* Covers the equipment, operations, and individual security and combat skills essential for soldiers and others who must act as infantry * Extensively updated to include both the latest doctrine and lessons learned from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq * Essential for Army infantry NCOs and officers at the platoon and company level, Special Forces A-teams, Air Force and Navy Special Operations, Marines, and any other element that operates as infantry" A guide to the basic skills all soldiers, sailors, and Marines must know to prevail in small-unit dismounted combat operations, including planning, battle drills for offense and defense operations, patrols, construction and emplacement of fighting positions, use of weapons and call for fire, land navigation and map reading, communications, close quarter battle, and tactical combat casualty care.

Why do civilians suffer most during times of violent conflict? Why are civilian fatalities as much as eight times higher, calculated globally for current conflicts, than military fatalities? In Why They Die, Daniel Rothbart and Karina V. Korostelina address these questions through a systematic study of civilian devastation in violent conflicts. Pushing aside the simplistic definition of war as a guns-and-blood battle between two militant groups, the authors investigate the identity politics underlying conflicts of many types. During a conflict, all those on the opposite side are perceived as the enemy, with little distinction between soldiers and civilians. As a result, random atrocities and systematic violence against civilian populations become acceptable.

Rothbart and Korostelina devote the first half of the book to case studies: deportation of the Crimean Tatars from the Ukraine, genocide in Rwanda, the Lebanon War, and the war in Iraq. With the second half, they present new methodological tools for understanding different types of violent conflict and discuss the implications of these tools for conflict resolution.

In contemporary missions, soldiers often face unconventional opponents rather than enemy armies. How do Western soldiers deal with war criminals, rioters, or insurgents? What explains differences in behavior across military organizations in multinational missions? How does military conduct impact local populations? Comparing troops from the United States, Britain, Germany, and Italy at three sites of intervention (Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan), this book shows that militaries in the field apply idiosyncratic organizational routines. Friesendorf uses the concept of routines to explain, for example, why US soldiers are trigger-happy, why British soldiers patrol on foot, and why German soldiers avoid risk. Despite convergence in military structures and practices, militaries continue to fight differently, often with much autonomy. This bottom-up perspective focuses on different routines at the level of operations and tactics, thus contributing to a better understanding of the implementation of military missions, and highlighting failures of Western militaries to protect civilians.

When the Civil War began, Northern soldiers and civilians alike sought a framework to help make sense of the chaos that confronted them. Many turned first to the classic European military texts from the Napoleonic era, especially Antoine Henri Jomini's Summary of the Art of War. As Carol Reardon shows, Jomini's work was only one voice in what ultimately became a lively and contentious national discourse about how the North should conduct war at a time when warfare itself was rapidly changing. She argues that the absence of a strong intellectual foundation for the conduct of war at its start-or, indeed, any consensus on the need for such a foundation-ultimately contributed to the length and cost of the conflict. Reardon examines the great profusion of new or newly translated military texts of the Civil War years, intended to fill that intellectual void, and draws as well on the views of the soldiers and civilians who turned to them in the search for a winning strategy. In examining how debates over principles of military thought entered into the question of qualifications of officers entrusted to command the armies of Northern citizen soldiers, she explores the limitations of nineteenth-century military thought in dealing with the human elements of combat.

'This is what an SAS career is really like' AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE MAGAZINE Elite SAS Patrol Commander Stuart 'Nev' Bonner takes us inside the extraordinary and dangerous world of secret combat operations in this explosive, behind-the-scenes look at life inside the SAS. A world where capture means torture or death, and every move is trained for with precision detail to bring elite soldiers to the very peak of fighting ability. In a career spanning twenty years, fourteen of them in the SAS, Bonner shares with us the inside story of being out in front - and often behind enemy lines. From patrolling the mountains of East Timor to covert operations in Bougainville and the Solomon Islands, from sweeping into the Iraqi desert ahead of invading US forces to cripple Saddam Hussein's communications to patrolling in war-torn Baghdad and being in the middle of the disastrous Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan - this is a no-holds-barred account of what it's like to live, eat and breathe SAS. Now part of the HACHETTE MILITARY COLLECTION.

In an increasingly urbanized world, urban terrain has become a greater factor in military operations. Simultaneously, advances in military technology have given military forces sharply increased capabilities. The conflict comes from how urban terrain can negate or degrade many of those increased capabilities. What happens when advanced weapons are used in a close-range urban fight with an abundance of cover? Storming the City explores these issues by analyzing the performance of the US Army and US Marine Corps in urban combat in four major urban battles of the mid-twentieth century (Aachen 1944, Manila 1945, Seoul 1950, and Hue 1968). Alec Wahlman assesses each battle using a similar framework of capability categories, and separate chapters address urban warfare in American military thought. In the four battles, across a wide range of conditions, American forces were ultimately successful in capturing each city because of two factors: transferable competence and battlefield adaptation. The preparations US forces made for warfare writ large proved generally applicable to urban warfare. Battlefield adaptation, a strong suit of American forces, filled in where those overall preparations for combat needed fine tuning. From World War II to Vietnam, however, there was a gradual reduction in tactical performance in the four battles.

The existence of the Schlieffen plan has been one of the basic assumptions of twentieth-century military history. It was the perfect example of the evils of German militarism: aggressive, mechanical, disdainful of politics and of public morality. The Great War began in August 1914 allegedly because the Schlieffen plan forced the German government to transform a Balkan quarrel into a World War by attacking France. And, in the end, the Schlieffen plan failed at the battle of the Marne. Yet it has always been recognized that the Schlieffen plan included inconsistencies which have never been satisfactorily explained. On the basis of newly discovered documents from German archives, Terence Zuber presents a radically different picture of German war planning between 1871 and 1914, and concludes that, in fact, there never really was a 'Schlieffen plan'.

The twentieth century saw an unprecedented emphasis on fighting in all terrains, seasons and weather conditions. Such conditions made even basic survival difficult as subzero temperatures caused weapons to jam, engines to seize up and soldiers to suffer frostbite, snow blindness and hypothermia. The conditions often favoured small groups of mobile, lightly armed soldiers, rather than the armoured forces or air power that dominated other combat environments. Some European armies developed small numbers of specialist alpine troops before and during World War I, but these proved to be insufficient as nearly all the major combatants of World War II found themselves fighting for extended periods in extremely hostile cold-weather and/or alpine environments. Drawing upon manuals, memoirs and unit histories and illustrated with period tactical diagrams and specially commissioned full-colour artwork, this study sheds new light on the winter-warfare tactics and techniques of the US, British, German, Soviet and Finnish armies of World War II.

Accidental harm to civilians in warfare often becomes an occasion for public outrage, from citizens of both the victimized and the victimizing nation. In this vitally important book on a topic of acute concern for anyone interested in military strategy, international security, or human rights, Alexander B. Downes reminds readers that democratic and authoritarian governments alike will sometimes deliberately kill large numbers of civilians as a matter of military strategy. What leads governments to make such a choice?

Downes examines several historical cases: British counterinsurgency tactics during the Boer War, the starvation blockade used by the Allies against Germany in World War I, Axis and Allied bombing campaigns in World War II, and ethnic cleansing in the Palestine War. He concludes that governments decide to target civilian populations for two main reasons desperation to reduce their own military casualties or avert defeat, or a desire to seize and annex enemy territory. When a state's military fortunes take a turn for the worse, he finds, civilians are more likely to be declared legitimate targets to coerce the enemy state to give up. When territorial conquest and annexation are the aims of warfare, the population of the disputed land is viewed as a threat and the aggressor state may target those civilians to remove them. Democracies historically have proven especially likely to target civilians in desperate circumstances.

In Targeting Civilians in War, Downes explores several major recent conflicts, including the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Civilian casualties occurred in each campaign, but they were not the aim of military action. In these cases, Downes maintains, the achievement of quick and decisive victories against overmatched foes allowed democracies to win without abandoning their normative beliefs by intentionally targeting civilians. Whether such "restraint" can be guaranteed in future conflicts against more powerful adversaries is, however, uncertain. During times of war, democratic societies suffer tension between norms of humane conduct and pressures to win at the lowest possible costs. The painful lesson of Targeting Civilians in War is that when these two concerns clash, the latter usually prevails."

At the end of the Second World War, it quickly dawned on the West that the defeat of one totalitarian enemy - Hitler's Germany - had left another, our late ally turned potential foe: Soviet Russia. This official assessment of the Red Army's strength and standing, published in 1949, is therefore of consuming interest to students of the Cold War. It comprises a history of the Red Army from its formation in 1918 after the Bolshevik Revolution to its triumph in the Second World War. Then follows a section on the army's command and control structure; notes on its post-war re-organisation; and two long chapters on tactics - including such subjects as tanks, air support; night attacks and artillery. There are more chapters on weapons, equipment, conditions of service, supply and airborne operations. With charts of command structures, and photographs and diagrams of important weapons, this is as complete a snapshot of a potentially hostile enemy force as can be imagined.

Osprey's study of street-fighting tactics during World War II (1939-1945). In a continuation of the tactics mini-series, this new book describes and analyzes the physical tactics of the close-quarter fighting that took place in the ruined cities on both the Western and Eastern Fronts of World War II. Street-to-street fighting in cities was not a new development, but the bombed-out shells of cities and advances in weaponry meant that World War II took it to a new level of savagery and violence. New tactics developed around the defenses that ruined cities offered. This book examines these tactics, describing how a small group of infantry could now destroy whole tank units for very little cost before melting away into the cities' rubble. It also analyzes the need for infantry units to clear ruins of the enemy, and looks at how this was done, and the cost of the slow house-to-house fighting that was seen across the war, from Stalingrad to Berlin. Packed with eye-witness accounts, tutorials from original training manuals, maps, and full color artwork which illustrates these tactics, this is an eye-opening insight into the tactics and experiences of infantry fighting their way through ruined cities in the face of heavy casualty rates and vicious resistance.

Essential background to the German blitzkrieg of World War II Complements the stories of panzer aces like Otto Carius and Michael Wittmann

In the wake of World War I, the German army lay in ruins--defeated in the war, sundered by domestic upheaval, and punished by the Treaty of Versailles. A mere twenty years later, Germany possessed one of the finest military machines in the world, capable of launching a stunning blitzkrieg attack against Poland in 1939. Well-known military historian Robert M. Citino shows how Germany accomplished this astonishing reversal and developed the doctrine, tactics, and technologies that its military would use to devastating effect in World War II.

Accidental harm to civilians in warfare often becomes an occasion for public outrage, from citizens of both the victimized and the victimizing nation. In this vitally important book on a topic of acute concern for anyone interested in military strategy, international security, or human rights, Alexander B. Downes reminds readers that democratic and authoritarian governments alike will sometimes deliberately kill large numbers of civilians as a matter of military strategy. What leads governments to make such a choice?

Downes examines several historical cases: British counterinsurgency tactics during the Boer War, the starvation blockade used by the Allies against Germany in World War I, Axis and Allied bombing campaigns in World War II, and ethnic cleansing in the Palestine War. He concludes that governments decide to target civilian populations for two main reasons desperation to reduce their own military casualties or avert defeat, or a desire to seize and annex enemy territory. When a state's military fortunes take a turn for the worse, he finds, civilians are more likely to be declared legitimate targets to coerce the enemy state to give up. When territorial conquest and annexation are the aims of warfare, the population of the disputed land is viewed as a threat and the aggressor state may target those civilians to remove them. Democracies historically have proven especially likely to target civilians in desperate circumstances.

In Targeting Civilians in War, Downes explores several major recent conflicts, including the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Civilian casualties occurred in each campaign, but they were not the aim of military action. In these cases, Downes maintains, the achievement of quick and decisive victories against overmatched foes allowed democracies to win without abandoning their normative beliefs by intentionally targeting civilians. Whether such "restraint" can be guaranteed in future conflicts against more powerful adversaries is, however, uncertain. During times of war, democratic societies suffer tension between norms of humane conduct and pressures to win at the lowest possible costs. The painful lesson of Targeting Civilians in War is that when these two concerns clash, the latter usually prevails."

Strategic bombardments, either aimed explicitly at civilians or deployed in circumstances where extensive civilian deaths are written off as collateral damage or accidental, are becoming increasingly common. This book shows how certain European colonial powers, notably Britain, initiated aerial bombardment of civilians after World War I, how it was an instrument of choice in World War II, and how it has since been refined and practised by the US in Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. It exposes the rationalizations put forward to avoid the label of 'state terrorism', the race, gender and class biases used to justify bombing 'other' people and the dirty secret about the so-called 'clean' use of air power. It argues that if terrorism is to be diminished, the role of aerial bombing in sustaining global violence must be recognized and confronted.

Intelligence professionals are employees of the government working in a business that some would consider unethical-the business of spying. This book looks at the dilemmas that exist when one is asked to perform a civil service that is in conflict with what that individual believes to be "ethical." This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations that confront government employees. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. To the intelligence professional, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. Managers, supervisors, and employees of all levels should read this book. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, Ethics of Spying makes the statement that the intelligence professional has ethics.

Describes the operational challenges posed by the urban environment and proposes several recommendations to surmount them. In every operation, the functions of command, control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and communications are all fundamental to success. But in cities, the dense population, many manmade structures, and other challenges act to severely impede these functions in several ways. This monograph contemplates the nature of those challenges and proposes several recommendations to surmount them in both the short and longer terms.

Gives an overview of the formidable tasks facing US Army combat service support (CSS) in urban operations and recommends ways for the CSS community to prepare itself to meet them. The inevitability of US armed forces future involvement in urban contingencies worldwide demands that those responsible for arming, manning, sustaining, and otherwise supporting these operations prepare for the challenges inherent in such undertakings. This report gives an overview of these formidable tasks and recommends ways for the US Army combat service support (CSS) community to prepare itself to meet them.

Using a case study based on the Army's Stryker Brigade Combat team, the authors explore how the Army might improve its ability to contribute to prompt global power projection, that is, strategically responsive early-entry forces for time-critical events.