Orbital fortresses poised to fry entire cities with no warning using giant mirrors. Bombers that take off from Earth, punch through the thin border between the atmosphere and vacuum and take advantage of that lofty altitude to speed across the globe on missions of mass destruction. These and other exotic orbital weapons were under consideration, or even active development, in the early decades of humanity's push into space. And no wonder. The era of frantic, dueling, American and Soviet space-exploration efforts -- which stretched from the end of World War II to the United States' successful Moon landing in July 1969 -- had its roots in Nazi Germany, a country that pinned its hope for global conquest on equally ambitious superweapons. In the decades following World War II, the top scientists in the U.S. and Soviet space programs were ex-Nazis most notably rocket-designer Wernher von Braun, who sided with the Americans. The basic technologies of the space race derived from Nazi superweapons, in particular von Braun's V-2 rocket. But orbital war never broke out in those heady decades of intense space competition. It's possible to triangulate the moment the seemingly inevitable became evitable. July 29, 1958. The day U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower reluctantly signed the law creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Starting that day, the U.S. military gradually ceded to NASA, a civilian agency, leadership of American efforts in space. Even von Braun, once a leading advocate of orbital warfare, went along. Space-based superweapons and their architects, and the high-stakes politics that reined them in, are the subject of this brief book.

In 2010 a 32-year-old, socially awkward, unemployed African-American Army Veteran, who had been kicked out of the service and was living with his father in the South Carolina countryside while facing federal pornography charges, spent a significant portion of his life's savings on the filing fee to run for U.S. Senate in the Democratic primary to challenge incumbent tea party kingmaker Jim Demint. Alvin Greene didn't campaign, didn't even have a website and no one knew who he was. Until he won.

The 'Stan is a collection of short comics about America's longest war. The tales in this book--based on reporting by David Axe and Kevin Knodell and drawn by artist Blue Delliquanti-are all true and took place in roughly the first decade of the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan. While the stories are from the recent past, The 'Stan is still very much about Afghanistan's, and America's, present. And likely future.

In 2001, the Pentagon had just 200 robotic aircraft. In 2008 it had more than 5,000. The number of military ground robots jumped from 160 in 2004 to around 4,000 in 2006. Only underwater robots lagged: so far just a few dozen systems have entered service. Under the water is, after all, the toughest environment for robots. But even undersea bots will see a boost in coming years. The Pentagon has plans to spend at least $4 billion a year for the foreseeable future designing and building robots.

The spread of robots in our armies, navies and air forces has greatly advanced the science, engineering and techniques for mixing thinking people and thinking machines. And it has forced us to try answering a basic moral question. Just how much responsibility should we surrender to machines? If and when robots fulfill their promise to make war cheaper and easier for our side, will we discover that we wage war too lightly? Are we already guilty of that sin?

This book examines just a handful of the many types of war bots, and just a few of the ways they're being used in the expanding American-led "war on terror." Some of these robots have been in service for years. Some are still just prototypes. Between them they span the entire range of military robotics. Some are killers. Others are helpers. All of them are soldiers with no fear.

No money. No change of clothes. 4400 miles from home. Teller has been in Paris for 128 minutes.

While the use of drones is now commonplace in modern warfare, it was in its infancy during the Vietnam War, not to mention revolutionary and top secret. Drones would play an important - and today largely unheralded - role in the bloody, two-decade US air war over Vietnam and surrounding countries in the 1960s and '70s. Drone aircraft spotted targets for manned US bombers, jammed North Vietnamese radars and scattered propaganda leaflets, among other missions. This book explores that obscure chapter of history. DRONE WAR: VIETNAM is based on military records, official histories and published first-hand accounts from early drone operators, as well as on a close survey of existing scholarship on the topic. In their fledgling efforts to send robots instead of human beings on the most dangerous aerial missions, US operators in South-East Asia in the 1960s and '70s wrote the first chapter in the continuing tale of autonomous warfare.

Logistics includes the planning and practice of moving stuff raw materials, tools, finished products, and even people from one place to another. It carried American settlers over the sparsely populated Great Plains to connect the East Coast to the West Coast and has underpinned our domestic prosperity ever since. Logistics also solidified the global power and influence of the United States by guaranteeing our ability to rapidly reinforce Europe in the world wars, by helping us win the Cold War, and by enabling the current U.S. military to fight two wars at once. Further, logistics undergirds the world economy as swelling populations vie for shrinking resources, including energy, water, arable land, food, and cheap labor. Natural disasters urgently increase such demand."From A to B" is the story of modern American logistics, which will continue to shape the nation s role in this century. The book begins with a U.S. Army transportation company in Iraq during the height of insurgent attacks on American supply networks. Then it tours the shipyards, railways, highways, airports, classrooms, corporate boardrooms, and laboratories that make up our complex and colorful transportation culture. With competition stiffening and our national transportation infrastructure crumbling, we must find ways to move resources and products even more efficiently if we are to thrive. "From A to B" presents this challenge.