Burning the Sky


Book Description

The unbelievable true story of an American Cold War scheme to detonate nuclear bombs in space is revealed in this military history exposé. The summer of 1958 was a nerve-racking time. The Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik drew America into a game of nuclear one-upmanship. Tensions escalated between the two superpowers over their respective nuclear weapons reserves, both sides desperate for a solution to the imminent threat of massive destruction. In America, an outlandish yet ingenious idea was raised by the eccentric physicist Nicholas Christofilos: launching atomic bombs into outer space to fry incoming Soviet ICBMs with an artificial radiation belt. Known as Project Argus, this secret plan was the riskiest scientific experiment in history. In Burning the Sky, Mark Wolverton draws on recently declassified sources to tell this incredible, unknown story. Burning the Sky chronicles Christofilos’s unconventional idea from its inception to execution—when the so-called mad scientist persuaded the military to use the entire Earth’s atmosphere as a laboratory. A meticulously researched tale that reads like a sci-fi thriller, Burning the Sky will intrigue any lover of scientific or military history.




Learning War


Book Description

Learning War examines the U.S. Navy’s doctrinal development from 1898–1945 and explains why the Navy in that era was so successful as an organization at fostering innovation. A revolutionary study of one of history’s greatest success stories, this book draws profoundly important conclusions that give new insight, not only into how the Navy succeeded in becoming the best naval force in the world, but also into how modern organizations can exploit today’s rapid technological and social changes in their pursuit of success. Trent Hone argues that the Navy created a sophisticated learning system in the early years of the twentieth century that led to repeated innovations in the development of surface warfare tactics and doctrine. The conditions that allowed these innovations to emerge are analyzed through a consideration of the Navy as a complex adaptive system. Learning War is the first major work to apply this complex learning approach to military history. This approach permits a richer understanding of the mechanisms that enable human organizations to evolve, innovate, and learn, and it offers new insights into the history of the United States Navy.




Incidents at Sea


Book Description

Drawing on extensive State Department files, declassified Navy policy papers, interviews with both former top officials and individuals who were involved in incidents, David F. Winkler examines the evolution of the U.S.-Soviet naval relationship during the Cold War, focusing in particular on the 1972 Incidents at Sea Agreement (INCSEA). In this volume, an updated edition of his classic Cold War at Sea, Winkler brings the story up to the present, detailing occasional U.S.-Russia naval force interactions, including the April 2016 Russian aircraft “buzzings” of the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic. He also details China’s efforts to militarize the South China Sea, claim sovereignty over waters within their exclusive economic zone, and the U.S. Navy’s continuing efforts to counter these challenges to freedom of navigation.




Attu


Book Description

The Battle of Attu, which took place from 11-30 May 1943, was a battle fought between forces of the United States, aided by Canadian reconnaissance and fighter-bomber support, and the Empire of Japan on Attu Island off the coast of the Territory of Alaska as part of the Aleutian Islands Campaign during the American Theater and the Pacific Theater and was the only land battle of World War II fought on incorporated territory of the United States. It is also the only land battle in which Japanese and American forces fought in Arctic conditions. The more than two-week battle ended when most of the Japanese defenders were killed in brutal hand-to-hand combat after a final banzai charge broke through American lines. Related products: Aleutian Islands: The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/aleutian-islands-us-army-campaigns-world-war-ii-pamphlet Aleutians, Historical Map can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/aleutians-historical-map-poster Other products produced by the U.S. Department of Interior, National Park Service can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/national-park-service-nps World War II resources collection is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/world-war-ii




The Scientific Way of Warfare


Book Description

Bousquet's landmark book examines the impact of key technologies and scientific ideas on the theory and practice of warfare and the handling of the perennial tension between order and chaos on the battlefield. Spanning the entire modern era, from the Scientific Revolution to the present, it offers a systematic account of modern warfare as the constitution of increasingly complex assemblages of bodies and machines whose integration rests upon a military assimilation of scientific thought. Reflecting the pervasive influence of scientific conceptual frameworks upon warfare, modern armies have been successively organised by reference to the paradigmatic technologies of the clock, engine, computer, and network. Conversely, major scientific developments and technological breakthroughs have become intertwined with the experience of war, especially since the Second World War's unprecedented mobilisation of scientific rationality and technical expertise. This increasingly tight symbiosis between science, technology, and war is at the heart of both the tremendous powers and enduring pathologies displayed by the contemporary military machine. In this new and revised edition, Bousquet extends the analysis to encompass the latest developments in the scientific way of warfare in the midst of renewed great power competition and a wave of technological innovation in artificial intelligence and robotics.




Gradual failure : the air war over North Vietnam 1965-1966


Book Description

Of the many facets of the American war in Southeast Asia debated by U.S. authorities in Washington, by the military services and the public, none has proved more controversial than the air war against North Vietnam. The air war s inauguration with the nickname Rolling Thunder followed an eleven-year American effort to induce communist North Vietnam to sign a peace treaty without openly attacking its territory. Thus, Rolling Thunder was a new military program in what had been a relatively low-key attempt by the United States to win the war within South Vietnam against insurgent communist Viet Cong forces, aided and abetted by the north. The present volume covers the first phase of the Rolling Thunder campaign from March 1965 to late 1966. It begins with a description of the planning and execution of two initial limited air strikes, nicknamed Flaming Dart I and II. The Flaming Dart strikes were carried out against North Vietnam in February 1965 as the precursors to a regular, albeit limited, Rolling Thunder air program launched the following month. Before proceeding with an account of Rolling Thunder, its roots are traced in the events that compelled the United States to adopt an anti-communist containment policy in Southeast Asia after the defeat of French forces by the communist Vietnamese in May 1954.




The Paths of Heaven The Evolution of Airpower Theory


Book Description

Airpower is not widely understood. Even though it has come to play an increasingly important role in both peace and war, the basic concepts that define and govern airpower remain obscure to many people, even to professional military officers. This fact is largely due to fundamental differences of opinion as to whether or not the aircraft has altered the strategies of war or merely its tactics. If the former, then one can see airpower as a revolutionary leap along the continuum of war; but if the latter, then airpower is simply another weapon that joins the arsenal along with the rifle, machine gun, tank, submarine, and radio. This book implicitly assumes that airpower has brought about a revolution in war. It has altered virtually all aspects of war: how it is fought, by whom, against whom, and with what weapons. Flowing from those factors have been changes in training, organization, administration, command and control, and doctrine. War has been fundamentally transformed by the advent of the airplane.




Technology, Violence, and War


Book Description

This volume explores the importance of technology in war, and to the study of warfare. Dr. Guilmartin’s former students explore how technology from the medieval to the modern era, and across several continents, was integral to warfare and to the outcomes of wars. Authors discuss the interactions between politics, grand strategy, war, technology, and the socio-cultural implementation of new technologies in different contexts. They explore how and why belligerents chose to employ new technologies, the intended and unintended consequences of doing so, the feedback loops driving these consequences, and how the warring powers came to grips with the new technologies they unleashed. This work is particularly useful for military historians, military professionals, and policymakers who study and face analogous situations. Contributors are Alan Beyerchen, Robert H. Clemm, Edward Coss, Sebastian Cox, Daniel P. M. Curzon, Sarah K. Douglas, Robert S. Ehlers, Jr., Andrew de la Garza, John F. Guilmartin, Jr., Matthew Hurley, Peter Mansoor, Edward B. McCaul, Jr., Michael Pavelec, William Roberts, Robyn Rodriguez, Clifford J. Rogers, William Waddell, and Corbin Williamson.




Defense's Nuclear Agency 1947-1997 (DTRA History Series)


Book Description

This official history was originally printed in very small numbers in 2002. "Defense's Nuclear Agency, 1947-1997" traces the development of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP), and its descendant government organizations, from its original founding in 1947 to 1997. After the disestablishment of the Manhattan Engineering District (MED) in 1947, AFSWP was formed to provide military training in nuclear weapons' operations. Over the years, its sequential descendant organizations have been the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) from 1959 to 1971, the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) from 1971 to 1996, and the Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA) from 1996 to 1998. In 1998, DSWA, the On-Site Inspection Agency, the Defense Technology Security Administration, and selected elements of the Office of Secretary of Defense were combined to form the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).




Black Shoe Carrier Admiral


Book Description

The revisionist work about Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, who won his battles at sea but lost the war of public opinion. A surface warrior, Fletcher led the carrier forces in the Pacific that won against all odds at Coral Sea, Midway, and the Eastern Solomon’s. Despite these successes, during the post-war Fletcher had become one of the most controversial figures in U.S. naval history and was portrayed as a timid bungler who failed to relieve Wake Island and who deliberately abandoned the Marines at Guadalcanal.