cold War. Gusterson links the emergence of the anti-nuclear movement to shifting gender roles and the development of postindustrial capitalism.

The publication of this text represents a significant contribution to the available technical literature on military and commercial test and evaluation. The first chapter provides important history and addresses the vital relationship of quality test and evaluation (T&E) to the acquisition and operations of defense weapons systems. Subsequent chapters cover such concepts as cost and operational effectiveness analysis, modeling and simulation, and verification, validation, and accreditation, among others. In the closing chapters, new and unique concepts for the future are discussed.

Making Arms in the Machine Age traces the growth and development of the United States Arsenal at Frankford, Pennsylvania, from its origin in 1816 to 1870. During this period, the arsenal evolved from a small post where skilled workers hand-produced small arms ammunition to a full-scale industrial complex employing a large civilian workforce.

James Farley uses the history of the arsenal to examine larger issues including the changing technology of early nineteenth-century warfare, the impact of new technology on the United States Army, and the reactions of workers and their families and communities to the coming of industrialization. Shortly after the War of 1812, the U. S. Army founded several new arsenals, including Frankford, to build up supplies of arms and ammunition then in short supply. At that time, the Army was held in low regard because of its perceived poor performance in the war, so the arrival of arsenals was not welcomed. By 1870, however, the arsenal at Frankford had integrated itself into the community and become a valued and respected member of it.

Farley argues that the Ordnance Department of the U. S. Army created an industrial system of manufacture at Frankford well in advance of private industry. He also contends that the evolution of the Army into an employer of a large-scale civilian workforce helped to end the isolation and anti-militarism that plagued it after the War of 1812. Farley's study joins recent work in the history of technology, such as Judith McGaw's That Wonderful Machine, that seeks to understand technological change in its social and cultural context.

With many of the most important new military systems of the past decade produced by small firms that won competitive government contracts, defense-industry consultant James Hasik argues in "Arms and Innovation" that small firms have a number of advantages relative to their bigger competitors. Such firms are marked by an entrepreneurial spirit and fewer bureaucratic obstacles, and thus can both be more responsive to changes in the environment and more strategic in their planning. This is demonstrated, Hasik shows, by such innovation in military technologies as those that protect troops from roadside bombs in Iraq and the Predator drones that fly over active war zones and that are crucial to our new war on terror.
For all their advantages, small firms also face significant challenges in access to capital and customers. To overcome such problems, they can form alliances either with each other or with larger companies. Hasik traces the trade-offs of such alliances and provides crucial insight into their promises and pitfalls.
This ground-breaking study is a significant contribution to understanding both entrepreneurship and alliances, two crucial factors in business generally. It will be of interest to readers in the defense sector as well as the wider business community.

Wartime is costly. Whilst the human cost is a burden which remains part of our every waking thoughts for many years after the end of the conflict, the physical cost, at least in some cases, is easier to deal with. Some, if not most of the physical cost of war, is spent in the constant supply of materials including armaments and machines to the troops- wherever they happen to be fighting. Of course the Services have always needed supplies of uniforms, equipment and machines. However, the rate of expansion of the Services and the rate of consumption of armaments increases dramatically in wartime. Pre-war traditional manufacturers simply could not cope with the sudden increase in orders. The only solution was to fabricate what was needed, in the Second World War at least, in additional factories. Shadow Factories was the term used to describe the use of third party factories and equipment used to manufacture components or complete units which were then passed on to the Services. These units could be anything from tanks, parts of aircraft to small pumps or rifles. The list was almost endless. Clearly it would be impossible to walk into the nearest engineering shop and expect them to manufacture heavy components. The railway yards were used to dealing with heavy blocks of metals and so they were approached to help with heavier vehicles such as tanks. Similarly the motor manufacturers were asked to help out with producing trucks and jeeps, for example. Of course this need necessitated formal contracts, and as far as possible discretion so that the German bombers could not locate and destroy vital sources of supplies. In some cases, such was the level of secrecy that components for aircraft for example, were fabricated in a number of shadow factories and assembled in a different location. In that way the exact engineering drawings could be more easily controlled and a stray bomb would only destroy part of the plans and planes. Where relevant, examples are provided from across the United Kingdom and cover an extensive range of machines and vehicles. Some details will also be provided concerning armament shells, some of which were made in one site and filled in other facilities. The government departments were certainly kept busy keeping track of it all!

While researching his previous study, Arsenal of Democracy: The American Automobile Industry in World War II (Wayne State University Press, 2013), award-winning automotive historian Charles K. Hyde discovered the many remarkable photos that were part of the era's historical documentation. In Images from the Arsenal of Democracy, Hyde presents a selection of nearly three hundred of these documentary photos in striking black and white, with brief captions. Taken together, the images create a captivating portrait of this crucial moment in American business, military and cultural history. Images from the Arsenal of Democracy spans from 1940 until the end of the war, presenting up-close, rarely seen views of newly built plants and repurposed production lines, a staggering variety of war products and components and the many workers behind Detroit's wartime production miracles. The human faces that Hyde presents are especially compelling, as photos show the critical role played by previously underused workers - namely women and African Americans. Images from the Arsenal is divided into chapters by theme, including "Preparing for War before Pearl Harbor"; "Planning Defense Production after Pearl Harbor"; "Aircraft Engines and Propellers"; "Aircraft Components and Complete Aircraft"; "Tanks and Other Armored Vehicles"; "Jeeps, Trucks, and Amphibious Vehicles"; "Guns, Shells, Bullets, and Other War Goods"; "The New Workers"; and "Celebrating the Production Achievements". The first comprehensive and detailed history drawn solely from the surviving photographic record of wartime Detroit, Images from the Arsenal will be appreciated by automotive historians, World War II scholars and American history buffs.

Despite being the inventor of the tank and responsible for campaign-winning tactics, by the start of the Second World War the United Kingdom had fallen well behind other nations in the design and build of armoured vehicles. Here, William Suttie uncovers the history of tank design from a government perspective and the decisions and failures that led to that state of affairs, and details the formation of the Fighting Vehicles Research and Development Establishment at Chertsey. Known as the Tank Factory, the Chertsey establishment sought to ensure that the United Kingdom became world-leading in the field of military vehicle research and design, and that the British Army would never be underprotected or outgunned again. Drawing on unpublished sources and photographs, this fascinating book reveals the establishment's history, its groundbreaking research and its inventions and designs, including first-hand insights from those who worked there.

The Panel on Business Challenges within the Defense Industry conducted hearings, held roundtable discussions with industry, and reviewed many studies and publications that have examined the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) in order to gain insight into the complexity of the industrial base and the wide variety of factors influencing business behaviour and the shaping of the DIB. These efforts highlighted that the DIB is unique in that the Department of Defense (DOD) plays a role as both the customer and regulator of the DIB. This book provides several recommendations that the Panel believes will improve the defence business environment, reduce barriers to entry, spur innovation, increase competition, and aid in getting critical technology into the hands of the Warfighter.

South Africa's arms industry is an interesting phenomenon. Virtually nonexistent in 1960, the industry developed with almost unprecedented rapidity and by the mid '80s employed more than 150,000 people. Motivated by the quest for security and involvement in regional wars, South Africa was one of a handful of states in the developing world willing to bear the economic burden of a massive arms industry and the result was an armaments industry like no other in Africa. With the advent of majority rule in 1994, the new South African government faced many difficult choices, including the future of an important pillar of the thoroughly discredited apartheid government-the armaments industry. After more than a decade of majority rule, the armaments industry is a key government partner in the new South Africa and a global actor in its own right. This book explores the significant historical and ideological obstacles the new South Africa overcame and the rehabilitation of the arms industry in the 1990s to serve and ultimately contribute to the country's redevelopment.

The de-tooling and conversion of the vast Soviet defence industry, following the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, is vital for Russian political, economic and social regeneration and stability, and has huge implications for international relations and the world economy. Tarja Cronberg's original study is based on an empirical examination of all aspects of the Soviet military-technical establishment and is firmly grounded in political and social theory.