The conventional narrative of the Vietnam War often glosses over the decade leading up to it. Covering the years 1954-1963, this book presents a thought-provoking reexamination of the war's long prelude--from the aftermath of French defeat at Dien Bien Phu--through Hanoi's decision to begin reunification by force--to the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Established narratives of key events are given critical reappraisal and new light is shed on neglected factors. The strategic importance of Laos is revealed as central to understanding how the war in the South developed.

In the 1970's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was made to manage our oceanic and atmospheric resources. The Southwest Fisheries Science Center is the research arm of NOAA's Southwest Region. Scientists study all areas from the Pacific Ocean to the Antarctic to make sure that the ocean and animals in it stay healthy and safe.

Fuel efficiency of aircraft is of great importance to the military and private sector. A more efficient wing design for UAVs would lead to improvements in mission support while reducing fuel costs for the Air Force. An experimental investigation of one candidate design, the Houck Aircraft Configuration, has been conducted in the AFIT low speed wind tunnel. This aircraft shares similarities to other joined-wing aircraft, but includes curved flow-guides of varying spanwise camber connecting the upper and lower wingtips. Experimental results show that the addition of flow guides on the 24" Houck Configuration results in a 2.5% reduction in L/Dmax at Re H 80K and a 0.3% reduction in L/Dmax at Re H 125K. This trend shows a decrease in the performance gap as the Reynolds number increases from 80K to 125K. It is recommended that additional testing at higher Reynolds numbers be performed to determine if an increase in performance can be shown. The designed flow guides proved to be successful in combining the upper and lower wing-tip vortices into a single vortex. The flow guides alter what would be two smaller compact vortices and instead produce a slightly larger, spread out vortex which follows the curve of the flow guide. Ultimately, evidence of improvements in aerodynamic efficiency will need to be shown before other claims of the design are demonstrated to be fully successful.

Arthur Goodzeit Award For seven weeks in 1929, the Republic of China and the Soviet Union battled in Manchuria over control of the Chinese Eastern Railroad. It was the largest military clash between China and a Western power ever fought on Chinese soil, involving more that a quarter million combatants. Michael M. Walker's The 1929 SinoSoviet War is the first full account of what UPI's Moscow correspondent called 'the war nobody knew' a 'limited modern war' that destabilized the region's balance of power, altered East Asian history, and sent grim reverberations through a global community giving lip service to demilitarizing in the wake of World War I. Walker locates the roots of the conflict in miscalculations by Chiang Kaishek and Chang Hsuehliang about the Soviets' political and military power-flawed assessments that prompted China's attempt to reassert full authority over the CER. The Soviets, on the other hand, were dominated by a Stalin eager to flex some military muscle and thoroughly convinced that war would win much more than petty negotiations. This was in fact, Walker shows, a watershed moment for Stalin, his regime, and his still young and untested military, disproving the assumption that the Red Army was incapable of fighting a modern war. By contrast, the outcome revealed how unprepared the Chinese military forces were to fight either the Red Army or the Imperial Japanese Army, their other primary regional competitor. And yet, while the Chinese commanders proved weak, Walker sees in the toughness of the overmatched infantry a hint of the rising nationalism that would transform China's troops from a mercenary army into a formidable professional force, with powerful implications for an overconfident Japanese Imperial Army in 1937. Using Russian, Chinese, and Japanese sources, as well as declassified US military reports, Walker deftly details the war from its onset through major military operations to its aftermath, giving the first clear and complete account of a little known but profoundly consequential clash of great powers between the World Wars.