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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Weapons & equipment
Illustrated with detailed artworks of modern military aircraft and
their markings with exhaustive captions and specifications,
Technical Guide: Modern Military Aircraft is an extensively
researched review of the military aircraft deployed by the world's
air forces in recent conflicts in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere. Organised alphabetically by
manufacturer, this book includes every type of aircraft in use in
the world today, from the F-22 Raptor through the Dassault Mirage
2000 to the MiG-29 and Su-33. The book includes multirole fighters,
ground attack aircraft, high-level bombers, reconnaissance
aircraft, carrier aircraft, and unmanned drones. The guide is
illustrated with profile artworks, three-views, and special cutaway
artworks of the more famous aircraft in service, such as the F-15E
Strike Eagle, Sukhoi Su-27 and Eurofighter Typhoon. Illustrated
with more than 110 artworks, Technical Guide: Modern Military
Aircraft is an essential reference guide for modellers and
enthusiasts with an interest in modern military aircraft.
While there are many books on logistics which understand the
concept of service and supply, none understand the important role
of transportation in synchronizing logistics. Delivering Victory:
The History of U.S. Military Transportation covers the evolution of
military transportation in the U.S. Armed Forces from the Spanish
American War until the recent humanitarian missions to Haiti and
West Africa to show how military transportation both synchronizes
and creates logistics operations and therefore shapes the conduct
of contingency and combat operations. Based on a rich selection of
both primary and secondary sources, this book explores how the role
of military transportation in the U.S has evolved, from disparate
organizations to a synchronized logistics approach which connects
dots from end to end, from fort and factory, and to the foxhole.
Chronicling the birth of a separate branch of the Army during the
Second World War and the creation of a strategic logistics
technique headed by a single organization, the author demonstrates
how transportation created logistics operations due to its inherent
moving nature which allowed military operations to change in scale
and magnitude. To this end, this book demonstrates how the ability
to deploy and sustain mass around the globe became the hallmark of
American military transportation capability, and an essential part
of delivering victory.
The global threat of nuclear weapons is one of today's key
policy issues. Using a wide variety of sources, including recently
declassified information, Nathan E. Busch offers detailed
examinations of the nuclear programs in the United States, Russia,
China, Iraq, India, and Pakistan, as well as the emerging programs
in Iran and North Korea. He also assesses the current debates in
international relations over the risks associated with the
proliferation of nuclear weapons in the post--Cold War world. Busch
explores how our understanding of nuclear proliferation centers on
theoretical disagreements about how best to explain and predict the
behavior of states. His study bridges the gap between theory and
empirical evidence by determining whether countries with nuclear
weapons have adequate controls over their nuclear arsenals and
fissile material stockpiles (such as highly enriched uranium and
plutonium). Analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of various
systems of nuclear weapons regulation, Busch projects what types of
controls proliferating states are likely to employ and assesses the
threat posed by the possible theft of fissile materials by aspiring
nuclear states or by terrorists. No End in Sight provides the most
comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of issues at the forefront of
contemporary international affairs. With the resurgence of the
threat of nuclear terrorism, Busch's insights and conclusions will
prove critical to understanding the implications of nuclear
proliferation.
Stephen Hill analyzes the factors that affected the success or failure of the UN disarmament processes during intra-state peacekeeping missions conducted between 1991 and 1999. He examines seven case studies including Cambodia, Mozambique, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, El Salvador, and the last two operations in Angola. The text utilizes developing approaches to conflict resolution in order to create an analytical framework through which to assess the UN's attempts at disarmament.
This book examines the recent intersection of national security and
public health regarding biological threats to the U.S. populace and
proposes improvements to the executive and legislative development
of U.S. policy addressing biological threat mitigation. Over the
last 20 years, the national security community has engaged with
disease-related issues that have traditionally been the scope of
public health agencies. The federal government's response has been
to create a single national biodefense strategy, which has been
largely ineffective in improving conditions due to poor
terminology, a lack of leadership, and a failure to assess
government programs. Applying a public policy framework, Albert J.
Mauroni examines how the government addresses biological
threats-including disease prevention, bioterrorism response,
military biodefense, biosurety, and agricultural biosecurity and
food safety. He proposes a new approach to countering biological
threats, arguing that lead agencies should focus on implementing
discrete portfolios with annual assessments against clear and
achievable objectives. Examines each of the five biological threat
sectors and identifies who develops and executes the policy for
those sectors, what funding they receive, how each policy area's
objectives are implemented, what congressional committees are
involved, and who advocates for them Covers policy evolution since
the beginning of the 21st century and identifies the major
milestones in biological threat mitigation Unveils the real issues
behind public health challenges, such as funding for disease
prevention programs Clarifies commonly misunderstood terminology,
such as health security, biosecurity, and biodefense
This book explores how revolutionary developments and convergence
of the chemical, life and associated sciences are impacting
contemporary toxin and bioregulator research, and examines the
risks of such research being misused for malign purposes.
Investigating illustrative cases of dual use research of potential
concern in China, India, Iran, Russia, Syria and the USA, the
authors discuss how states can ensure such research and related
activities are not utilised in weapons development. Although toxins
and bioregulators are, in theory, covered by both the Biological
and Toxin Weapons Convention and Chemical Weapons Convention, this
apparent overlap in reality masks a dangerous regulatory gap - with
neither Convention implemented effectively to address threats of
weaponisation. This book highlights the potentially damaging
consequences for international peace and security, and proposes
realistic routes for action by states and the scientific community.
'The young dictator comes under close scrutiny in this intelligent
account' Sunday Times When Kim Jong Un became the leader of North
Korea in 2011, many expected his rule to be short. Years later, he
remains the unchallenged dictator of a nuclear rogue state with
weaponry capable of threatening the West. In this behind-the-scenes
look, former CIA analyst and North Korea expert Jung H. Pak reveals
the explosive story of Kim Jong II's third son: the spoilt and
impetuous child, the mediocre student, the ruthless murderer, the
shrewd grand strategist.
Failure to exploit the potential of an original idea is a recurring
phenomenon in our national history. Few failures, however, can have
been so costly in human life as that of our military commanders
early in 1916 to appreciate that the tank was a war winning weapon.
The slaughter of the Somme, Passchendaele and Ypres salient had to
be endured before accepted conventional methods were abandoned and
the tank given a chance. Bryan Cooper describes the early tank
actions in vivid detail, with many eye-witness accounts. He tells
of the courage and endurance of the crews not just in battle but in
the appalling conditions in which they had to drive and fight their
primitive vehicles. Scalded, scorched and poisoned with exhaust
fumes, constantly threatened with being burned to death, these
crews eventually laid the foundation for the Allied Victory in
World War I. The book is well illustrated with many original
photographs which give the present day reader a glimpse of the
infancy of a dominant weapon of modern war.
During the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of people died from
the use of nuclear weapons in Nuclear War I and other nuclear
disasters. Dr. Newtan's book describes the disastrous consequences
of the following nuclear developments all of which occurred in the
20th century: The Trinity Test of a nuclear device (explosion) The
destruction of Hiroshima by a uranium bomb The destruction of
Nagasaki by a plutonium bomb The hydrogen bomb, neutron bomb, and
cobalt bomb Radioactive fallout Radiological weapons The BRAVO Test
(hydrogen bomb) Three Mile Island nuclear reactor disaster
Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster Fermi I breeder reactor disaster
Nuclear submarine disasters (U.S., U.S.S.R.) Thresher nuclear
submarine disaster Scorpion nuclear submarine disaster Nuclear
satellite disasters Lost nuclear weapons Lost nuclear fissile
materials for weapons Nuclear waste disasters Acts of war on
nuclear facilities Nuclear terrorism Proliferation of nuclear
weapons Nuclear reactors in space Nuclear weapons in space Nuclear
waste - can it be safely stored for millennia?
This is the most up-to-the minute survey of the vital subject of
sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) to appear in ten years. It
systematically analyzes the technological promises and weaknesses
of SLCMs, especially conventionally armed, land-attack versions,
explaining sophisticated technologies in language accessible to the
general reader. Eric H. Arnett presents a cogent assessment of the
crux of the SLCM issue for U.S. security, examining the coastal
nation concept of the U.S. defensive position and investigating
whether technology can adequately compensate for geography as
Tomahawks and their Soviet counterparts give way to more advanced
progeny. Arnett weighs the trade-offs in a frank discussion of the
technologies and missions envisioned for current and future SLCMs.
This well-researched, authoritative study evaluates both U.S. and
Soviet SLCM arsenals, examines the role of arms control and
unilateral initiatives in managing the dangers of SLCMs, and
critically assesses the claims made for the Tomahawk conventionally
armed cruise missile. The relevance of a changing international
scene and domestic fiscal chaos to SLCM issues is fully
appraised.
The book's eight chapters lead the reader through all aspects of
this complex field with admirable lucidity. Early chapters describe
missions envisioned for U.S. conventionally armed SLCMs, and assess
actual SLCM technology. Chapter 4 addresses the reciprocal problem
of Soviet SLCMs, describing possible and likely roles of Soviet
nuclear and conventionally armed SLCMs and the importance of
offering responses. The increasingly important question of how
SLCMs might be used in the developing world, both by and against
U.S. forces and security partners is considered in Chapter 5--an
especially relevant discussion in light of the apparent success of
the Tomahawk SLCM in the 1991 war with Iraq. The next two chapters
describe SLCM arms control as it has been practiced and discuss,
from two vantage points, the roles of future arms-control and
unilateral disarmament initiatives in addressing the disadvantages
of SLCMs. Finally, the immediate implications of the previous
chapters for policy practitioners are developed in a chapter that
focuses on specific policy recommendations. This timely
contribution is a reliable source of information on SLCMs for the
interested public, the non-government arms control community, naval
personnel, and members of both Congress and the administration.
Countries around the globe are continuously investing money into
weapon development and manufacturing. While weapon design has been
a relevant topic, from the Middle Ages to today, the morality of
this practice is not commonly presented in research. The Morality
of Weapons Design and Development: Emerging Research and
Opportunities is an essential scholarly resource that presents
detailed discussions on ethical dilemmas in weapons design and
innovations. While highlighting relevant topics including
projectile and nuclear weapons, the true costs of war, design in
peacetime, and weapons development and justification, this book is
an ideal resource for researchers, engineers, graduate students,
and professionals who have an interest in weapons design,
development, and ethics.
With a brand new introduction from the author, this is the complete
story of how the bomb was developed. It is told in rich, human,
political, and scientific detail, from the turn-of-the-century
discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping
of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so
swiftly -- or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical
discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there
was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as
merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the
Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening
rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers -- Szilard,
Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and yon
Neumann -- stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.
Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by
minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome
discovery and invention. The Making of the Atomic Bomb has been
compared in its sweep and importance to William L. Shirer's The
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It is at once a narrative tour de
forceand a document as powerful as its subject.
Illustrated with colourful artworks of carrier aircraft and their
markings, Allied Carrier Aircraft of World War II is a detailed
guide to all the aircraft deployed by the Allied navies from 1939
to 1945. Organised chronologically by type and nationality, this
book includes fighters, fighter-bombers, torpedo bombers,
dive-bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, floatplanes and flying
boats. All the best-known types are featured, such as the Grumman
F4F Wildcat, Douglas TBD Devastator and Douglas SBD Dauntless that
fought at the battle of Midway in 1942, as well as the Fairey
Swordfish torpedo bomber that proved so effective at the Battle of
Taranto in 1940 and helped sink the German battleship Bismarck in
1941. The entries are accompanied by exhaustive captions and
specifications. The guide is illustrated with profile artworks,
three-views, and special cutaway artworks of the more famous
aircraft in service, such as the Blackburn Skua torpedo bomber,
Curtiss SB2 Helldiver dive-bomber and the Vought F4U Corsair heavy
fighter. Illustrated with more than 100 artworks, Allied Carrier
Aircraft of World War II is an essential reference guide for
modellers and enthusiasts of military aircraft of World War II.
There is probably no area of more crucial concern nor one more
subject to possible misunderstanding and riddled with paradox than
nuclear weapons and their use, not only in war, but as deterrents
to war. In Strategic Impasse, Cimbala examines the critical issues,
problems, and paradoxes inherent in the current nuclear situation.
It is from a fundamental contradiction--the usefulness of nuclear
weapons versus the undesirability of nuclear war--that nuclear
deadlock arises. Their usefulness as deterrents is based on their
destructive potential and the balance of power in Europe cannot be
adjusted until the inflexible, bipolar "balance of terror" is
addressed. Ironically, superpower sovereignty in nuclear first
strike/retaliation capability, shared across the divided East-West
political buffer zone, created the impetus for improvements in
"conventional" warfare. To the extent war can be contained below
the nuclear threshold, conventional weaponry contributes to
"deterrence by denial." One difficulty lies in the improbability of
completely isolating the nuclear from the conventional battlefield
in a European scenario. Also, a level of superpower force perceived
to be adequate in peacetime might prove to be an inadequate
intrawar deterrent. Because of the underdevelopment of conceptual
frameworks, "credible deterrence"--the creation of nuclear
campaigns designed to prevent war--remains conjectural. Highly
usable weapons require a command system that can provide for
simultaneous fighting and escalation, but escalation beyond a
certain level conflicts with control and therefore usability. In
turn, low expectations of weapon usability may weaken deterrence.
In Gorbachev's "defensivesufficiency," forces for aggression and
surprise attack would be diminished, while forces for defense would
be strengthened. The problem lies not only in differentiating
between offensive and defensive weaponry but in achieving a
consensus on such a definition by NATO's member countries. The book
is divided into three parts: the first section, "Issues of Theory
and Strategy," scrutinizes the relationship between offense and
defense and examines SDI and more inclusive strategic defense
matters. It also questions the connection between policy objectives
and force, and explores the "complication of externalities," such
as relations with allies. In section two, "Stretching Deterrence,"
Cimbala reviews the "operational art" likely to be employed by the
Soviets in a conventionally fought European war and defines and
appraises the "sensor-cyber" revolution in technology and its
impacts on preferred strategies. The final part, "Beyond
Deterrence," considers war termination scenarios and related
issues, including sociopolitical aspects, surveys the part nuclear
weapons play in superpower competition in the Third World, and
explains how issues of sovereignty effect deterrence, avoidance,
and future super power relations. Strategic Impasse will enable
scholars and students of military affairs as well as political
scientists and government officials to see beyond current "nuclear
rhetoric" and to make informed judgments on an issue that
fundamentally affects this nation's and the world's future.
This book focuses on Biopreparat, the Soviet agency created in
1974, which spearheaded the largest and most sophisticated
biological warfare programme the world has ever seen. At its
height, Biopreparat employed more than 30,000 personnel and
incorporated an enormous network embracing military-focused
research institutes, design centres, biowarfare pilot facilities
and dual-use production plants. The secret network pursued major
offensive R&D programmes, which sought to use genetic
engineering techniques to create microbial strains resistant to
antibiotics and with wholly new and unexpected pathogenic
properties. During the mid-1980s, Biopreparat increased in size and
political importance and also emerged as a major civil
biopharmaceutical player in the USSR. In the wake of the collapse
of the Soviet Union in 1991, an acute struggle for control of
Biopreparat's most valuable assets took place and the network was
eventually broken-up and control of its facilities transferred to a
myriad of state agencies and private companies.
On 9 May 1912 the first airplane take-off from a ship was made from
the deck of the HMS Hibernia. In July 1918, seven Sopwith Camels
launched from the converted battlecruiser HMS Furious damaged the
German airbase at Tonder and destroyed two zeppelins. The age of
the carrier was born. In the interwar years the Lexington, Akagi
and Courageous-class carriers were developed, but it was only
during World War II that the aircraft carrier finally came into its
own. Fleet carriers carrying 30-40 aircraft allowed the Japanese
and US navies to project air power across the vast Pacific Ocean,
with the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor presaging a new kind of
warfare. With the sinking of hundreds of ships during World War II,
including the German battleship Bismarck in 1941, by the end of the
war carriers ruled the waves and the era of the battleship had
passed. Aircraft Carriers features 52 of the most significant flat
tops and amphibious assault ships built since the 1920s until the
present day, from the USS Yorktown, which survived direct hits
during the battle of Midway (1942), through the Falklands War
veteran HMS Invincible, to the mighty Nimitz class, the core of the
US Navy's carrier battle groups today. Also included are
significant amphibious assault ships, such as the USS Tarawa and
French Mistral. Each entry includes a brief description of the
ship's development and history, a colour profile view or cutaway,
key features and specifications. Packed with more than 200 artworks
and photographs, Aircraft Carriers is a colourful guide for the
naval warfare enthusiast.
The importance of technology in our day to day lives is something
that few people would deny. At home and in the office, in business
and in politics, the effects of technology are pervasive. In this
important new study, Anthony DiFilippo examines one specific aspect
of this issue: the forces of political economy that direct the
course of industrial technology. The book thoroughly analyzes the
topic both empirically and comparatively and assesses the impact
the political economy of technology has on the nation's standard of
living, its quality of life, and its long-term prospects for
economic and democratic advancement. In addition, DiFilippo
concludes with a practical and rational alternative to confront
many of the economic problems described. The book's primary thesis
states that recent U.S. industrial policy, which has emphasized
continuous advancement of military capabilities, has absorbed large
amounts of capital and technical personnel. At the same time,
foreign nations have improved their technological capacities
through comprehensive, civilian-supported industrial policies. To
improve U.S. competitiveness, manufacturing, productivity, and,
ultimately, the standard of living, DiFilippo shows that
technological resources must be shifted to the civilian sector. He
examines a wide range of issues surrounding the topic, from the
demise of the post-industrial economy and the conventional
explanations for competitive decline to the resource drain of
advanced warfare and the industrial policies of Japan, West
Germany, and France. An extensive set of charts and tables support
DiFilippo's argument and point out some of the serious economic
problems the U.S. approach to high technology has caused. A
bibliography of selected works is also provided. With its
pertinence to current economic, political, and technological
issues, From Industry to Arms will be a valuable resource for
courses in government and business, political economy, policy
analysis, and science and technology. Public and academic libraries
will also find it to be an important and timely addition to their
collections.
This fully up-to-date reference book provides an authoritative
overview of the military helicopter. It begins with a detailed
history, from the ideas of Leonardo da Vinci through to the
tilt-rotor aircraft that have operated with coalition forces in
Afghan-istan. The book continues with an A-Z directory covering
over 80 helicopters from the most famous manufacturers including
Aerospatiale, Agusta, Bell, Boeing-Vertol, Eurocopter, Kamov,
Robinson, and Sikorsky. The origins, development and operation of
each type are clearly described, and a specification panel gives
key performance and dimensional data. This informative book is
superbly illustrated with cutaway drawings and over 500 photographs
showing helicopters both on the battlefield and in service.
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