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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.